YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown now includes third-party apps

YouTube's argument is the same as Linus' from LTT: if you watch a video without ads, you're failing to comply with your side of the transaction, thus essentially pirating that content and stealing the revenue source.

Regardless if we agree or not with that statement, I'll absolutely side with adblockers always for a deeper issue: it's my screen, so I get the ultimate say on what content gets rendered. Quite literally. It's my network, my cable, my screen, my graphics card, my web browser running JavaScript on my CPU - you do not, ever, get to overreach and decide what pixels show up or not. If I don't want your obnoxious ad for an AI girlfriend to show up, there's no moral argument to be had here.

EDIT: I think some of you are missing the point of this comment. There's no reason to reply to me countering the argument in the first paragraph, as it is not my comment, in fact, I specifically mentioned how it's YouTube (and Linus') argument.

“because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership”

not like Youtube rewards creators for viewership either (and then lying to the advertisers as well)

At this point id rather see youtube die than watch ads

I haven't seen an anti adblocker popup on youtube for a couple months now, I though they gave up. It looks like the uBlock developers and block list maintainers are just doing an excellent job staying ahead of whatever youtube is doing.

Personally, I don't think a service is in the wrong for trying to protect against ad block, especially when their revenue comes from ads. However I also don't think there's anything wrong with adblockers continuing to innovate to circumvent that. I'm rooting for Ublock Origin lol

One 10-15 sec ad for an 5-10 mins video would be fair. Because if you calculate the ad shown in Cable TV it was similar I would watch them no problem. But NOOO these greedy fckrs want 3-5 ads of >15secs unskipable ads shoved down our throats. They have record profits. In a business if you are in profit then it's a good thing. But these fcks want to increase profit year by year, not stable profit for the number of users. That want infinite growth and profit from a finite source and they crazy or what? So if anyone says blocking ads on YouTube is piracy, then fck you and those greedy fckrs. They crossed the limit long time ago and they are reaping what they had sowed.

I refuse to use the official youtube app. Its so trash... I use newpipe and its amazing to just have all my favorite videos bookmarked locally in different lists.

If they take that away from me i will just stop using youtube.

Since the initial push, I have not even had to reset my ublock... stop using Chrome

The web should have had a Terms of Usage from start. Something like

"If you broadcast content on the internet, expect people to download it."

New pipe and inner tune still work fine.

everything still fine here on firefox + ublock origin

Somewhere out there a CEO thought this was a good idea. All it seems to be doing is pushing people to other platforms (the younger gen moving over to tiktok and the older gens moving 3rd party or just offline).

YouTube is bringing its ad blocker fight to mobile. In an update on Monday, YouTube writes that users accessing videos through a third-party ad blocking app may encounter buffering issues or see an error message that reads, “The following content is not available on this app.”

Yea, noticed that last week. Is already fixed again in latest revanced.

• Delete microG, revanced manager, and YouTube revanced

• Download and install the new gmscore, which replaces microG: https://github.com/ReVanced/GmsCore/releases/tag/v0.3.1.4.240913

• Download and install latest version of Revanced Manager: https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases/tag/v1.20.1

• Download and install YouTube 19.09.37 from APKmirror: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/youtube/youtube-19-09-37-release/youtube-19-09-37-android-apk-download/

Oh, I definitely have experienced "The following content is not available on this app." Before, but I thought it was just a thing of my Revanced version outdated because I rarely update it... Which I'm gonna do just now 😁

I hope this doesn't bring too many issues to Smart Tube, which is where I do 99% of my YT usage (and I have yet to be bothered with any bug).

Did they fuck up revanced again?

Nope, it still works...

In Germany, there is a law that regulates the amount and intervals of advertising for private television broadcasters: 20% or 1/5 per broadcast day may be used for advertising. Programs that are shorter than 30 minutes may have a break, otherwise there must be 20 minutes between commercial breaks - 30 minutes in the evening. Unfortunately, there are still some loopholes.

Children's programs are not allowed to have commercial breaks.

It's a shame that this law still doesn't apply to YouTube.

Makes me miss a time where they couldn't tell if ads were actually watched or not.

Sooner or later, ad blockers should just simulate the ad being played (in the background) with the real content going in the foreground to act as if the ad was watched.

Kind of like going to the bathroom during commercials.

Then again I wish we had a real alternative to YouTube. (Don't point me to the fediverse video stuff ... that's not what I mean.) There is no real competition for a place to freely upload videos ... or on the other side find all that content. No one wants to scale enough to compete. (Very few probably could considering the amount of new content per minute).

If only there was real competition, then YouTube would have to fight over our attention/usage by lowering ad count.

No competition means worse for all.

