YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker

[magic]

I would say only few failed states are prohibiting the use of VPN.

And new failed states may join, if necessary. Yours included.
FYI, your ISP is already mandated to block your access to Russian news, for example.

Of course nobody will ban using VPNs, that would be too economically disruptive.
But connecting to unlicensed VPNs? Abroad?? Man, why would you ever do something shady like that?

[madires]

Those popular services sold as VPN aren't really VPNs. They are NAT services with a VPN connection between client and NAT gateway.Their purpose is to hide your IP address and location while also keeping the traffic between the NAT gateway and you private. So it can be also used to circumvent state sponsered internet filtering measures.

Besides some oppressive regimes, VPNs can't be banned as they are often required by laws or regulations in most countries (transfer of medical images, GDPR protected data or corporate compliance, to name just a few).

[Ranayna]

Those popular services sold as VPN aren't really VPNs. They are NAT services with a VPN connection between client and NAT gateway.Their purpose is to hide your IP address and location while also keeping the traffic between the NAT gateway and you private. So it can be also used to circumvent state sponsered internet filtering measures.

Besides some oppressive regimes, VPNs can't be banned as they are often required by laws or regulations in most countries (transfer of medical images, GDPR protected data or corporate compliance, to name just a few).

For companies, yes, they cannot really be banned. Highly regulated, but an outright ban would be difficult. Even China allows VPN for companies, but only if these play by their strict rules. This can have very heavy penalties though if you misuse it. Authorities have the right for auditing any company to make sure VPN is not misused.

But why could a government not ban private VPN connection to targets abroad? I see a decent chance of that happening. The lobby for that will be strong:

- Content providers do not like VPNs, since these are used to circumvent licensing deals
- Some Porn sites are now blocked in various US states and Germany. Currently VPNs can circumvent these blocks, but there are already calls to ban VPNs by the same people that got the porn banned
- Governments that want more control and insight over what the people are communicating will also have an incentive to ban secure VPNs. Both the EU and UK are at the moment trying to ban secure cryptography

There are actually a lot of interests to control and limit the internet. Banning private use of VPN services can, and quite likely will be, a part of that.

[Bicurico]

My goverment is indeed blockinig part of the internet. I cannot open sites like PirateBay when using the DNS servers of my internet provider. But, I can chose to simply use some other DNS server and yes, I do use Google's DNS server. I accept that in return of being able to have unfiltered access to any domain using Google's DNS, Google gets to know my whole surfing profile, including all the shady sites I visit.

Stil, in this case I prefer Google to know it instead of my local ISP that is monitored by my goverment.

Human kind has managed freedom in a very poor way, giving minorities the freedom to be against freedom. But that is a whole new subject, fully off-topic.

[tom66]

VPNs couldn't be banned technically, once you have encrypted DNS (DNS-over-HTTPS) it's possible to tunnel everything through a VPN and all that can be seen is you are sending encrypted traffic to an IPv6 address, that could be anyone and the IPv6 address can be frequently renewed. 

Encrypted traffic looks similar to compressed video/data, so unless you're doing deep packet inspection it's very difficult to distinguish it from that, and of course there are entirely legitimate non-VPN uses for encryption.

Governments hate encryption being used en-masse by big tech because it makes the NSA's (and national equivalents) job much, much harder.

[Karel]

My goverment is indeed blockinig part of the internet. I cannot open sites like PirateBay when using the DNS servers of my internet provider. But, I can chose to simply use some other DNS server and yes, I do use Google's DNS server. I accept that in return of being able to have unfiltered access to any domain using Google's DNS, Google gets to know my whole surfing profile, including all the shady sites I visit.

Stil, in this case I prefer Google to know it instead of my local ISP that is monitored by my goverment.

Human kind has managed freedom in a very poor way, giving minorities the freedom to be against freedom. But that is a whole new subject, fully off-topic.

I prefer Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) over google's DNS.
Probably Cloudfare isn't perfect, but I believe that, regarding privacy, google is the worst.

[madires]

Pro tip: run your own DNS resolver with DNSSEC support fully turned on.

[amwales]

I use an adblocker uBlock Origin and have been banned from using this now with youtube. They gave me the 3 video limit and its either watch with ads or register for premium. I thought I would have to give up watching youtube, then I saw post on here with bigclive and the video was embedded and strangely it played without ads. After a little digging I found that simple rewriting the url for the video I want to watch from



to

https://www.youtube.com/embed/v5liq9Tj3aU

This change made the video play, I was able to do this with any video and my adblocker continued to work,
YMMV.

[Ranayna]

VPNs couldn't be banned technically, once you have encrypted DNS (DNS-over-HTTPS) it's possible to tunnel everything through a VPN and all that can be seen is you are sending encrypted traffic to an IPv6 address, that could be anyone and the IPv6 address can be frequently renewed. 

Encrypted traffic looks similar to compressed video/data, so unless you're doing deep packet inspection it's very difficult to distinguish it from that, and of course there are entirely legitimate non-VPN uses for encryption.

