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Mobile Ad Blocker Will No Longer Stop YouTube's Ads

34 points| Hary06 | 1 year ago |gizmodo.com

82 comments

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fdgjgbdfhgb|1 year ago

It's one of those things - they are totally in their right to do it, but I still think it sucks.

At the end of the day, both parties benefit: Youtube won't have to serve me videos for free and I'll gain back a bunch of free time.

alsetmusic|1 year ago

At this point, I download all videos (Downie.app on Mac; it's awesome) and play them locally. The day I no longer have a workaround I will stop watching. I have enough other content to keep me going. Too much, really.

BadHumans|1 year ago

Just use NewPipe. It's just a better Youtube client even if it had ads.

https://newpipe.net/

CornCobs|1 year ago

Seconding NewPipe. Though recently it's been unable to load comments and the error banner keeps popping up as a result (no comments may actually be a plus?)

I still use the regular Youtube app for shorts but NewPipe is definitely a better experience overall. My main gripes with the official Android Youtube client: - They made it so annoying to choose your video resolution (Seriously, who tested this and found it better than the old method?) - I can accept not being able to play in the background, but if you lock your screen while in fullscreen mode and then unlock it, there is a very noticeable lag before the app exits fullscreen mode, and in this period you cannot resume playback.

1vuio0pswjnm7|1 year ago

For me, the less-complicated client called "DVD" is more reliable for downloading than the client called "Newpipe"; the later stops working intermittently. YMMV.

Neither are as reliable as using own custom command line programs on desktop, or mobile via Termux. If Google makes a change I can fix/workaround immediately. No waiting for app developers.

For me, Newpipe works well as a Soundcloud client.

From the Kotlin source for "dvd":

Video downloader app powered by yt-dlp (formerly youtube-dl).

Features

Download video/audio from 1000+ sites supported by yt-dlp.

Run custom yt-dlp commands.

Update yt-dlp version from settings.

Share link via other apps.

References

dvd - https://github.com/yausername/dvd

youtubedl-android - https://github.com/yausername/youtubedl-android

yt-dlp - https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp (formerly youtube-dl - https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl)

S0y|1 year ago

I'm also quite a big fan of NewPipe. I just wish you could sort videos by views.

jiehong|1 year ago

Equivalent on iOS?

Just hoping I’ll be able to use ublock origin on Firefox once it’s available on an I dependent App Store…

dyingkneepad|1 year ago

I tried using it for a while, but it always took forever to start loading the videos. It was significantly slower to the point of being annoying. I gave up.

avtolik|1 year ago

Does it show the same video adds as YouTube?

Cipater|1 year ago

My experience with Newpipe has been disappointing.

It freezes about 1/3 of the way into every video

It fails to display comments.

It crashes constantly.

998244353|1 year ago

> In October, YouTube made it nearly impossible to watch its website while using an ad blocker.

Did they revert that? I saw those for maybe a week. After that, I assume uBlock Origin had already worked around that. Probably the same will happen with mobile clients.

bambax|1 year ago

Same here. I don't know about mobile, but on desktop with uBlock Origin I see absolutely zero ads.

Akronymus|1 year ago

It mostly impacted ABP users, because UBO just has a much faster turnaround on bypassing adblocker-blockers.

themoonisachees|1 year ago

Ubo has been working hard to make sure you don't see it. YouTube keeps tweaking it's stuff so that the filters break, presumably on purpose.

hagbard_c|1 year ago

Don't use Youtube without going through a proxy like Invidious [1] or Newpipe

Don't use {site} Search without going through a proxy like SearxNG [2]

Don't use TwiXXer without going through a proxy like Nitter - this has gotten more difficult lately but it still works as long as you feed the daemon some registered accounts. Video does not work at the moment but that seems to be fixable.

Don't use Reddit without going through a proxy like libreddit [4]

Start noticing the pattern? Maybe it is time to start producing promotional posters:

The only thing to come between you and ADS could be a proxy / ADS. I'ts just not worth the risk

ADS / New rules for a sane net / Sane net protects you, your partner and your community

A proxy here and a filter there, ADS nowhere

The more you tighten your grip, ${site}, the more viewers will slip through your fingers

[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

[2] https://github.com/searxng/searxng

[3] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

[4] https://github.com/libreddit/libreddit

zinekeller|1 year ago

Extremely misleading title, made worse with the HN autotrim. This is simply about YouTube de jure telling that ad-blocking is forbidden, which is just putting this previously-de facto policy in the legal realm. It's not even specifically for mobile devices: I'm not sure why the author of this article have linked it with mobile devices.

euix|1 year ago

I think between Invidious and Freetube there are enough alternative feeds to to Youtube these days.

oliveshell|1 year ago

Sadly Youtube has been actively blocking Invidious instances for a while now. These days it only works for me ~50% of the time.

randcraw|1 year ago

MONOPOLY. If Youtube officially offers no public service anymore, it's time to vigorously prosecute them for this and their insane number of copyright violations.

pixxel|1 year ago

If YT implemented a p2p option then I wouldn’t need to use their bandwidth and block ads. The world’s video library belongs to all. If you want to act as gatekeeper to all the knowledge so you can profit then we’ll work around it. But that’s just my opinion, man.

