YouTube runs experiment addressing users with ad blocker

[Infraviolet]

AdNauseum: Wouldn't something which clicks ads in the background put you at increased risk of it loading one which contains a browser exploit and thereby installing malware on to your system? Better to block all entirely surely?

P.S. IdahoMan, DVD trailers/warnings/anything else "user skipping prohibited at this point"... VLC media player happily lets you skip them all. HDMI/VGA/DVI... from a computer running VLC in to the television's appropriate input.

[langwadt]

P.S. IdahoMan, DVD trailers/warnings/anything else "user skipping prohibited at this point"... VLC media player happily lets you skip them all. HDMI/VGA/DVI... from a computer running VLC in to the television's appropriate input.

and a pirated movie doesn't have any of that nonsense ...

[eutectique]

AdNauseum: Wouldn't something which clicks ads in the background put you at increased risk of it loading one which contains a browser exploit and thereby installing malware on to your system? Better to block all entirely surely?

Here is the answer from the developer's FAQ:

How does AdNauseam "click Ads"?

AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.

[NiHaoMike]

It's also worth noting if if one disables the "fast forward" part of the ad muter and add a function to draw a countdown timer over the ad, it would become a truly stealth adblocker. To Youtube, it would seem as if no adblocker was used at all.

[SiliconWizard]

It's also worth noting if if one disables the "fast forward" part of the ad muter and add a function to draw a countdown timer over the ad, it would become a truly stealth adblocker. To Youtube, it would seem as if no adblocker was used at all.

Yes, it's not hard to make the browsers stream content without showing it to the user. It's dead-simple. But once a major browser does it, YT will go bonkers and will do whatever to have this removed.
This is a war, and not with equal weapons.

[NiHaoMike]

Good luck trying to stop an open source project, try to take it down (if that's even possible, it could be hosted at a place that could care less) and the Streisand Effect will undo your effort almost immediately. What they could do is try to make it hard to tell ads apart from regular content, which one of the most difficult to do would be by checking if the content is seekable. They'll either have to make regular content non seekable (which would really make Youtube less usable in general) or make the ads seekable which would let users easily bypass them manually.

[SiliconWizard]

Maybe you're right, and in any case, this is going to be an interesting time.

[Infraviolet]

" What they could do is try to make it hard to tell ads apart from regular content"
I think content wise this has happened a lot already...

Actually, to be honest adverts which are sponsored parts within videos, timed by the video's creator to appear at a place where they don't break things up too badly, voiced by the same person and at the same sort of volume levels as the main video are a lot less unpleasant than actual pre-video or mid-video ads.

[JPortici]

" What they could do is try to make it hard to tell ads apart from regular content"
I think content wise this has happened a lot already...

Actually, to be honest adverts which are sponsored parts within videos, timed by the video's creator to appear at a place where they don't break things up too badly, voiced by the same person and at the same sort of volume levels as the main video are a lot less unpleasant than actual pre-video or mid-video ads.

though they are still annoying as hell. Especially when you have product X that is being pushed to every single channels about topic Y
And worse, youtube don't get their cut, poor them
But at least some of the more concious channels that use chapters in their videos have the chapter about sponsored content so you can skip right away

[Dave]

There is an addon called SponsorBlock that uses community-sourced information to automatically skip these baked-in ads. Pretty much any bigger YouTube channel is going to have the ad portion in  the video tagged within hours of the release. Should you find a video which has not yet been tagged, you can add the tag yourself and save other viewers some time.
Everything is anonymous (random user IDs, no registration) and you also get stats on how much time you saved in total, and if you tagged videos, how much time you saved for other viewers.

[PlainName]

He turned out to be a pretty decent chap after all.

[tszaboo]

" What they could do is try to make it hard to tell ads apart from regular content"
I think content wise this has happened a lot already...

Actually, to be honest adverts which are sponsored parts within videos, timed by the video's creator to appear at a place where they don't break things up too badly, voiced by the same person and at the same sort of volume levels as the main video are a lot less unpleasant than actual pre-video or mid-video ads.

There is a plugin for that called Sponsorblock. Users report the ads, and the video playback skips it.

