I get the feeling we are now talking about two different things. If by "cracked" you mean that someone can rip and redistribute the content once they get access to it, sure, it's very hard to protect against that.
What I mean is: it's possible to restrict access to the service so that you cannot watch a video unless you've played the ad first or you are a paying customer. As an example: Netflix or any of the movie streaming platforms. There's no add-on or special browser that allows you to use Netflix without being a paying customer, and if YouTube implements their plan, they can make it so you won't be able to circumvent it just by using Firefox, like you claimed.
Ngl would like to see the browser vs. app usage statistics for YouTube. They've been moving into shorts hard so I'm thinking that desktop users are becoming a minority on the platform.
I‘m the type of determined contrarian who even pays for AdBlockers to support them in this arms race, so if they want that sweet subscription cash to keep coming they‘ll defeat whatever bullshit Youtube comes up with. Worth every cent, for a less ad infested world.
There's an unwritten deal, you know. Youtube lets us block and in return, we allow Youtube to know we block. Because if we take that away from Youtube, Youtube no longer has reliable viewer statistics and the price of their ads will go down.
Now it seems Youtube wants to break the deal (and they can, unless we start pirating Youtube content, they can at the very least make us sit through a minute of black screen before each video). They probably think the damage that will be done is less than the additional income that the subscriptions generate.
it's just the same old story. Grow, grow, grow, wait until you've got a monopoly, now squeeeeeeeeze the profit.
Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.
And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.
That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.
Just to clarify, AdNauseam doesn't click on every ad. Certainly not by default. I've noticed that while it does hide ads embedded in YouTube videos, it doesn't seem to click them often. (Though, it does still click on image based ads on YouTube).
Additionally, by default AdNauseam does not click on ads that are "do not track" (DNT) compliant, an emerging standard set by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'll link to the GitHub FAQ post the devs made regarding why they, by default, don't click DNT compliant ads.
It does yes. It also interferes with other privacy related extensions like privacy badger. I have disabled both Ublock Orgin and Privacy Badger in favor of AdNauseam and have been pleased. After using it for about a week, it says I've "clicked" on about $150 worth of ads.
The main thing to note is if you're on a site, and you see ads, you can always flip AdNauseam into "strict" mode. In strict mode, it is less effective at clicking on ads, but better at making sure nothing pops up. There's only one site that I've had to use strict mode on so far. Attached image is of my "ad vault" (the ads that have been clicked). I did hide the NSFW ads:
One thing that worries me about this approach is that it's still generating ad revenue. Sure you don't actually see the ads but it's still an incentive for companies to continue running more and more ads.
But they’re not making the company paying for the ads any profit. It’s a money sink for them. But you’re correct in that whoever is hosting the ads will make their coin.
From the persepctive of the host site, maybe. But for the advertisers, AdNauseam punishes them pretty badly. The idea is to destroy the relationship between the "click through rate" and "conversion rate" of offending sites/ads.
The linked article discusses the phenomena in more detail, but the bottom line is that advertisers want sales. If their ads don't get sales on a certain platform, they will no longer advertise on said platform.
That's without even considering how this screws up the data that organizations like Google are trying to track. That data is worth something to them, and this obfuscates it.
I don't mind having to watch an ad every now and then, a couple of years ago the ads were still acceptable, watch 30s, one ad, the video starts and enjoy. Now it is two or three ads and the start, which can be longer than the video itself, and you can have ads in the middle of the video. It just becomes very annoying, very quickly. Hence, I started blocking these ads more and more.
Yeah that's the thing. I'm happy to watch reasonable ads but the concept of reasonable seems to continuously shift. I was happy with a single 15s ad occasionally but it's:
2x 10s ads
1x 15s ad and 1x 10s ad (with a skip at 5s in)
1x 15s as (with maybe a skip at 5s)
Like the pattern and the frequency are all over the place and it feels like I'm constantly watching ads.
I get that need to pay for traffic / usage, but I'm watching 720p / 1080p at compressed quality. How much do they truly need
And don't forget that even after that you still have to watch baked-in "This video is sponsored by <insert shady company here>" adds since the actual revenue that gets passed to creators from youtube is so low that to keep the ship afloat they have to look for additional revenue streams.
There is "anti adblock" blockers, mine work on even the most aggressively advertising sites and i don't think the adblock developers will stand still either.
uBlock Origin on Firefox is best, enable all the filter lists (except the regional language ones). Not to be confused with uBlock, they are not the same.
I suspect that all of the AI these companies think will solve all their problems (and add profits), will actually be a tool for us to use to skip and block ads.
Someone will learn how to use AI against them.
[evil laugh heard in the background]
Shit if I have to I'll download every single YT video I wanna watch with yt-dlp and watch em in VLC/MPC/Plex/any other video player in the world lol. My eyeballs see advertisements when I choose for them too.
Oh, no no no no no. I'm not going to sit through ANOTHER year of election commercials with you-know-who and other assorted fear-mongering fascist freaks. As what remains of my sanity is my witness, I will slay every ad they send my way!
I noticed the YouTube Addon for Kodi has started throwing errors about age restricted videos not being available outside of official YouTube apps or the site itself.
We use STube; its bloody magic.. Not sure what wizzardry goes on in the background as not only does it block youtube ads it also blocks the add that the content creators put in the middle of their vids.. No more NordVpn / Squarespace or clash of twats add...
Did you know the software will only display none or at most a single 4-second skipable ad if you watch less than 15 minutes of youtube a month? I hear people complain about 5-15+ minute youtube commercials and laugh because I've never dealt with that.
The secret is to literally just stop watching youtube (and television in general). The content you find on Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, etc is all going down hill quickly.
No clue tbh how they track it - neither my partner nor I watch youtube much, so they don't see much traffic from our network. Don't know if they track usage by user, ip, cookies, etc
I won't stand any ads on youtube. Getting blasted with 5 times the same ad at 300% loudness. And premium does not really get rid of it as well, they would have to forbid sponsored content. Every time ads start to slip through adblock I will happily spend hours trying to block them instead of watching a single one. If they don't want me to watch the videos for free they can easily put them behind a paywall. Or do some reasonable pricing if they need infrastucture costs covered.
However I don't mind sending a couple of bucks towards content creators that I watch regularly. That will easily be worth more to them than watching ads even for the rest of my life.
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