I watch hobbyists who upload interesting things just to share information, like how YT used to be. You can gatekeep ‘content creators’ like Jake Paul behind a paywall for all I give a shit.

Workaccount2|1 year ago

You are delusional if you think ISP's will just lay down and take it when every one of their subscribers becomes a video CDN.

bigtex|1 year ago

Brave on iOS still have no issue with YT ads.

_fat_santa|1 year ago

Personally I just pay for Youtube Premium. Yes it's $10/month but I found that if you watch alot of Youtube, it's well worth it. Now anytime I'm at friends house and an ad comes up before a video I'm always like "oh right Youtube has ads"

yjftsjthsd-h|1 year ago

It's funny; I pay for lots of things, even other streaming services in order to not have ads, but I absolutely refuse to give YouTube a single penny. The difference is that every other service made the deal up front - pay X for content, pay Y for content and no ads, and here's the website and here are some mobile apps - while YouTube started out free for all with some really minor ads that you could block if you wanted and loads of 3rd party apps plus the website and 1st-party mobile apps, and then over time removed features from the free version and cranked the ads up to 11. Basically, if your selling point is "we made the free version worse" I don't want to reward that behavior.

Workaccount2|1 year ago

I'll never understand why people don't think twice paying for the array of streaming services (netflix, hulu, disney, apple, etc.) but the thought of paying for a service with creator profit sharing (and a majority share at that) is unthinkable.

fckgw|1 year ago

What country? It's $14/mo in the US now, or $23/mo for a family plan.

I wish they would unbundle the stupid Youtube Music from Premium.

mikkom|1 year ago

But uBlock with browser that supports it still does :-)

(If you have android, try kiwi browser if you haven't - it's chrome based and you can use regular extensions with it)

hagbard_c|1 year ago

If you have Android use Firefox, you can use extensions with it and get real uBlock Origin which does what it is supposed to. Add something like Privacy Redirect pointed at a number of service proxies (Youtube->Invidious, Reddit->libreddit, TwiXXer->Nitter (need a private instance for now), Search->SearxNG, etc) and you're close to ad-free.

brink|1 year ago

Eh, if I have issues watching Youtube, I'll just watch less Youtube. My time would be much better spent in other places anyway.

latexr|1 year ago

> We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service.

Ah yes, it’s all about the creators, you see. The money Google makes from it has nothing to do with it, no siree. As we all know, Google’s magnanimity always puts the creators first, and that is why every creator is so thankful to YouTube and no one has ever complained or criticised the platform. Hooray!

michelsedgh|1 year ago

Why can’t it be both? You don’t expect them to provide Youtube for free do you? Also if they don’t profit how do you want them to monetize the creators? Don’t get me wrong I hate the ads, but the problem is there has to be some kind of profits for them or for anyone else to run a platform and not just youtube no?

nkozyra|1 year ago

I think Youtube got caught offguard a bit by creators making in-video ads and sponsorships a few years ago. They don't get a cut of that, and it softens the blow of people who do use Adblock.

PlutoIsAPlanet|1 year ago

Adblocking on YouTube is a security requirement given how much fraud and malware is advertised on YouTube.

I'll disable my AdBlocker when YouTube stops trying to sell me crypto currencies from supposedly Elon Musk.

rpmisms|1 year ago

Revanced is absolutely amazing, just saying.

Havoc|1 year ago

> mobile ad-blocking apps may result in buffering issues

That seems like a rather gaslighting passive aggressive approach.

huppeldepup|1 year ago

This is called “throttling”, no?

danpalmer|1 year ago

If the video content is loaded from the same place as the ads, and the blockers are blocking the source, that statement would make sense. I'm not sure it's gaslighting. Passive aggressive? Maybe but the point is to tell you not to do this so perhaps that's justified?

throwaway5959|1 year ago

YouTube Premium (which avoids ads and still pays creators, plus offers downloads) is $14/month.

Put another way, let’s say the average Hacker News commentator makes $150k/year or $75/hour, that’s less than 15 minutes of work.

Just reeks of “I don’t believe tipping is fair to workers, that’s why I don’t tip.”

Edit: downvoted in less than a minute, haha

mmastrac|1 year ago

Why are you conflating the extremely broken tipping culture/minimum wage system in the US and a multi-billion-dollar company's revenue strategy?

BXlnt2EachOther|1 year ago

For US users who are interested, paying annually discounts it to $11.66/mo. Comes with YT Music for better or worse (I rarely use that side of the membership).

Workaccount2|1 year ago

I agree with your statement, but the tipping thing is totally unrelated. Youtube pays creators for the content they produce (via ad-share or premium sub share). There is no tipping in the loop here.