YouTube screwing itself with adblockers again

I use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Not sure what kind of experience anyone else is having with YouTube, but recently my home page has been empty because I “don’t have watch history turned on”. Okay, fine. I won’t be able to browse suggested videos, and I’ll spend less time on their platform.

Then I began to get warnings about using an adblocker. Okay, fine. I know they need to make money, so I turned off the adblocker. Now when I’m having my time wasted by ads, I have to ask myself, how bad do I really want to watch this video? Not badly enough? I close the tab and spend less time on their platform.

Finally, I began experiencing glitches when playing videos. The video stops, but the audio continues. This never happened before. Perhaps mistakenly, I attribute this to YouTube, which is owned by Google, trying to force me off Firefox and on to Chrome. That was the last straw.

Now I use YouTube to simply follow the channels I’m subscribed to. When I want to watch something, I copy the URL, paste it into YT-DLP, download the video and spend zero time on their platform at all.

To summarize; Now I’m watching zero commercials, and YouTube is streaming the entire video to me, even if I only watch a small portion of it, and they’re collecting less information about my watching habits than ever before.

Nice job, YouTube. Nice job.

rodgm, (edited )

I have gotten so advertising adverse in my old age that I no longer listen to or watch radio, cable TV, magazines or any of the “old” media that I grew up with. It has gotten to the point that my mind revolts to hearing them or seeing them. It’s like smelling shit and to be expected to find that entertaining. So good luck Google, if it comes down to it I will turn off the internet if ads become mandatory(advertising creep) the same as I have done with any other forms of advertising supported media. Edit: I do donate to sites that are user supported.

Scary_le_Poo,
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

Allow me to help. Get the libredirect pluggin for Firefox. Go download and install freetube. Set libredirect to direct all YouTube links to freetube. Enjoy!

refurbishedrefurbisher,

FreeTube is also available as a webapp and on Android: marmadilemanteater.github.io/freetube/#/

github.com/MarmadileManteater/FreeTubeCordova

I’ve had trouble importing subs on the Android version though, and haven’t really tested the webapp.

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

This. Works great.

Zaphod,

Firefox + uBlock as well and I the only issue tha I have is that YouTube always takes a few seconds to load, before that the page is basically frozen

Rangus97,

You could get around the load time by spoofing your useragent to chrome on Windows

Zaphod,

I did try that with the extension, but unfortunately didn’t work

rengoku,

If you dont like it and dont want to circumvent it just leave. Dont need to make it hard for yourself.

IllNess,

I don’t have my adblocker on and I get the “Your YouTube history is off” message. I cleared my cookies specifically for YouTube and Google. I still get that message.

When I go to Private mode in Firefox, the message disappears. Same thing happens when I change my User Agent in Developer Mode and changing device size.

Makes me wonder how they are specifying my non private tabs…

toodd,
@toodd@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

There’s a small army of cookies and local storage data on any of their sites. Private tabs are devoid of cookies and storage data on initial launch which starts YouTube in its default state. Unless you’re clearing cookies and storage every time you visit YouTube they’ll track you.

IllNess,

Thank you for the information.

jarfil,

amiunique.org/fingerprint

If you are unique, and keep browsing with the same set of parameters, then they can track you (any web, not just YouTube).

Private tabs tweak some of those parameters to make you appear less unique, so webs have a lower confidence in you being the same person, are less likely to correlate that tab with your actual browsing habits, and less likely to punish you for “past transgressions” like having used an ad blocker.

Private tabs also clear up any data stored in your browser by a given website when you close them (not just cookies or site data, but also whether it has some fonts or tracking pixels in its cache), usually have fewer extensions enabled (each extension and data stored in it can make you more unique), and so on.

IllNess, (edited )

Thank you for the information and the link.

Edit: I just ran this. This site basically says I am unique because of I updated my OS on my old computer. There are a lot of other factors but those are the main ones. This is so interesting. I’m gonna do more research on how to mess these variables up. Thank you very much for this. Bookmarked.

jarfil,

This site basically says I am unique because of I updated my OS

The site is more for illustrative purposes, since they don’t have nearly close the same amount of users as large sites like YouTube, and there is no way to know which data points exactly does some website take into account at any given moment or to what level… but you can export the results and compare them between devices, places, over time, or try to mess with them, like you said.

BurningRiver,

Jesucristo. Can you guys just not use YouTube for like a month? Seriously, when they roll out unpopular features, just don’t fucking use it. Why is this all too hard to understand?

ExLisper,

Because addiction.

jarfil,

YouTube is still the best source for long format content. They’re trying very hard not to be… but still are, for now.

coffeejunky, (edited )

I have been using revanved for years, never really had major issues.

Also just not using the service isn’t going to change anything. I think Reddit was a good example of how companies really don’t listen to their users.

So I’ll just keep using it without ads, once it doesn’t work anymore I’ll just switch to the next solution or stop using YouTube. I do have Nebula so maybe I’ll just, only use that at some point.

chahk,

To YouTube people like you and me are not the intended demographic. We were never going to pay either directly or through watching ads, so they don’t need us.

Sleestak_Chaka,

I use the desktop FreeTube app and watching YouTube works smoothly. On mobile, I use invidious via a browser or Safari in iOS with 1Blocker and NewPipe on Android.

ShadowRam,

Ya know, I wouldn't mind ads,

If google would just FUCKING LISTEN TO MY CURATING DECISIONS!!

