this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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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?

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[โ€“] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't think I've done anything and I'm still yet to see an add.

I do most of the watching on phone, so might be I just missed the transition

[โ€“] UprisingVoltage@feddit.it 3 points 11 months ago
[โ€“] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah I've used newpipe on phone and invidious on desktop for a couple of years now. Nothing has happened yet.

[โ€“] jackmarxist@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just updated the filters and it never happened again.

[โ€“] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You only had to do that once? In the initial phase I just couldn't get rid of the pop-ups for longer than one session

[โ€“] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago

Do you have uBlock set to auto-update filter lists? It's the first option in the filter list settings, I've had it checked and have yet to see the popup a single time.

[โ€“] jackmarxist@hexbear.net 2 points 11 months ago

r/ublockorigin has pinned the standard guide for anti YouTube warfare. You can refer that.

For me I just had to clear the filter cache and click update. I didn't do anything else.

I had it exactly once. I watched three videos and then used it as an excuse to just go to bed. Did exactly nothing and haven't had another pop up since *shrug"

[โ€“] currawong@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago

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

[โ€“] Arthur_Leywin@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

[โ€“] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 months ago

Its probably just outdated version or cache.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

[โ€“] 420stalin69@hexbear.net 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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

[โ€“] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml -1 points 11 months ago

Pedophile browser.

[โ€“] Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] Ciel@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 11 months ago

cleared yt cache, no issue since

[โ€“] starbreaker@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

I just shrugged and decided I didn't really need to see that music video after all, so I added youtube URLs to /etc/hosts and mapped them to "0.0.0.0".

[โ€“] AlexSup21@iusearchlinux.fyi 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] zzzzzz@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What browser are you using?

[โ€“] ninjirate@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

Did you disable enchanced tracking protection in Firefox for youtube and remove all other adblockers? Enhancer for youtube has one built in for example.

[โ€“] SpicaNucifera@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] dxc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Firefox doesn't really work anymore for me with ublock and privacy badger. I don't always get the popup but the video usually won't buffer. I'm using a different browser now for YouTube only with ublock and it works so far. Never had the timer or blocked video player though

[โ€“] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] snooggums@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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).

[โ€“] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] snooggums@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[โ€“] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] boatswain@infosec.pub 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] ayaya@lemdro.id 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[โ€“] ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[โ€“] JSens1998@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[โ€“] SquislyMe@reddthat.com 2 points 11 months ago

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

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.

[โ€“] CalamityBalls@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

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

[โ€“] JGrffn@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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)

[โ€“] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.