The enshittification continues until profits increase!
(Btw I still haven’t seen those yet. In USA and I’m using uBlock Origin on Firefox)
Got it in the Netherlands a few days ago. With ublock origin on Firefox. So I switched to freetube with the subscriptions I actually watch.
I am also in the Netherlands using uBlock Origin and Firefox and am not getting it. So my best guess is they’re doing A/B testing and people are being randomly selected to see how they’ll respond to something like this.
I’ve been using free tube but lately it’s been running pretty poorly. Which insidious instance do you use?
I didn’t change any settings so its randomizing the instance. For now that seems to work fine.
I started having problems with freetube a few months back, as well. I switched to one of several piped instances (whichever one is working at any given time) in my browser.
Haven’t seen it here yet, same country, Vivaldi and uBlock.
Browser and plugins don’t matter, this is being rolled out in waves. People are getting this on all browsers, with or without ad blockers
So this is how the internet dies? With ads, paywalls, and DRMs?
🥲
It doesn’t have to be. This could be how YouTube dies.
Websites are nothing without users. We have the power to stop using websites that pull this shit and promote new websites that don’t.
Reddit = Text based platform. Text: 1 Character = 1 Byte
Youtube = Video based platform. Videos: [Error, Not Enough Storage]
🥲
Edit: Also, bandwidth.
Storage and bandwidth are practically free though. Only last mile bandwidth is expensive, and that is paid for by the end user.
Practically and actually are two different things.
Just because serving the video costs a fraction of a cent doesn’t mean you can round that down to zero, especially when you are serving billions of video views a day.
I did say practically free.
IRL Example: I host several videos across my various sites. I pay $99/mo for a CDN. Said CDN caches my videos and does not charge for bandwidth usage. Therefore you can technically argue that I pay $99/mo for X visitors. In actuality , the CDN caches all my content. It also provides DDOS protection, a firewall, and other advanced features. That is what I pay $99/mo for.
My cost to distribute the video is $99 + my hosting bill ($50-$200/mo depending on backend jobs) / number of views. This would be true if the video has 1 view or a billion (most of the ones I host have had “millions” of views)
The video can be 360p or 8k. CDN does not care. Mine are 4k.
Normies will just watch the ads and keep using yt
Cynically, it won’t kill youtube, either. There are no alternatives. They have a lot of leverage to shittify it.
And a lot of users who just doesn’t care enough to do anything drastic about it. We already saw it with reddit, and twitter to a point. The userbase on the internet is so huge now that the people actually being aware and caring about privacy and non-commercialisation are a tiny minority. Companies can easily still make a profit on the vast majority of people who will uncritically consume.
Which makes me wonder why they care enough to put development time into these anti ad block measures.
The paradox of the internet is that people want everything:
- in one place
- free of charge
- anonymous
but don’t want everything:
- owned by one company
- supported by ads
- full of toxic assholes
Same , but not in the USA , I havent seen them yet
i’d rather not use youtube than watch ads.
Thankfully that isn’t a choice you have to make, and thanks to open source, you will ever need to make.
The only trick Google has up their sleeve is their web integrity work. Even then, there will be workarounds.
I’m not sure if this works anymore but I saved this message a while back. If you get this pop-up then put this into your adblock custom rules and it should sort it out:
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
You’re an angel. This is for ublock origin?
I believe it should work with any adblocker that lets you set custom rules but since adblocking still works for me I haven’t tried this myself. Saved it from reddit like 3 months ago so I hope it’s still relevant
I have been adblocking on YouTube for as long as I remember. Personally I think it’s unusable without an adblocker. What’s the alternative? Because I am not suddenly going to pay for a platform that keeps getting worse all the time.
When ever I see someone using YouTube without an adblocker it looks like some cheap chinese knock-off or something. As someone who sees less ads than 99% of people I’ve genuinely became a bit oversensitive to them. Podcasts are the only thing I keep paying attention to despite them having ads which even then I always skip over. Other than that every online platform I use is ad-free and I don’t watch TV or listen to radio either.
I like to listen to podcasts in the gym and I will interrupt my set to skip sponsors and ads. The enshittification on Spotify is particularly bad as they now play ads in addition to sponsorings for premium listeners.
Yeah I don’t personally use spotify for podcasts even though I have premium aswell. Except for the occasional JRE episode I listen everything else on Podcast Republic.