No, I'm never going to buy a car based off an ad. Block em all.

No, I'm never switching insurance companies based on an ad.

No, I'm not interested in mobile games. Ever.

And yet when I tell google, block this content, not interested, I don't want to see this particular topic.

It just doesn't fucking listen.

You'd think this would be an absolute GOLD MINE of information that google would want, to better focus their ads,.

But they just ignore it,

It's not about linking people to stuff they are interested in and taking a percentage... it's about wasting everyone's fucking time, and then they wonder why people run ad blockers.

bluGill,

Statistically you will buy that so the ad companies pay google to ignore your prefferences.

detectivemittens,

What’s funny is Google pushed me to turn off all my targeted ad preferences + watch history on YT. I basically did what you did and they started pushing me PragerU and other weird conservative ads, so I just straight turned everything personalized off. And pretty much stopped using the platform.

plasticcheese,

More often than not, adverts are about brand awareness. You might not buy that car based off that advert right now, but when you do decide to buy a car, you’ll remember that brand name and they become a consideration.

I hate adverts.

t3rmit3,

It still has to be remotely relevant to me. If they showed me 10 different cars that look like Mini’s aesthetics, hey, I’d probably keep those in mind. Instead they show me 5 SUVs and 5 pickup trucks, and unless I actually start to make enough money to start that llama-petting-zoo-cafe I dream about in my worst work moments, I will never need or want either of those vehicle classes.

blindsight,

Research shows it still affects you, though. You’ll have more brand awareness, whether you want to or not. Everyone in the US & Canada know what a RAV4 and Forester are. You don’t need that explained to you when your coworker tells you about their new car.

And even if you don’t drink pop at all, you still know Coke is better than Pepsi.

hulemy,

This kind of stuff makes me sad, in a way. Knowing there are people with psychological degrees whose job it is to ““indoctrinate”” people with marketing and advertisements to minmax profits.

Pepsi still better than coke though.

t3rmit3, (edited )

I do know what a Rav4 is, because my coworker drove one, but without looking it up I don’t know what a Forrester is.

But also, I think you’re confusing the studies that show that all people are susceptible to marketing, with saying that all people are susceptible to all marketing, which is not what studies show. Nor is there such a thing as marketing with 100% market penetration.

Believing that all marketing works on everyone is just as false as believing that there are people whom no marketing works on.

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time… Well, you keep saying it differently, Abe.”

jherazob,
@jherazob@beehaw.org avatar

I do have brand awareness, if i get ads shoved in my face about a brand, that brand goes into a shit list to NOT buy from

jarfil, (edited )

Do you tell your friends how shitty that brand is, so they can go and check it out for themselves…? 😜

They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Even if it’s only people who think you’re full of shit, who go check out a brand you criticize, that’s still working as advertised.

Veblen goods can also benefit from brand recognition by people who can’t afford them. It’s why Rolex, Ferrari or Lamborghini advertise to everyone, so the rich kids know they can flaunt their wealth in your face. Interestingly, the likes of Bentley barely advertise outside of their target market.

jarfil,

Less popular ads can pay more to get shown, so while Google charges by the click, at some point fewer clicks from a less targeted ad at a higher price, can make them more money than more clicks from a more targeted ad at a lower price.

And yet… that’s still less enshittification than with the likes of TikTok. Expect for it to get much worse.

lemmie689,
@lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I don’t know why I don’t have ad problems and errors like I’ve been reading for a while now. My laptop has Kubuntu with Proton vpn set to block ads, and just bare bones Brave with ad blocking set to whatever max in the settings. My phone is Android with FF and uBlock, and also Proton vpn. I haven’t been blocked or seen an ad, although I don’t use YouTube very much. If I open YT links on my phone, is there acutually ads there that I’m not seeing? I can open YT in FF and just get a home page, play a video uniterrupted. Lately tho, if I wanted to look up something specific I just used piped.video, but I was frustrated by a java error on piped for a bit, so thats when I started using just YT again, and like I said, I have’t seen any ads. I’m using piped again now.

sculd,

Even though I have premium, YouTube recently has been very hit and miss. Live streams keep buffering for no reason. Some videos failed to play and needed a refresh.

Just odd behaviour all around. In their battle to take out adblockers they destroyed the average viewer experience as well.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

They’ve destroyed all the competition by offering a free service on the back on unlimited funding and then switching to an aggressive payment model once they have complete market dominance.

Google doesn’t care if ad block users stop watching. They want ad block users to watch ads or go away.

SapphironZA,

My YouTube homepage has been set to the subscriptions tab for 7 years now.

TheBaldness,

Didn’t know I could do that. Gonna change it now.

SapphironZA,

To clarify, I changed my bookmark to be the subscription page

TheBaldness,

Got it.

dog,

Give piped.video a try. Basically a youtube frontend that isn’t ass.

DigitalPaperTrail,

although I use it, too, be prepared to have to hop around instances because of errors that stop a video from loading, or keeps them eternally buffering. I still find it more preferable to the ad-filled hell

ares35,
@ares35@kbin.social avatar

lately i haven't even been able to get some pages (just pages, not streams themselves) on yt to even open up in firefox, with or without ubo enabled.

TheBaldness,

I seem to remember reading that Google is purposely degrading the YouTube experience on Firefox. Don’t know if it’s true, but it sure seems that way.

01189998819991197253,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Had the same issue. I changed my user agent to safari on macos, and haven’t had an issue since.

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