I’m sure many of you are already aware that YouTube has been rolling out anti-adblock detection for Chrome users for a few weeks now.
Today, as a long time Firefox user with the fantastic uBlock Origin extension installed, I got my first anti-adblock popup on the platform. Note that this may not happen to you personally for a while, but it is inevitably coming for everyone.
Thankfully, the fine folks at uBlock Origin have already advised a simple workaround (on Reddit, yuck!) which I will duplicate in a simplified form below for your convenience. I have tested it on Firefox and it is working fine for me (so far).
PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST.
Update uBO to the latest version (1.52.0+) . <== The extension itself, for technical improvements. You do this in your browser.
Remove your custom config / reset to defaults. <== This means removing your custom filters (or disabling My filters) and disabling ALL additional lists you’ve enabled. It might be quicker to make a backup of your config and restore to defaults instead.
Force an update of your Filter Lists. <== This is within the extension. Lists are what determine what’s blocked or not. How to update Filter lists: Click 🛡️ uBO’s icon > the ⚙ Dashboard button > the Filter lists pane > the 🕘 Purge all caches button > the 🔃 Update now button.
Disable all other extensions AND your browser’s built-in blockers. <== No need to uninstall, just disable them. They might interfere with our solutions.
Make sure you follow all 4 points above. If you’re seeing the message, it’s likely due to your custom config (either additional lists or separate filters in My filters).
Restarting your browser afterwards may help too.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the issue on default settings, you can slowly start restoring your config (if you really need it). Do it gradually, to easier find out what was causing the issue in the first place. Once you find the culprit, simply skip it in your config.
If you want to use Enhancer for YouTube*, you have to* disable its adblocking*.*
May the force uBlock Origin be with you!
Update
Just wanted to mention a few things that have been pointed out in the comments:
- There are quite a few projects that provide an alternative ad-free front end to YouTube. These include Invidious, FreeTube, LibreTube, Newpipe, Revanced, and I’m sure there are several more options I’ve missed. I don’t have any particular preference really but I routinely use NewPipe on my cellphone just because I tried it once and couldn’t be bothered trying all the others.
- In step 4 listed above, to clarify, afaik you only need to remove adblocker extensions (if you have more than one installed) that might conflict with the uBlock Origin rules and trigger the anti-adblock, not all extensions.
- If you hate non-stop ads but want to support your favorite content creators then be sure to give them some love on Patreon or whatever alternative options they provide. Creators typically make only a tiny, tiny fraction of what YouTube makes in ad revenue, assuming YouTube doesn’t just outright steal the lot, and it’s a shitty business model that’s ruining the internet. Even if you watch the ads, you’re only supporting YouTube most of the time, not the creators.
So annoyed at how all these services keep degrading for users. I was happy to pay for premium light. I don’t need download/music/etc I just wanted no ads. Simple as that. The price was fairly reasonable and I would have kept paying it. Now they got rid of the premium light and I have to pay at least 50% more for additional things I don’t and will not use.
Alright then, well you lost a customer and I’ll just use AdBlock. And if you somehow figure out how to disable that, I’m just going to find content somewhere else. I’m fucking sick of ads. I’ll pay a reasonable amount to remove them. But I will not be continually wrung out for more and more money. Just leave me alone.
The enshittification continues. Read up on Doctorow’s coining of the term on Wired.
It’s an ironic choice of site in my opinion, in that they used to have no reading limits and used to be in my list of daily sites to check. Now you have to JS-block if you want to use the site.
Yeah I reference that article a lot. It’s happening everywhere. Feels like it’s accelerated rapidly in the last few years too.
It has. The pandemic helped a lot of people see their value as assets in the workplace, and unfortunately the owners and rich saw that new empowerment and immediately felt very threatened, so they have declared an all-out war on the working class. The fact that so many are taking so long to realize it unfortunately means that the rich are winning this war, too
Hell the last few months it has been very noticable.
Same here. I would have been tempted to pay for premium light but they removed that, and I’m not paying extra for things I don’t use.
Holy Hell, I just checked and Youtube Premium is more expensive than Disney+ here in Canada, and D+ includes STAR which is basically Hulu. Youtube Premium is a terrible deal.
