YouTubes and Ad-Blocker

I've been fortunate in that the ad blockers I run on my PC have done a great job of, well, blocking ads.

As of late, the YouTubes overlords are cracking down on those of us that use them. They say it's illegal, in spite of the FBI instructing citizens to use ad blockers in YouTube. Hmmph. 

So, are there any workarounds? I would have less of an issue with ads, if it were more like old school TV: And ad at the beginning, middle and end of a 30 minute show. In contrast I've gotten 5 ads...on a 30 second video ( I wish I was exaggerating.)

ABP and Firefox works just fine.

Adguard still works on my phone if I go through the browser and not the app.

Abp still works on chrome on my desktop.

If only I could block this bullE36 M3 on my smart tv so I don't have to sacrifice a laptop to bedroom YouTube duties

The FBI instructs people to use them?

In reply to ProDarwin :

Even the FBI says you should use an Ad blocker

Are adblockers illegal?

Discussion on Brave

No, but YouTube is making it extremely difficult (and waay beyond the abilities of an average user who is not tech savvy)

Not to hijack, but can you recommend an Ad Blocker?

Ad block plus, usually known as "ABP". Ive been using it for years. I forget how well it works until I see a familiar webpage with "unrestrained" adverts and then HOLY CRAP how do people put up with all the GD ads!

 I do love the cat-n-mouse game of ad farms and ad blockers.  
 

I  will second Ad Block Plus. I use that, as well as Ghostery.

YouTube is still recognizing it, but giving me a "You're not allowed to use an Ad Blocker!" notification that disappears after about 5 seconds.

SV reX said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

Even the FBI says you should use an Ad blocker

I found this quote from the article slightly ironic:

"In a pre-holiday public service announcement, the FBI said that cybercriminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands, like cryptocurrency exchanges."

SV reX said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

Even the FBI says you should use an Ad blocker

Interesting

In reply to Beer Baron :

Yeah, an ad in middle of a paragraph about the dangers of ads. I noticed it too. 
 

Note that I didn't vet those links. Just reading fodder. 

I use Enhancer for Youtube, which offers a plethora of useful functions including blocking ads and those stupid cards at the end of a video. That, plus HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger. All this is in Firefox; not sure if the same extensions are available for other browsers.

If you're tech savvy, you can use a raspberry pi to build a pi-hole. You need to know some basic command line stuff to get it setup, but it's a fun $40 (or cheaper) project 

Slightly off topic, but I'll recommend Face Book Purity or FBP to block ads on Facebook. Seems to work very well - I'm also shocked when I use a different machine and see the horrific number of ads.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

ABP and Firefox works just fine.

[Inspector Clouseau] Not anymore... [/Inspector Clouseau]

Beer Baron said:

I  will second Ad Block Plus. I use that, as well as Ghostery.

YouTube is still recognizing it, but giving me a "You're not allowed to use an Ad Blocker!" notification that disappears after about 5 seconds.

I also have AdBlock Plus (free version).  I get the same pop-up, click the "allow ads" button, then a "refresh page" pop-up, which reloads the video. Still no ads, which is nice...

I honestly wasn't sure this was something to do with having the free version of ABP vs. a paid version.  If I have to pay for ABP, I may as well just get YouTube Premium. I've debated on doing that anyway since I understand views on Premium pay the creators slightly better than Ad Sense.  Plus, Premium should work on all devices, including ones I can't install an ad blocker on (my work computer, for example). 

I understand some VPNs block ads as well, although I'm not sure how that works. 

ABP and Chrome is working for me. That takes care of ads on most sites. Some sites will block you if you are running ABP. Since their content frequently isn't worth the ads, I just hit the back button and go find the info I'm looking for elsewhere.

I'm also running Disconnect, HTTPS Everywhere, and uBlock Origin. 

In reply to Toyman! :

Chrome is owned by Google. Google  is in the business of making money from ads.

You sure about that?

Beer Baron said:

I  will second Ad Block Plus. I use that, as well as Ghostery.

YouTube is still recognizing it, but giving me a "You're not allowed to use an Ad Blocker!" notification that disappears after about 5 seconds.

SV reX said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

Even the FBI says you should use an Ad blocker

I found this quote from the article slightly ironic:

"In a pre-holiday public service announcement, the FBI said that cybercriminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands, like cryptocurrency exchanges."

I got the same thing for about a week, then "you get 3 videos" then "turn off ad blocker" because you get nothing. YouTubes has slowly been going through accounts. If you aren't dealing with this BS you might soon. I'm currently running uBlock Origin and Adblocker.

Theres a reddit video detailing how to get around the BS that posted less  than a day ago. You clear cache (which used to work on it's own) and mess with setting to get it to work.

calteg said:

If you're tech savvy, you can use a raspberry pi to build a pi-hole. You need to know some basic command line stuff to get it setup, but it's a fun $40 (or cheaper) project 

This is a massive headache for YouTube though. Supposedly there's a way to make it work without constantly updating and changing things, but people are real hush hush about it. 

I can't be the only person who pays the around ten bucks a month for ad free YouTube can I?

If my TV is on at home it is usually on YouTube via a Roku. There is no adblock for that scenario so I paid for premium. This was almost a decade ago. If I see an ad on YT I accidentally logged out.

In reply to SV reX :

I'm sure I don't see ads on web pages. I'm sure I don't see ads on YouTube.

Everything I listed is a Chrome extension. Meaning it modifies Chrome's abilities to be different from what Google intended. 

On this page, ABP blocked 2 ads. Disconnect blocked on analytics request. uBlock blocked 9 ads or requests. 

Since its installation, ABP has blocked almost 200k ads. uBlock has blocked 88k ads. They are worth every penny I didn't have to pay for them. 

I use a pihole network level blocker, but it doesn't stop YouTube ads. I just don't watch much YouTube. The pihole  works well overall, there's at least one site I visit that is literally unusable without it. It is blocking about 17% of the DNS queries on my network.

I did have YT Premium for a few months as a perk from some computer purchase. During that time, I was streaming a lot of British shows (8 out of 10 Cats, etc) while working in the garage - but as soon as it ended, YT started serving ads about every 20 seconds and telling me to pay for more Premium. It felt exactly like a protection racket, they were purposefully downgrading the experience to make me pay up. "Nice service you got here. Sure would be unfortunate if something were to happen to it..."

I didn't resubscribe and the ad frequency has dropped to a much more reasonable level, but every once in a while they'll throw in a 4 minute commercial block that requires me to go get the remote and hit "skip" when I'm greasy. So now I'm more likely to stream ad-free Hulu in the background instead. 

SV reX said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Chrome is owned by Google. Google  is in the business of making money from ads.

You sure about that?

My experience with Chrome is that ad blockers can't prevent ads from loading, you just don't see them.

So you don't see them but download/page load speeds still slow to a crawl, and you still get malware injected into your computer, which is how I found out about it.

YT was blocking ABP on Firefox, so I switched to uBlock Origin and that's been working. r/uBlockOrigin can answer questions if it doesn't work for you.