Governments hate encryption being used en-masse by big tech because it makes the NSA's (and national equivalents) job much, much harder.

And that is very likely why the EU and UK are looking into mandating backdoors for cryptography.
With a backdor, they can look into whatever you are transmitting, then it is trivial to filter and block.
And if they can't look into the traffic: well, you have circumvented the mandated backdoor, with all the consequences that entails...

[MK14]

I use an adblocker uBlock Origin and have been banned from using this now with youtube. They gave me the 3 video limit and its either watch with ads or register for premium.

That sounds far too aggressive to me, and is a sort of blackmail.  I wonder if the governing bodies, could take them to court over it?

The thing is, companies really can get a terrible image, and it can be damaging.
I think Google/YouTube's, stance, could back-fire big-time in various ways.

For example, some people would refuse to work for Google now, and some advertisers might start backing away from Google, if they are getting a very bad image.  Sales of the Google Pixel Phones, could decline, etc.

[tom66]

And that is very likely why the EU and UK are looking into mandating backdoors for cryptography.
With a backdor, they can look into whatever you are transmitting, then it is trivial to filter and block.
And if they can't look into the traffic: well, you have circumvented the mandated backdoor, with all the consequences that entails...

Yes, the problem is essentially, there is no way to build a back door into something like asymmetrical crypto, that others could not eventually exploit.  Things like hidden keys or secrets that are only available to the government will be leaked.

So what they are asking for is cryptography to be banned, and that's just not feasible.  Too much of modern society depends upon it. 

[madires]

There are actually a lot of interests to control and limit the internet. Banning private use of VPN services can, and quite likely will be, a part of that.

And that is very likely why the EU and UK are looking into mandating backdoors for cryptography.
With a backdor, they can look into whatever you are transmitting, then it is trivial to filter and block.

Cryptography is so pervasive that it can't be simply put back into a government's safe. Weak encryption or backdoors won't work either. We had that already (crypto wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars). Those measures would also violate very elementary rights of citizens in several countries. Additionally, that would break a lot of current technology and create a serious impact on the security of most information and communications systems. Your enforced backdoor can be used by your enemy too. This is not just a theoretical danger, this happened already a few times. For example, Juniper's security incident in 2015 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-02/juniper-mystery-attacks-traced-to-pentagon-role-and-chinese-hackers).

[ve7xen]

It's always interesting to see privacy sensitive folks advocating for the use of VPN services. These services hide your traffic from your ISP, and maybe your government if you're worried about that, but they also send it all in the clear to some often-shady-seeming company in a foreign country, whose customers are also often shady, or have 'something to hide'. To me that makes them both juicy targets for black hats / intelligence entities, as well as potentially a 'cure worse than the disease' if that company itself decides to leverage the information they have access to (legally or not). I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next Snowden Papers revealed the NSA using these services as 'honeypots'. You'll also frequently get flagged as suspicious when using various services through such a VPN, which is annoying. I think you really need to make an informed decision about this for your own situation, because which is better is going to heavily depend on who you trust (or not) and your own situation. It is absolutely not a panacea.

It does obscure the most trivial way of identifying you for data collection, but what these companies are actually doing to link the data they collect with 'you' is far more sophisticated. Not that it matters much, since most people give up this information 'willingly' by logging in. If you're logging into accounts, using a VPN service thinking it will protect your privacy just seems like a step backwards.

Among the options, I think CloudFlare's Warp is among the better for privacy; it has a pretty strong privacy policy, isn't their primary revenue (or traffic) source, and I think CloudFlare has established itself as a trustworthy company, relative to those VPN services advertising with YouTube creator embeds (ironically...). Operating such a thing yourself, on devices you control, is a different story too of course, but you give up some of the privacy benefits by not mixing your traffic with a bunch of others.

As far as legality, I can see such services whose intended purpose is to obscure identity / geographic location running into legislative difficulties, they do pose some legitimate issues. But crypto is far too pervasive and useful to 'ban' in any wide manner, and there will likely always be foreign jurisdictions that don't ban such services, who you can buy service from by jumping through some hoops. It'd also be a case of legal whack-a-mole, like we have seen with things like The Pirate Bay, and the underground stuff will always find a way to exist. Of course you will always be able operate such a thing yourself, with slightly more effort and slightly less anonymity by purchasing a VM, which is another thing that is not feasible to ban outright.

[Bicurico]

You cannot ban cryptography. Even I could implement known public algorithms and protect my communication. Use WhatsApp and copy&paste encrypted strings. Doesn't need to be the latest method. A simple improved Vigenere algorithm would already keep security agencies busy enough. Even better if you hide the coded message inside normal text.

[ve7xen]

You cannot ban cryptography. Even I could implement known public algorithms and protect my communication. Use WhatsApp and copy&paste encrypted strings. Doesn't need to be the latest method. A simple improved Vigenere algorithm would already keep security agencies busy enough. Even better if you hide the coded message inside normal text.

