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.

I was happy with an ad at the side of the video. Then they started popping up over my video, then they started appearing before my video, then they started appearing throughout my video. Companies shot themselves in the foot with online advertising, banner ads and such weren't much of a problem, but once ads start disrupting the content we visit a site for, then we look to block them ads. More people blocking ads is less revenue, so they make the ads more aggressive... and the cycle continues.
And on a side note, Linus can fuck off.
- That and the large ad networks even on sites like YouTube and Facebook literally are advertising scams. Every time I browse shorts on either I get ads that are obvious scams of the "There's a new $6400 monthly health credit see if you qualify." variety. On one of Meta's apps I got an ad that was for male enhancement that was straight up clips of uncensored hardcore porn. Not just nudity but full on PIV sex. If they can't even do the work to properly screen their ads they can get fucked, I'm blocking all of it that I can.
- Non disruptive ads were meant to advertise.
  Slightly annoying ads were meant to be seen more, since people just ignored banners by default.
  Hidden ads (like an ad in an article which you really could tell it was an ad) were meant to increase the image of a company.
  Disruptive ads like in YouTube or Spotify aren't meant for advertising. They don't really care about the advertising money, they want to force you to buy premium. The more annoying the ad is the higher the chances you pay 20€ a month for them to go away.
You know what, I actually agree with YouTube's argument. Ad blocking is piracy. In fact, no, it's worse than piracy. If I pirate a movie, Disney makes no money, but it costs them nothing at all. If I watch YouTube without an ad blocker, I'm depriving YouTube of its revenue source and I'm costing them money. Morally, ad blocking sits somewhere between piracy and actual theft.
The thing is? I don't care. I ad block YouTube all the time and feel not a lick of guilt. The reason: Google brought this on themselves. I used to happily pay for YouTube Red. But they have continuously, both before and after that point, been actively hostile to the people actually producing the content they make. Their willingness to bow down to copyright trolls and complete inability to properly apply fair use. They extremely harsh policies on acceptable content, stopping people talking about sex education or mediaeval weaponry being able to reliably makes money.
And the straw that broke this camel's back was when they changed the requirements to be in the Partner Program, locking out all the smaller creators from ever being able to make money on YouTube. I never considered myself a "creator", but over the 5 years prior to that I occasionally uploaded stuff I was doing anyway. I had amassed almost $100 over those 5 years. Not an impressive amount, for sure, but having that taken away from me made me feel unwelcome. I don't think I've uploaded anything public since, and I've been blocking ads on the site since then.
Even worse, not long after this change, they decided to start showing ads even on videos from non-partnered videos, so you can get ads on my videos even though I don't see a single cent.
So fuck YouTube. Ad blocking is worse than piracy, and I say good.
- Google: You're pirating our content!
  Us: Yeah, so what?
I’d agree with that logic if YouTube kept up their end of the bargain and actually vetted their ad buyers. Instead they show ads for fake stimulus scams, fake news, and blatant malware.
I manage a large network and ads are blocked at the edge of the network. Not using an adblocker is a security risk that is not acceptable for my company. I pay for YouTube premium because it’s in my means and I get value from the subscription but I don’t blame anyone who takes the same approach
TBH I'm just so fucking tired of ads overstepping, back in the day there's be a little banner on the side of a page advertising a truck or whatever, I'm sick of seeing like, enormous length ads.
One day I had a 3 hour minecraft let's play uploaded as an ad, you think I should have to watch all of that youtube?
And the frequency is getting crazy.
The problem is that there is that ad networks and ad placements are just bad actors in the consumer space. Not only has malware been passed time and time again with ads but also false ads to malware. When that happens suddenly the content creator/website/whatever 'isn't responsible' for it. Then there's the issue of ads being placed everywhere slowing down websites but even worse, getting in the way with auto play audio and video, videos autoscrolling over the content you're trying to read or whatever, etc.
As a consumer, I should not and ethically do not need to worry about another's business model. If the business model fails simply because I don't allow something that model depends on to traverse my network then it is on them to figure it out. If the ads get in the way of the content, then I just want consume the content anyway.
Some news websites use Ad Admiral or whatever it is called and I haven't bothered trying to bypass the adblock wall for them. I just simply consume the content elsewhere.
If ads were ever responsibly used or perhaps could be argued that there is compromise where consumers wouldn't mind, then there'd probably be a lot less ad blocker usage. It's like anything else. When it takes less effort to install an adblocker to have an OK experience, then ad blockers will be popular.
I was around before ad blockers were very popular and even before pop-up blockers were around. Ads kept getting worse which is why ad blockers became more popular and more sophisticated. The Internet had ads for years before ad blockers were the norm.
- Yeah I wasn’t using an Adblock on YouTube when this all started. Then the ads got so intrusive it was seriously hindering content. These days I don’t watch much YouTube, but it’s with Adblock
By that logic using a VCR to record television and fast-forwarding adverts is piracy.

