YouTube continues global crackdown on ad blockers, targeting mobile third-party apps

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Bitch your content creators to also provide content on other platforms.

The day they "win" is the day YouTube is dead to me

God I wouldn't mind if the ads weren't so fucking cancer. Like I have streaming with ads and dumb Liberty Bibberty or whatever is fine.

But YouTube, it constantly runs gambling scams and then rolls into a 90 minute "ad" podcast about some bull shit

You guys, Mr YouTube worked really hard to make and produce all those videos quit stealing them!!

The link is broken.
After some searching, found it here.

So no one else has to do that annoying seach, here is the article text.
I'm sure formatting will be shite. Sorry about that.

YouTube is becoming unwatchable for ad block users – thanks to this powerful new crackdown tactic News By Mark Wilson Published May 28, 2024 Videos now auto-skip to the end, ad block users report

A laptop showing YouTube's ad blockers message next to a laptop showing UBlock Origin (Image credit: YouTube / Shutterstock / monticello) Share

The battle between YouTube and ad blockers is heating up again, with some YouTube users reporting that videos are now auto-skipping to the end if they're using extensions to block advertisements.

The new YouTube tactic has been widely reported on Reddit (via 9to5Google), with ad blocker users revealing that video playback immediately skips to the end of their video. This apparently continues to happen even if the video is immediately replayed.

While Google hasn't officially stated that this is a new tactic for dealing with ad blockers, it has escalated its crackdown on apps and extensions that remove advertisements in its videos over the past few months.

For example, in April a Google post in a YouTube Community forum stated that viewers who use third-party apps like NewPipe "may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video".

This new auto-skipping behavior appears to affect multiple ad-blocking extensions including AdBlock, although there's some evidence that uBlock Origin has already found a workaround for the issue.

The other solution, of course, is to subscribe to YouTube Premium ($13.99 / £12.99 / AU$32.99 a month), which is undoubtedly what YouTube is pushing users towards with its ad block crackdown. But its tactics are seemingly nudging many towards doubling down on ad blockers, resulting in a game of whack-a-mole that's likely to run for a long time.

Is Premium worth it? A YouTube Premium menu on a tablet

(Image credit: Shutterstock) YouTube argues that using ad blockers "prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership" and that the site's increasingly long advertisements "help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service".

The problem is that, with those advertisements becoming increasingly lengthy and unskippable, many users feel that YouTube is increasingly looking to boost its own bottom line as much as its creators' income.

In a parallel to Netflix's password-sharing crackdown, there is evidence that YouTube's ad blocker is working – back in November, ZDNet reported that Google's tactics had led to a record number of users uninstalling their ad blockers. And in February, YouTube reported that it had hit a new milestone of 100 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.

But with YouTube Premium also recently getting its biggest price hike in years, many are still holding out and using ad blockers and extensions like YouTube Enhancer to preserve an ad-free experience. With YouTube ramping up its battle with ad blockers, though, the game of cat-and-mouse will likely become increasingly hard-fought.

On android use a firefox fork with ublock I'm sure there is an equvalent on ios as well. It's much easier than playing whack-a-mole with an app.

youtube/google is spending more time, money and reputation (not that it cares about reputation since its the only player in the game) trying to defeat adblockers, than it would have ever spent on just moderating its platform to make sure its not airing scams, malicious misinformation, frauds, hoaxes, outright porn, and all the other nasty shit that piss people off about the advertising.

cause thats really all this comes down to. no one likes ads, but they'd be a lot more tolerable if google fucking policed what they showed so people didnt get fucking AI nudifying ads on kids videos, or if they just didnt air 2 hour long prageru videos about why the white race is superior and why blacks should be happy whites "elevated" them with slavery.

but they'd rather force us to see that shit, than put in the slightest effort of moderating themselves

Is the article 404ing for anyone else?

Some of us don't base their buying off of stupid ads. Why can't we just be left alone. At this point I'm just basing on if I have any money left after going to the gas pump.

What Youtube seems not to understand is...they serve at the people's pleasure. And even more so...they exist BECAUSE people create their product (content).

They're not too big to fail; they're just not annoying enough for mass exodus, yet. Classic frog in boiling pot.

Let's all remember - Youtube is a replaceable commodity. I would make efforts to download / store what videos you find irreplaceable from there (0.5-1T of hard-drive should store roughly 1500-2000, 20-30 minute youtube vids, at 720p@60), streaming them locally and intermingling with other sources.

In fact, I am working on an effort to do just that, by creating a local, SMB backed "channel" in my forked version of SmartTube

Newpipe's been relatively solid for me on Android. I think I have more subscriptions there than on Youtube at this point.

Just quit YouTube. Just part of degoogling. When I finally get all my auth off of Google I'll finish it and go to graphene.

I use two separate third party apps, and YouTube is very diligent with screwing with my favorite of the two.

Which forces me to use the other, which is very diligent at clipping out the sponsor ad.

I use an app called freetube

https://freetubeapp.io/

If your having issues with ad blockers then this might be worth a try

Yeah , I love a good ad blocker / sponsor block / privacy frontend but they all feel like duck tape on a sinking boat. At some point we have to move away from these centralized platforms but the enshitification hasn't outweighed the lion's share of content / creators on these platforms to a tipping point for the majority. Ad blocks let you mitigate the enshitification so you can stay on these platforms longer - in many cases this is required so not knocking it, I do it as well. My hope is that as these companies continue to go after ad blocks users will finally jump ship in mass as they are forced to confront the lovecraftian nightmare that is any of these platforms without an ad block.

I started routing all of my system traffic through Tor recently, which made YouTube nearly impossible to watch. So, my watching time on YouTube has dropped, and I have started watching more Rumble, Odysee, and PeerTube.

Any selfhosted, web based, alternative YT client? I've tried some quickly but nothing worked out of the box. Any recommendations?

I already left youtube. Do I miss it? Not really.

Good to see they are actively making it worse.

Pichai, you fucking banchode.

Oh, yes, uBlock Lite and a bunch of other plugins killing off intrusive ads can't still be beat.

Been using Morphe for over a year now with no issues. Smarttube also still works fine on my tv.

pipepipe is working just fine for me. youtube will never win this war. the best they can do is force people to work around their temporary tricks, people who will always be more motivated than youtube engineers.

Freetube is a third party youtube client that usually works, but they are also in a cat and mouse game with youtube blocking.

https://freetubeapp.io/

Guess that explains why GrayJay stopped working.

I use premium and even then it’s getting shitty. The UI sucks now and I get so many crap gen AI videos that aren’t my subscriptions. I keep intending to run invidious, I should do that today

"Page not found" but the post is upvoted this much? Is the article taken down perhaps?

That's why I'm using the nouTube app, I can watch my videos peacefully and it doesn't have those annoying shortsyoutube :P

When Gemini recommended SmartTube I made the switch.

Hasnt been very successful as i can see, mine goes well and i even vibe coded some slop IPA for my iphone to sideload a custom ad free client that works flawlessly. Idgaf their greedy ass, ima watch my shit adfree until i tapout

I've probably watched thousands of hours of YouTube over many years. I honestly don't see what people have against paying for the service in stead of watching ads. It's not like you never heard of YouTube premium, you know it exists.