You can't prevent anyone from using it of course, but you can certainly ban it in the same sense as anything else is banned: limit distribution by applying leverage against companies that might sell it, and exercising violence against people or entities that use it anyway. This is no different than banning anything else, except that doing so with cryptography would be completely impractical, with wide ranging implications, not to mention the basic rights it would violate. I doubt it has/will/would prevent the less reasonable of our world governments from trying it anyway, and using "you used crypto, you are a criminal" as a weapon against people they don't like, particularly the people who need it most, like journalists and whistleblowers. You are not 'safe' if using crypto in any manner is equally punished as whatever it is you're trying to hide.

[SiliconWizard]

Those measures would also violate very elementary rights of citizens in several countries.

Do you think that would really stop them?

[helius]

This change made the video play, I was able to do this with any video and my adblocker continued to work,
YMMV.

I was hesitating to disclose it to the world, but yes, it continues to work (and it has worked for the last handful of years I have hand-edited all youtube URLs in this way). You may not be given the option of full-HD quality on some videos.
Using a DNS proxy with dummy static entries for e.g. "googleadapis.l.google.com" can also prevent the text ad banners.
Actually the subscribe popups and pre/midroll ads simply do not load when using this interface, there is nothing for adblockers to block.

[Karel]

..., but they also send it all in the clear to some often-shady-seeming company in a foreign country, whose customers are also often shady, or have 'something to hide'.

You believe that, for example, Proton VPN which is based in Switzerland, is a shady company?
Switzerland has one of the strongest privacy protection laws and they are not part of the US or the EU.
As long as you don't break Swiss law, you'll be fine when using Proton VPN.

[wilfred]

Using Microsoft Edge on WIN10 and Adblock Plus I got the warnings and then the timeout warning and then they stopped and I was getting a blank screen in the YT window for what I am assuming is the timeout to skip the ads before the video started playing.

I'll take that. I can ignore the blank screen and silence, and wait a bit for the video to start playing.

I did install Ublock Origin into Edge and that just showed a YT you've got 3 more videos before we just stop playing videos. Which is what happened. I went back to Adblock Plus. Maybe that too will stop working soon.

Then I will hopefully watch fewer YT videos along with fewer ads. Maybe I'll buy a subscription. It's not like I don't think I'll get some value from it.

[ve7xen]

You believe that, for example, Proton VPN which is based in Switzerland, is a shady company?
Switzerland has one of the strongest privacy protection laws and they are not part of the US or the EU.
As long as you don't break Swiss law, you'll be fine when using Proton VPN.

I did not name any companies, so no I don't believe that, because I don't know anything about this company or Swiss law. I believe that many of these companies target shady customers, some are registered in 'corporate friendly' jurisdictions with dubious histories, and all of them are juicy targets for black hats, the surveillance apparatus, and user data silos alike. Many or even most of these companies operate servers outside their home jurisdiction as well, which are subject to the laws and surveillance apparatus of the place they operate. And if you as a customer aren't in the same jurisdiction as that company's home, you might not enjoy the same rights as citizens, or likely just have no practical recourse against them should they violate your trust.

I am simply advising careful consideration before you use one, which includes deciding for yourself whether or not your trust the particular VPN provider you choose to use. The point is you are changing who has access to your cleartext, not preventing anyone from having access, as these companies would have you believe.

[PlainName]

I did not name any companies, so no I don't believe that, because I don't know anything about this company or Swiss law.

And yet you are happy to pronounce on other companies that you also don't know anything about. Perhaps you could share the names of the companies you do know about?

I am simply advising careful consideration before you use one

That's fine, but you seemed to be tarring them all with the same brush.

[Karel]

I guess you can't trust whatever VPN provider for 100% but I believe that the "good" ones are better than the average internet service provider.
Specially if you are living in the EU where politicians are heading for chinese style mass surveillance.

[madires]

AFAIK, for each good VPN (NAT) service there are at least 10 shady ones. Free ones usualy like to collect data and install malware. Several were caught lying about not keeping logs. Some use PPTP or L2TP which are insecure by today's standards. And a few already had data breaches.

[madires]

Using Microsoft Edge on WIN10 and Adblock Plus I got the warnings and then the timeout warning and then they stopped and I was getting a blank screen in the YT window for what I am assuming is the timeout to skip the ads before the video started playing.

Don't know if it's related but uBlock has sometimes a similar quirk. When it happens an ad starts playing, but audio only. It's a race condition which can be easily fixed by reloading the page. After the reload I can enjoy the video without any ads.

[NiHaoMike]

AFAIK, for each good VPN (NAT) service there are at least 10 shady ones. Free ones usualy like to collect data and install malware. Several were caught lying about not keeping logs. Some use PPTP or L2TP which are insecure by today's standards. And a few already had data breaches.

For some use cases (e.g. getting around geoblocking nonsense), it doesn't need to be particularly secure. It's also worth noting that one could connect to Tor and then one of those VPNs for torrenting (can't use Tor alone since it doesn't support routing UDP), in that case the logs would not show the user's actual IP.