this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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224
YouTube’s new anti-adblock measures (iter.ca)
submitted 2 days ago by wegbier@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Today i was looking through the top popular shorts in a private tab. It was so depressing there were countless AI slop videos getting 300m views.

People just dont care. Its why I love Lemmy, here the people care about the tech they use and content they consume. People here have standards. But most people arent like that and eventually everyone will be designed for them and there won't be anything for us and there will be less and less people like us. I love technology and I hate what's happening to tech so much.

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 7 points 10 hours ago

On the other hand, I really do wonder how many of those 300m views were also not human views.

[–] EighteenthNerd@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

  1. I watched YouTube ads.

  2. When they got to be too much I stopped watching.

  3. Then I added uBlock Origin and NoScript (even on YouTube I block some scripts) and went back to watching.

  4. When bazillions of content creators started over-creating content just for revenue, and not to provide value, I started watching less and less.

  5. Now content creators are producing even more garbage via AI, and now I only watch a very few real-world content creators and videos more than 2 years old. Everything else I watch on other sites. If a content creator also posts to other sites, I watch them there and not on YT.

[–] Sinraw@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What other sites can you recommend?

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Nebula has some of the best educational content, especially ever since Tom Scott went on to other things. There are definitely some weird ones on there, as well as a couple which I'm convinced are right-wing shills, but by and large many of the best edutainment channels have collected over there, especially if you're into writing/world building. HAI/Wendover, Minutephysics, legaleagle, extracredits, nilered, and hellofutureme are the big ones I'm aware of that are also popular on YouTube which publish their videos over on Nebula. It's well worth it to know that you're supporting them more directly, and no ads.

Also, dropout (nee collegehumor) is worth it.

[–] PushButton@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Imagine going through the interview process, like 10 rounds or whatever leetcode bullshit, and being told you are going to be working on /blocking Ads-Blocker users/...

Fuck it, I am out of here!

[–] _edge@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 day ago

Imagine applying to work on the youtube team because you enjoy watching videos and then you are expected to make it worse for everyone including yourself.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 day ago

It's an arms race. And when Google stops me from downloading videos to avoid ads, YouTube's videos will be replaced with other content. I mean, the videos are convenient, but there's absolutely enough content to avoid them. Plus, I can develop new hobbies.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 125 points 2 days ago

Noticed it for a single day, then ublock must've updated and everything works fine again. I will drop YT entirely before I watch a single shitty ad on there, let alone pay for a sub.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wonder how much they spend trying to defeat adblockers versus how much revenue they lose because of them.

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago

Even if only 1% of people used adblock, then that's 1% of millions of dollars of ad revenue. It's easily enough to put several people on this as a full time job if they want to.

I'm sure Google saw it as only a minor issue at first, but the number of people using adblockers is presumably going up all the time.

The irony being of course that adblock usage is skyrocketing only because companies like Google have made the Internet so thoroughly ad-polluted it's intolerable to go without one.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Meanwhile on Newpipe: just another day with no ads.

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

One glance at the GitHub issues reveals just how much of a struggle it is for the NewPipe developers to keep the app functioning, with YouTube constantly targeting every trick they use.

It's draining so much of their time and energy that there's barely anything left for working on new features.

The mental exhaustion of the developers is another issue entirely, one that should be obvious to anyone familiar with the demands of maintaining a relatively popular open source project. The fact that it involves YouTube only makes things worse for them.

[–] ter_maxima@jlai.lu 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

NewPipe simply does not work for me. Every video fails to play.

The best YouTube experience I've achieved so far is still using the official website with a ton of firefox addons.

[–] Sudomeapizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ive seen mentioned elsewhere, but recently it looks like they blocked all vpn access. When using newpipe, it all works again for me when i turn off my vpn!

[–] ter_maxima@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not going to disable my VPN, I'll try again later to see if it's fixed.

[–] Monstrosity@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

Just curious, why are you resistant to turn off your VPN?