Thanks for the tip, I will try that one out!
bilibili, an actual chinese knockoff has less ads
Same for me, I wish there was something like sponsorblock for podcasts.
There is peertube. I’m not familiar with its limitations. Technically it is possible for someone to try and track your activity because it’s P2P.
The content is currently lacking. I’m kind of wondering what limitations are in place for each user to upload video. Can someone make a bot to start reuploading content from their favorite streamers?
And unfortunately IDK of any alternatives to YouTube. A big part of the problem is that some of my favorite creators only upload to YouTube. I don’t want to switch to an alternative and lose a large percentage of the content that I like to watch, that would be pretty shitty.
This message is displayed in the browser because Google asked your browser to do it, and your browser got the message and put it there.
When displaying ads, the end user experience is 100% client-side. You are using your screen and speakers to observe it. You can turn off your speakers and screen if you want, which will effectively “block” the ad.
But that is silly. Not only do you own your screen and speakers, but you have control of what you’re browser is doing, too (if you use a respectable browser). When HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other content is downloaded, just that happened: file downloads. After it has been downloaded, your browser then consumes it.
When it is consumed, a lot happens, but ultimately, the code in the browser displays content. Your (respectable) browser does all of this, and will change the look depending on local fonts, accessibility options, etc. With an ad block add-on, it will also remove these ads.
However, when ads are removed, the DOM is mutated with deleted or replaced content. It is possible for a website to then write ad block detection scripts to see if the ad contents have been removed or not. There are many ways to do this, and this screenshot is the result of one way of doing it.
However, enter the cat-and-mouse-chase of ad block block blocks. You can block your ads, then block the ad block block like this screenshot. These types of ad block rules are less common, but many public ones are available. Check the uBlock Origin lists in the setting page. By default, only about a third of the lists are enabled, and these extra blocks are in there.
Another avenue of determining that ads were not loaded is for the server to inspect if client-side (you) requests were made to fetch the ads. Even if this is in place, the server cannot determine if you have actually watched the ad or not. It could try to do more client-side attempts at validating that you somehow displayed it, but again, that’s client-side.
Imagine if you were sent a letter and a pamphlet in the mail. Imagine if the letter said that you could mail them back for a free sample of their product, but only if you read the pamphlet. They would have to trust that you read it, because you are reading your mail in the privacy of your own home. However, you could opt to toss the pamphlet (like an ad blocker) and never read it. It’s your mail, your home, and your choice.
Worst case scenario, they won’t respond for requests for the actual content of the video untill the duration of the advert passes.
The worst case scenario is that they only serve video to logged-in users, require accounts to be verified with government-issued ID, and enforce the whole thing with the web browser DRM they just proposed.
Make no mistake: this is a war on the public’s property rights and their right not to have ads inflicted on them Clockwork Orange-style. It can get a lot worse than you think, and will unless we force the government to stop them legislatively.
Honestly I can’t fathom this concept. Youtube isn’t a right. It’s an optional service. Why aren’t we all up in arms about the 5,000 porn sites that have paywalled their services for years? IMO the response to “youtube won’t let users use the site without ads” should be “lets help peer tube be more succesful” Just as we are here rather than trying to make a law to get reddit to open up their API for free.
I don’t like youtube. But I don’t think it’s fair or viable to mandate them allow their content for free without ads. That’s a bit like mandating hotels give rooms for free. Hosting videos costs a non zero amount of money. Google intends to make more money from advertisements then they spend on hosting videos.
Honestly I can’t fathom this concept. Youtube isn’t a right.
You know what is a right? Your property right to control the operation of your computer. Google is, as we speak, trying to violate that right by colonizing it with DRM and subverting your property to serve their own ends instead of yours.
Google has the right to serve a 403 error to anybody who refuses to pay, but they do not have the right to usurp control of people’s property to forcibly display ads. And make no mistake, it’s very much the latter that they (and all the other companies) are trying to do, as evidenced by things like this.
Do you “fathom” it now? How much clearer do I need to make it?
I’m missing here. This isn’t the sony rootkit to my knowledge. Right now we’re talking about youtube itself detecting it’s ads aren’t being shown and throwing up a page blocking the rest.
“Evidenced by” a non google service putting ads in it’s premium service? Don’t get me wrong it’s bullshit, but again a reason to not use spotify.
Really well explained. Thanks
It will be yet another endless cat and mouse game
There are smart people out there that will always find ways around this
I would love to know what the benefit is. I would think that a very minimal amount of users use adblockers. Maybe I’m wrong but their investment into these things must be substantial.
