Ublock users who got hit by Youtube's anti-adblock effort- how's your experience been?

I started getting the dreaded anti-adblock pop-ups on Youtube when they started ramping up their efforts a month or so back, and I initially went through the whole rigamarole: First it was just the pop-up, then it was the pop-up with the timer, then the 3-video countdown finally leading to the video player being disabled outright.

Throughout all of this I did the recommended Purging All Caches -> Update Now routine on the Ublock Dashboard at least once a day to keep the pop-ups away, but when it got to the player getting blocked it didn’t seem to work anymore. Since I’m on Firefox, I experimented using Containers and found that I could just log in to my YT account on a different container to keep using Youtube until that container started getting blocked.

In the past few weeks I’ve noticed no issues though apart from having the video player blocked once, which was fixed by purging all caches and updating and I almost forgot about the whole anti-adblock thing altogether. It does seem like YT pages are loading slightly slower than they used to though.

Are you still having issues with Ublock on Youtube or were you even affected at all?

rob299,

I don’t use AdBlock, I use Peertube. no ads by defualt. Never had any problems with YouTube knocking at my door.

Peertube, while empty at the content level, there are some known YouTubers who have a presence there. Especially Linux and open source YouTubers. But you will always find new people who only post on Peertube.

Omega_Haxors,

I don’t use adblock ([thunderous booing] Yeah yeah I know.) despite that fact sometimes videos flat out won’t load for no fucking reason.

Kind of reminds me of antipiracy which ends up harming normal consumers more than it does the people it’s intending to target.

SquislyMe,

I was using Chrome and doing the usual steps once a week kept ads away for a while but about a week ago it was no use.

We use a Mac for our main TV and were using Chrome, but it was taking up a ton of space and CPU so I just deleted it. I’m using Safari for now, All ads for the first time in a decade…

My secondary computer/bedroom TV is a crappy HP with the non upgradable RAM, I use edge and ads are still blocked with Ublock origin, for now

Arthur_Leywin,

Firefox gets those ads. Librewolf doesn’t so i have a browser specifically for YT xD

RogueBanana,

Its probably just outdated version or cache. Look into it again, should be a easy fix.

420stalin69,

Also Brave allows for background playback of YouTube videos on mobile, iOS at least

Omega_Haxors,

Pedophile browser.

currawong,
@currawong@lemmy.ml avatar

Firefox user with auto-clear cache on closing: I didn’t notice a thing. On Android I use NewPipe, didn’t notice anything either.

JSens1998,

I have a Firefox extension for creating PWAs (Progressive Web App), and had a profile setup for Youtube. The adblocker detected popup just appeared a couple weeks ago. So i just deleted the YouTube PWA profile, recreated it, and added Ublock back. Havent seen the popup or ads since.

SpicaNucifera,

My experience can be summarized as: lol. lmao.

I’m on Chrome. I just keep uBlock updated and turned off automatic Chrome updates. I’ve had Privacy Badger, uBlock, and HTTPS since forever.

They can bite me.

JGrffn, (edited )

I had pretty much the same experience you did. I did randomly find a reddit post with a ublock custom filter to avoid the whole “page not loading at all” thing. Ever since, I’ve had only one ubo failure that I fixed with the routine filters refresh, and dare I say youtube’s actually been getting faster for me lately? I did have that slowdown, due to their thing that prevented the page from loading, but now it’s almost like they’ve ramped down on their efforts.

Edit: I’m here to stand corrected. Fuckers are messing with any browser that’s not theirs. Add the following filter to ublock if your video pages take 5 seconds to load: www.youtube.com###+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), 5000, 0.01)

AlexSup21,

Didn’t get any of these popups yet, instead uBlock doesn’t block ads sometimes. I have to refresh the video a couple of times before it stops showing them. It gets really annoying.

zzzzzz,

What browser are you using?

AlexSup21,

Librewolf

Mugmoor,
@Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Firefox user in Canada here. The last few weeks ads would try to load, but nothing would play. If I refreshed the page the video played as normal.

The last few days I’ve had no issues at all.

ninjirate,

Using firefox+ublock origin. Showed up once for me but I found out that youtube enchancer also has their own ad blocker. Once I disable their ad blocker I haven't had any issues since.

theshatterstone54, (edited )

I’m so confused on how rollout happens. Is it random? I’m in a first world country (not the USA), using Firefox and Ublock Origin and have never experienced the popups. I use YouTube daily, often watching 10+ videos a day, and have never seen an ad or the popup. I have also never done anything to update my extensions or purge the cache as you mentioned. I’ve just had 0 issues. On mobile, I use Newpipe (BraveNewPipe, a fork with sponsorblock) and once again, 0 issues.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

often watching 10+ bideos a day

Oh, they don't block bideos, just videos.

I also use firefox + ublock origin with zero issues on desktop (and on mobile too).

theshatterstone54,

Haha, fixed. It’s interesting to see I’m not the only one.

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

So far the pattern I have seen is users who do a lot of extra filtering with UO are the ones that run into the issues, but us lazy peeps who stick with defaults are sailing clear.

The only custom thing I have done in UO is filter out posts in kbin/lemmy that have certain annoying politicians in the titles. I see them enough on regular news sites articles about their trials or their shitty laws being shit down in the courts.

theshatterstone54,

Interesting. I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a normie (I use Arch and a Custom ROM, btw) but I’ve never tinkered with Ublock’s extra features, so it seems that you’re right.

ayaya,
@ayaya@lemdro.id avatar

I have enabled multiple lists that aren’t default, have years worth of custom filters, run in medium mode and I have never seen a single warning on YouTube. Maybe none of the stuff I’ve configured is YouTube related.

boatswain,

I’m in this boat as well. I’d just kind of assumed I wasn’t getting ads because I never log in to YouTube, but it’s sounding like that’s not the case.

PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES,

I experienced pretty much the same thing as you. Had to do the clear cache+update a few times. But it’s been good for a few weeks as you said. I’ve also noticed that it can take 5-10 seconds for the video page to load. But not the biggest deal, at least I don’t see fucking ads.

ryven,
@ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

In the initial phase, the official fix (just purge your cache and redownload the filter lists to get the latest ones) didn’t work for me, but the second revision of a filter someone posted to Lemmy did. It had the side effect of making it impossible to scroll down on video pages, but it’s not like the comments on Youtube are super valuable most of the time anyway.

After a week or so I deleted that one to see how the official filters were doing, and it turned out they worked great and I haven’t had an issue since.

CalamityBalls,
CalamityBalls avatar

I refreshed filter lists in ublock once, business as usual since then.

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