I keep mine off most of the time & only rev it up when I feel like I really want or need the anonymity.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Didn't block me

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 day ago

for me its Grayjay even tho its not foss i had the best experience in any frontend

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[–] ilillilillilillililli@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I finally had to update (19.16.39 --> 20.12.46) and repatch my YouTube on Android via ReVanced. I'll probably need to do that again in 6 months. I use uBlock Origin and LibreWolf on PC and SmartTube on my TV. I hope Google understands I won't be watching YouTube with ads.

https://github.com/revanced

https://codeberg.org/librewolf

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin

https://smarttubeapp.github.io/

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Add in sponsorblock as well. Its an extension that autoskips "inline" ads that creators do in video. It uses community input to know when to skip, and is excellent. You can also submit ad time stamps very easily to help out millions of people.

[–] ilillilillilillililli@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Good advice! I use SponsorBlock too. Revanced and SmartTube have it integrated by default. LibreWolf/Firefox just need the extension installed. Its saved me hours (probably days at this point) of sitting through bullshit. Cheers!

[–] VintageGenious@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

Sams everything

[–] seven_phone@lemmy.world 49 points 2 days ago

Or how Google decided to choke on its own greed.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 43 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I have a Premium subscription, but I can give you an even bigger reason to never use YouTube. They actively push brain rot in their search. No matter what words I use to search for something, it is almost always the same results. Looking for nostalgic videos from the 90s? YT: "Here is the most recent brain rot on the Internet."

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Yes. I was searching for a video about a panda refusing to bathe on YouTube app of a friend’s phone.

The first 4-6 results were Shorts, and I had no way of knowing if they were what I wanted apart from the thumbnails, since the titles were truncated. The next four were only semi-related videos, in the sense it was about a panda.

The rest of the videos that followed were absolutely bonkers. From Minecraft clips to random mobile arcade games I have never heard of, and many, many, MANY AI generated Chinese videos featuring a baby doing farm work, masonry, or other kinds of labor.

In a way, it felt like a display of arrogance. In the sense that YouTube was confident it had already served me what I was looking for in the first 10 results, and then said: “Now that you have seen what you searched for, why not watch this crap?”

[–] Pirate@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Same thing on Google results. I don't use Google but I use what are basically frontends for Google and all it feeds you with every search is AI-generated slop.

Every Google search must be precedented by writing "Reddit", now.

[–] SalamenceFury@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago

Google trying its best to destroy adblockers and adblockers going "lmao low diff" is sooooo entertaining.

[–] kepix@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

honestly waiting 3 seconds of buffering is not the end of the world. i just have ptsd from the last isp, and makes my brain think i dont have net.

currently experiencing this on librewolf, however cromite desktop loads in instantly. google also have to fight against revanced, smartube, tubular...etc. this is a long ass battle and bless every codemonkey fighting the big brother.

[–] treyf711@eviltoast.org 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

YouTube is really cool right now. The video ads that come up are ai voices just rambling about some new discovery and a minute in I have no idea what the ad is supposed to be for. Another cool thing that happened while I was at work was YouTube showed me some sort of blocky AI generated image in the top ~~left~~ right of what appeared to be a woman performing fellatio. The neat thing was that it was an ad for roof repair.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Something tells me that 5 years from now YouTube will no longer exist

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Facebook still exists, so I'm not so sure

[–] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Remindme! 5 years

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I blocked YouTube. No ads.

[–] danielsan256@feddit.org 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Use the grayjay app from the FUTO team

[–] hogmomma@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I paid for their app and I've never felt more torn about recommending a product. On the one hand, it works pretty darned well (except for the inability to comment ON YouTube). On the other hand, I've contacted their support at LEAST three times and have no response. No bueno.

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[–] Monstrosity@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I use Pop_OS & the other day I was browsing the Store & stumbled on this app called 'youtubedl-gui'. Then I found out it's also available via apt.

Really cool little piece of software. Maybe check it out

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 1 day ago

It's also available on Windows, and most other Linux distros.

[–] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Interesting writeup with some interesting techniques. I should read these some more

[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

it’s getting hard to keep up with the changes YT does and especially as an ios uYou+ or ytLite user (like me) as now you need a jailbroken device that needs to be on an ios version that support the last youtube app version and decrypt and build the modded app with this whole workflow…

Before you ask I’m ios because reasons and need to be on it until apple drops support for my iphone 12 pro. I miss Android…

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Why not just use Brave, which blocks ads and allows for picture-in-picture and background play?

Do you need to download for offline play or similar?

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you have access to a command line, yt-dlp.

[–] zymagoras777@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

How can you have no access to a command line? Also yt-dlp has lots of UI frontends.

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