Yeah it’s fucking absurd
I don’t think Youtube cares so much about losing adblock customers. They suck up a lot of video, which costs a boat load of money, for no revenue. Watch time alone is great for attracting investors, but Google doesn’t need investors. Youtube needs more money.
The truth is, Youtube isn’t very profitable compared to any other kind of content Google hosts. You can easily cost Youtube a dollar a day, if not more, by sicking down background playback. That’s not too bad, but you won’t be only one doing it. Look around and see how few Peertube instances there are compared to Mastodon and Lemmy: video hosting sucks much more, and Peertube cheats by using peer to peer redistribution to help with the bandwidth (which means everyone who’s watching the video along with you knows your IP is watching the same thing as them).
Google is in hot water with their real customers (advertisers) for making them pay for showing ads that actually never got shown. They need to fix their metrics to detect ad fraud (hard) or block any attempt to hide ads (easier).
Youtube has know who does and doesn’t use adblock for years. When creators get paid, they show how much revenue they didn’t pay out because of adblockers. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t do this earlier.
I think this is a well-thought out tactic. They’ll lose a bunch of users who never made them any money on the first place, but the ones that are addicted enough will come back and start making money again.
Honestly, I’m annoyed that I’ll be seeing ads soon, but I think it’s for the best. There’s no such thing as free Youtube hosting. People need to start paying for online shit or we’ll end up with megacorporations having more and more control over the internet, which isn’t something we want.
I know paying for stuff sucks, but if we don’t get rid of this “everything must always be free and without ads” mentality, the internet is only going to get worse.
I would be inclined to agree with you if they didn’t get rid of Premium Light. I think charging users for avoiding ads is completely reasonable, we live in a Capitalist country and video hosting isn’t cheap. Even still, axing Premium Light shows a desire to screw over users in order to achieve more profit, which in my mind makes YouTube scummy.
Bingo. This move right at the same time they killed premium light really muddies the messaging on this one
I agree, them killing off Premium Lite in some countries and then starting to offer it in other countries is idiotic and typically Google.
However, I don’t think Premium Lite covers the “let’s put youtube in the background for music” royalties to be honest. Royalties are even more of a pain than hosting content.
I didn’t mind the ads back in the day, like 10+ years ago. They were ads for cars, cleaning products, food and drink, movies, games, theme parks, shit like that. Regular products, wasn’t really any super scummy stuff there. Now half the ads are scummy mobile games designed to cause a gambling addiction, impersonation frauds and scams, crypto doubling scams like it’s fucking Runescape, and a whole bunch of other shit that is actively harmful or brainrotting. I don’t mind seeing a funny little fox selling me laundry detergent, but the fart-piss-and-shit mobile ads are just genuinely revolting. If YouTube wants to make me watch ads, they should have some standards and vetting processes for those ads. Like, I still listen to the radio. I hardly notice the ads there because they aren’t actively making me feel worse physically for having listened to them. Very rarely I’ll watch regular TV and, again, don’t really mind the ads there 90% of the time.
And that’s not even touching on what the creators actually get from the hours of my life I would end up watching ads. If you donate 2 bucks to your favorite creator or sub to their patreon or whatever, you’ve probably given them more money than they would get from your ad views in a year. It’s not the loss of adblock revenue that’s making so many creators take sponsorships, it’s the lack of revenue in the first place.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
fart-piss-and-shit mobile ads
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
How is paying more to said megacorp going to reduce their influence?
They’re currently offering video hosting for a price that’s impossible to compete with. Then they can keep razor thin margins.
It’s how Walmart and Uber and all those other huge tech companies ruined entire market segments: come in for ridiculously low prices taking investor money/the profits from one completely different business model, and using it to operate a new business at a loss for a few years. Nobody can compete with a business that’s willing to take a loss, so your local supermarkets shut down or get bought out, your local taxi company/delivery services goes bankrupt, and then the megacorp can raise prices to make a small profit.
We need another Youtube, and with current pricing, only Amazon, Tencent, and other megacorps can afford to even attempt setting up a competitor.
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