It's kinda cute how they are utterly loosing with adblocker crackdown and now they are saying they will even handle their party apps. No company will handle an open source project full of talented people pissed of by ads.

What they don't realize is people are also using those third party apps because they are offering much more customization than the stock YouTube app ever offers. I had free premium and still used Revanced because it's such a godsend. There's so much useless crap in the youtube layout.

I just use revanced

I kind of already hoarded so many videos from youtubes last failed adblock crusade that I barely even use the real youtube anymore. Guess I'll show my disapproval by improving my offline video caching system even more.

My search system doesn't autosuggest results based on which videos have more boobs in the thumbnail but I'll get over it.

If they fully manage to block applications from viewing YouTube, then I will just stop viewing YouTube entirely. And I will figure out channels to watch on Odyssey and peertube. That will also be my last Google service since that is the only one I use frequently since I deleted my Google account two years ago.

Dickheads coming to shill for YT Premium in 3.. 2..

Luckily Piped, Invidious and others are still doing its thing.

If you are looking for a specific video, use DDG search, then click videos. No ad's!

Obviously not useful if you're just randomly browsing content.

Speaking of, does anyone know how best to block YouTube ads on my Sony TV? It uses Android and I have the YT app on it.

Lmao, because they've been so successful with browsers...

GrayJay works great. And it's not even limited to YouTube, there are lots of other platforms you can fill your feed with. And also, you still can get your feed directly from YouTube, so recommendations are there and channel memberships also work. You can't use YouTube likes and comments, but you can create a Polycentric identity, and like the videos or comment on it in that "decentralized" identity platform.

I still use FreeTube for desktop and no ads here :)

Okay, then in exchange can I get a UI that doesn't suck?

Good luck Youtube, you fools.

I hear people talking about how Youtube is not paying out like it used to. So they are playing ads to us and not paying the creators. There is a growing group of people looking at open source platforms like Odysee and PeerTube.

Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I hope the YouTube Kodi plugin stays working, otherwise I'll have to write a script to download all latest videos in my subscription to my home server.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

YouTube is bringing its ad blocker fight to mobile.

In an update on Monday, YouTube writes that users accessing videos through a third-party ad blocking app may encounter buffering issues or see an error message that reads, “The following content is not available on this app.”

It also began disabling videos for users with an ad blocking extension enabled.

But now, YouTube says its policies don’t allow “third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership.” This appears to target mobile ad blockers like AdGuard, which lets you open YouTube within the ad blocking app, where you’ll get to view videos interruption-free.

“When we find an app that violates these terms, we will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers.”

This likely won’t come as pleasant news to all the users who watch YouTube through ad blocking apps, but it doesn’t look like YouTube is backing down in its battle against ad blockers anytime soon.

The original article contains 220 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 25%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I don't see how they'll stop these without majorly changing the functionality of the site. Most just load the none ad portions of the video. I don't understand how they'll prevent that.

They need to distract the MBAs with a box of crayons to eat so the adults can make good decisions.

Lmao, I keep hearing about this but my Ublock Origin & Firefox keeps chugging along fine on both desktop and mobile. Eat my ass, Neal Mohan.

This sound familiar to anyone?

microG, Newpipe and brave still working like a charm..

LibreTube hasn't worked in a couple of weeks

I literally just use the Dislike Re-Adder, also used uBlock Origin and never got an Anti-AdBlock message

We will find a way. Never give up or give in. Screw your shareholders!

spoofing app signature makes revanced not work and clipious also not working so im down to just newpipe sponsorblock and yt on browser

it would be amazing if they could just add a mobile ui to Smarttube (best android tv app imho) - it supports login, adblock, sponsorblock & dearrow, you can cast to it, etc. - and it's updated constantly, via a prompt in the app, no external download or play store necessary

Okay so I will just keep using NewPipe

Now? They've always been playing whack-a-mole against third party apps.

And yet it still can't figure out how to get past two adblockers at once

It's stupid that it works, but it works

YouTube’s Youtube crackdown now includes third-party apps

Yes. The day after I posted I'd been happily using piped for a few days, it stopped working.

This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Ungoogled chromium + uBlock origin + pihole and I haven't had any issues so far (Germany)

They'll fail so hard, can't wait to watch this train wrack. If YouTube is gone tomorrow this is just a little inconvincing to me. Competition will pop up for every single element. Be it gaming, music or video trailer or fan made content. YouTube is stacking so high, they haven't noticed we're ready to replace them. Not one huge new YouTube, just small parts and people create 4-10 bookmarks to get the same content.

Lol

I don't get it. If Google really cares about ad revenue, why not just slap a DRM to each and every videos? They can protect their interests, and DMCA anyone who dares to circumvent it. Even a low effort DRM will do.