YouTube breaks ad blockers once again while testing a viewing limitation

[Redaktion]

This time, Google admits that the latest YouTube update "may result in suboptimal viewing experiences for viewers with ad blockers installed" and urges viewers once again to support creators by allowing ads or trying YouTube Premium. Also, when accessing the website without logging in, a warning shows up asking the user to sign up.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/YouTube-breaks-ad-blockers-once-again-while-testing-a-viewing-limitation.848100.0.html

[NikoB]

And in the Russian Federation there is no advertising on YouTube. Nobody uses blockers on YouTube there. Google's sanctions are such that only residents of the Western world suffer. =)

[TruthIsThere]

"Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service"

...and Alphabet (Google) violates its users' privacy, ect. by EVERY MICRO-SECOND DAILY. You CANNOT get good out of bad, folks.

Again... Google has forged huge communities, GLOBALLY, to fight Google more than ever today to stop and circumvent Google's EVIL PRACTICES more than ever... today and the people... as ALWAYS... will triumph! ALWAYS!

Good luck to Google riding on this endless road of quicksand. 😂

[Neenyah]

I'm yet to notice anything wrong though. Edge + Ublock Origin = not a single ad. Firefox + Ublock Origin = not a single ad. Firefox mobile (Android) + Ublock Origin = also no ads.

Not just no ads but no any issues of any kind like buffering problems, slow to load vids and such. Could it be a "beta" "feature" for a part of users?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Codrut Nistor]

Yes, they are probably testing these "in select regions/markets" as usual. :)

[Adblockman]

And in the Russian Federation there is no advertising on YouTube. Nobody uses blockers on YouTube there. Google's sanctions are such that only residents of the Western world suffer. =)

VPN is the Western man's friend. =)

[Neenyah]

Yes, they are probably testing these "in select regions/markets" as usual. :)

Heh, not really surprising given their history. But it is what it is, even if they manage to win in their attempts to push ads (which they won't) they will still need to close down the whole service as pretty much the only safe way to prevent direct downloads from the site (without opening YT at all). Good luck to them, I guess 😁 I already stream/download most vids from there. And watching YT vids through bing.com will show no ads at all even with adblock disabled so even Microsoft is blocking ads on their side, lmao.

I mean, I wouldn't mind paying Premium if there was any benefit of having it, but they keep increasing price(s) and provide no value for that. Plus their scummy politics where their main focus of interest is to make the experience more difficult for users with adblocks while simultaneously not spending a fraction of that time and energy to improve the experience for their existing paying users/customers.

Meanwhile there is Valve; with Steam they killed most reasons and justifications to pirate games (not comparing adblocks to pirating, but comparing business politics instead) because they focus on happy customers. Happy customers = profit for everyone including a lot of money for Valve. Alphabet/Google/YouTube is, somehow, heavily struggling in their attempts to realize that...

VPN is the Western man's friend. =)

Correct. But you don't even need it, it's good to have a decent private DNS (AdGuard, Quad9 etc.).

Edit: I completely forgot to mention the biggest issue with ads on YT - they are absolute utter trash. They miss all points of interest, with or without active targeted/personalized advertising. If those cringe ads were at least moderately interesting or relevant to one's interest then people perhaps wouldn't mind that much. "But no, let's push that further!" I can hear some "genius" from YT talking - "Now when we have shitty ads let's spam users with 2-3 of them per vid! Let's break a song right in the middle and push one unskippable 30-second ad for them to hear! They will love it!" 🙄 Clowns.

Edit 2: Private browser window (and no cookies or cache at all from before), changed user agent, disabled Ublock Origin and changed my IP address, went to YT to play a random song and the very first ad was some trash "bio makeup" product from Wish - and I'm a guy, I'm assuming I don't need makeup lol. Second ad was from Glovo with that bizarrely annoying song where they all sing how good is it to order delivery. In the middle of the song there was one more, this time for renting homes in Namibia (I'm in Europe, I own my place). Truly amazing. One have to love self-torture to watch that joke of a site without adblock/VPN/DNS/all of those.

[NikoB]

There is only one insoluble problem - YouTube does not work normally anywhere except Chrome (especially live streams in 1440p+), and in Chrome the text is always 100% cloudy (due to erroneous grayscale font smoothing) and this bug cannot be disabled by any version of Windows.

No matter how good Firefox is, for YouTube you have to switch to damned Chrome.

No matter how good Firefox is, for YouTube you have to switch to damned Chrome.

Moreover, even outdated versions of Chrome, even below version 100, perfectly show those streams that almost always have problems even in the newest versions of FF, especially when you choose a resolution higher than 1080p, if available, for obvious reasons of better picture quality.

It is this policy of Google that should first of all be recognized as illegal at the level of the antimonopoly authorities of each country, without exception, and primarily by the US authorities, but officials (corrupt officials?) pretend that they do not notice anything, although this service has an overwhelming market share.

[Neenyah]

No matter how good Firefox is, for YouTube you have to switch to damned Chrome.

No issues with FF. Use user agent switcher and switch it to Chrome, problem solved. Explained here.