I sometimes watch YT on my TV and it became absolutely obnoxious with the latest update. You cannot tell in advance how long the ad is, most are unskippable, and it even happens that it counts back only to start another ad. Sometimes it's more than 40s of ads before a video, and then 5 minute in the video another ad. I'm done with it I think.

[MathWizard]

I've been back on youtube w/o adblocker, and I'm not liking it. People will be mid sentence, and an ad kicks in. Also I'm really hating having to hear music in ads. There's lots of music in video's I already don't like, I don't want ad music in my head either, most of it is not what I like.

And most of the ads aren't about anything I want or care about. And some short video's have way too many ads. IDK how all that gets setup, but I'll back to avoiding youtube. I know bills have to be paid, but youtube is already raking it in.

And for me, I already waste too much time online, I don't like spending the extra time to skip ads either, it's just another interruption.


I'm getting so sick of the same old ST TNG/Voyager/DS9, and few movies I have on my PC. And I don't use my DVD drive anymore, it's way too loud, so I don't watch DVD's anymore. I need to check out some online radio, there's bound be be lot's of fiction and non-fiction/technical channels that can fill the silence.




Can another site or program "watch" a video, and with a time delay, playback the non-ad version of the video ?  And I used to love downloading mp3's of stuff on youtube. Everything from math lectures to movie talk. IDK what happens now if I try that with a video with ads in it.

[Bud]

Get an Android TV (if not have one) or stick and install SmartTube APK. Problem solved. Can't download stuff though.
smarttubenext.com

[rdl]

I can't imagine using YouTube without ad blocking. That would be like a nightmare for me. And there is a lot more there that needs blocking besides the ads.

[David Hess]

I just added ad blocking to Twitter and the experience is much improved.

[wilfred]

Get an Android TV (if not have one) or stick and install SmartTube APK. Problem solved. Can't download stuff though.
smarttubenext.com

I use Yt-dlp to download videos. Also recommended for those who can live without a GUI although someone has probably made a GUI. I also recommend Smarttubenext. As far as I know it doesn't work on PC's. Maybe that has or will change. I actually use the beta version since the whole adblocker thing blew up.

[Andy Chee]

I use Yt-dlp to download videos.

Another vote for yt-dlp here!

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation

[Bud]

Get an Android TV (if not have one) or stick and install SmartTube APK. Problem solved. Can't download stuff though.
smarttubenext.com

I use Yt-dlp to download videos. Also recommended for those who can live without a GUI although someone has probably made a GUI. I also recommend Smarttubenext. As far as I know it doesn't work on PC's. Maybe that has or will change. I actually use the beta version since the whole adblocker thing blew up.

I use SmartTube on my Amazon 4K stick. Works like a charm. Should work on other Android sticks as long as installing APK packages is allowed.

[tszaboo]

I just added ad blocking to Twitter and the experience is much improved.

I have a browser plugin to block all the social networks. Those like buttons for facebook on every website? Gone.
Third party tracking? Gone.

[nctnico]

I've been back on youtube w/o adblocker, and I'm not liking it. People will be mid sentence, and an ad kicks in. Also I'm really hating having to hear music in ads. There's lots of music in video's I already don't like, I don't want ad music in my head either, most of it is not what I like.

It seems Youtube has stopped doing add-blocker detection or Adblockplus has adapted. No more screens saying I'm using an add-blocker or ads showing.

[PA0PBZ]

It seems Youtube has stopped doing add-blocker detection or Adblockplus has adapted. No more screens saying I'm using an add-blocker or ads showing.

That is also my experience, some weeks back I had a few nag screens for some days but they are long gone, I never disabled my ad blocker (ABP) and it still works fine in removing all the rubbish.

[David Hess]

YouTube did something in the past couple of days which blocked access from JDownloader2, which relies on my session cookie to use my account, but JDownloader2 was updated and now it works again.

[HalFET]

It seems Youtube has stopped doing add-blocker detection or Adblockplus has adapted. No more screens saying I'm using an add-blocker or ads showing.

That is also my experience, some weeks back I had a few nag screens for some days but they are long gone, I never disabled my ad blocker (ABP) and it still works fine in removing all the rubbish.

ABP is also getting more frequent updates lately though, so maybe they're also actively monitoring and adapting?