The answer is always money
How much money? Yes
True story
At this point I feel like Google wants to Intentionally kill off YouTube so they don’t have to bear the cost anymore. Just another one for the Google graveyard.
Is “allowlist” the new word for whitelist?
Not really new, it’s been around for about a decade. Otherwise: yes.
Some people mistakenly think that the “black” in “blacklist” is a reference to skin color, so they demand it to be changed.
“Excuse me, it’s ‘list of color’.”
I’m honestly glad we’re getting rid of white/black list. I personally couldn’t give a shit the racial element (which wasn’t what they ever meant anyway), but I never have to stop and think about it for a half second to figure out which I need. Allow/deny list are just outright better names.
Blacklist and whitelist are intuitive to me. It’s the black/red/white -pill stuff I never even try to remember
I’ve dealt with them a lot but they never really stuck for some reason. Allow/block is much clearer IMO
I don’t need no stinky ad blocker! With a custom user stylesheet is enough…, that is, if you’re using something other than Chrome, because Chrome removed user stylesheets for “reasons”.
Reasons of adware
Reasons: “we don’t like it when you try to slightly moderate our torrents of spam”
Seems like it’s controlled test in different countries and segments. I (Europe) get this popup in Firefox, I also use pi-hole DNS and ublock origin.
Also Europe here, using ublock and firefox, and I don’t get that popup.
Dies your PiHole block Youtube ads?
It doesn’t because it can’t the ads and videos are on the same domain now
Thanks, I thought so.
It does not. It can only block domains. Youtube ads use same domain as actual videos.
Thanks, I thought so.
Which adblocker are you using? I am using Ublock Origins, Sponsorblock, RYD and Enhancer for YouTube. I will check later if I get the same message or not.
I’ll fucking use Vimeo if I have to.
Id rather die than to use the internet without protective services.
As long as we have the physical capability of pointing a camera at a display, people will control what they see. Worst case scenario in these browser wars, you run Chrome on a Google certified device then stream the output of that device to the computer you’re actually using, using various filters and vision recognition removing the advertisement from your video stream.
This is extreme, it’s a little crazy, but I think everyone can agree it’s technically feasible. This means we will always have the edge in the browser wars. If we control the display, we control the flow.
Everything else is just an optimization
It’s fundamentally impossible to grant read access without copy. And you can always do whatever you want to your copy.
Otherwise, piracy wouldn’t be a thing.
Im skipping a few steps. Down then road when they have WEI or something like it, they will only show videos in a secure environment… i.e. where the entire hardware chain has key attestation it hasn’t been modified. In that dark future, we can still do everything through optics.
I agree with you, if they send you data, no matter how its wrapped, its your data to do with as you wish.
Even then… I have a small USB stick that has a HDMI port and support HDCP. Which means it will capture any HDMI output unencrypted. It was like… 20 bucks on Ali Express. Since it counts as a valid HDCP sink, WEI can only attest that all components up to the “monitor” support copy protection. But it can’t see or attest, that I can just capture the data unencrypted anyways.
I was trying to agree with you overall in my first comment. That no matter what they try to do, there will be a way around it. Even if it’s as extreme as using a camera to make the copy.
At some point in the chain it has to be uncompressed, and even though they have teams at Google try to get that down to the last step, someone is always going to figure out how to step in between and grab that stream
I ain’t doing all that for a video. Better option would be to ditch YT or get governments and regulators to step in and put a stop to this predator nonsense.
Sorry tech companies, you have no right to control such things. I’ll be damned if a company can tell me what application I can and cannot use. Let alone what browser I can ingest the internet with.
This is no different than the browser wars of 2000.
I never got this pop up (i use Firefox + Ublock)
It’s not fully rolled out yet.
Does that mean Firefox + Ublock Origin is blocked too?
Yeah
What country are you in? I wonder if they’re rolling it out to smaller markets to see how much backlash they get.
Time to get a federated video hosting service scaled up ASAP. But who could afford the bandwidth and storage? We need a stable torrent-based streaming solution I suppose.
It really isn’t. I can get a gigabit pipe and all the storage i can cram into a 4U for a few hundred a month. That is enough to serve several dozen users. Add on a CDN and now you can serve thousands or more. I can probably find 10 or 100 gigabit offerings for not much more.
The bigger issue is copyright. A site that gains traction in the video space by ripping youtube videos would get sued into oblivion.