“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)

I think YouTubers make fractional pennies from Ads, and mostly only if its fully watched and sometimes clicked to go to the website. So if you get a 15 second ad, and skip to the content, you didn't give the creators any money.
Also, shout out to those ads being horrible. My first time ever installing an adblocker was during a rapid anti-smoking campaign, that had body horror. 15 year old me didn't want to smoke, nor wanted to after, but it was so disturbing that I learned how to avoid them.
Not even going into the disturbing or weird ads. One time I got an ad for a "Ching Chong Fing Fong shirt company" as a way of mocking Chinese people because their government sucks. Another time, I got a full 12 hour video by a Vietnamese couple just grilling in their backyard. No subtitles, not even sure if they were aware they enabled their videos to do that, or didn't fully understand the process of uploading videos.
Anytime I see actual ads on the internet, not just YouTube, it just makes me go "I am perfectly justified in not seeing these weird ads." I don't give them any money no matter what I do, so why not have my eyes saved from bright flashing colors and scam artists?
They could probably retain users simply by running ads every 10 minutes, rather than every 3 minutes.
- Oh but they don’t care about anything but short form content. If they could ditch supporting long form content today they would.

At this point id rather see youtube die than watch ads

I was watching a long video on chromecast today and I had ads every three minutes or so. That's a two hours video. The amount of ads is disgusting.
YouTube is unwatchable without an ad blocker.
This is why I pay for YT Premium. No way in hell am I watching ads, but I do want to be able to use the platform, and the money has to come from somewhere. So far it's been pretty good value, although SponsorBlock is of course still required.

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.

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.

No amount of ads are "fair"
I'm done wasting my life for other people.
Go ahead tho, you do you boo
- How do you propose YouTube should pay for infrastructure costs (servers, Internet etc), staff costs (engineers, designers, moderators) and the content creators?
Television shows are 22-24 minutes, because cable TV should show 6-8 minutes of ads every half hour. 30 second ads in blocks of 3 or 4, multiple times per show.
15 seonds ads are almost too short for a trip to the kitchen. I'm not saying they're good, but if you want to compare to cable TV, you need to remember the dark times.
They’re publicly traded, they have to. Thats not an excuse mind you, but if you ever like a service and they go public, just understand the end users are no longer the focus.
- Being publicly traded does not force companies to become greedy, immoral scum... Stop spreading this piece of misinformation
  https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits
  PS: this goes hand in hand with the "you got to be an asshole to succeed"... You don't, the problem is that most people can't find anything else to imitate

For now
- exactly, it would be trivial to have a whitelist server side and now only ad friendly apps can access the videos. they only still work because it's worth keeping those viewers in the system for the time being.
Same with revanced right now.

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

they also fucked themselves over with the ad skill issues they've had over the years. Advertisers now find it to be more worthwhile to advertise directly with creators, though that also means they make a lot more money, so.
They kinda dug their own grave, to be honest.

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/

Revanced will never die.
- Vanced died. If revanced dies we'll just get rerevanced. Ad infitum.

Did they fuck up revanced again?

Nope, it still works...

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).

Never had any outage in SmartTube either, unless they pushed a faulty release (I'm on the beta channel), but even then they have reacted super fast with fixes.
So far I'm using NewPipe x Sponsorblock on my phone - apparently it has been discontinued & archived, but still works just fine as well. Only the comment view is broken since a couple weeks, but I really don't care about those to begin with.
- Nowadays I'm using tubular which is newpipe with sponsor block and youtube dislike incorporated.

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

Wish I could say the same.
I'm also using firefox + ublock, but Ive noticed when I'm watching shorts, I'll occasionally get an ad that's disguised as a short. There's no like/dislike buttons or anything.
- Just block shorts alltogether, it's a win win.

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.

Making you leave is their point since you cost them money.

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.

Well, YT is literally getting petabytes uploaded to it. Every single day. Thats 1000 terabytes, and thats 1000000 gigabytes.
I bet you haven't even seen a petabyte of storage in one place (assuming you didn't go to a data center yourself). How is a small company, or even fediverse, gonna handle that? Thats absolutely insane amount of data and, without moderation or curation, it is not feasible.
It's a giant waste of space and resources, to be honest. Most videos are seen once, and the rest is mostly spam or bad quality content.

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).

While I agree, the amount of people who'd do this is negligibly small, compared to their total userbase. Obviously a bunch of people use ad blockers, but only a tiny amount of them have modified apps, followed by an even tinier amount of those people with fully custom frontends. For YT it might work out as a net positive, because the annoying blocks and reminders will just pressure people into paying for Premium.
At the end of the day, I could just stop watching youtube entirely, if this trend continues. I have nothing to gain there

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.

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.

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."

This. I always say this exact thing.
If you provide content for free, expect people to take it for free.

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.

It's a shame that this law still doesn't apply to YouTube
If Germany is anything like Canada and other countries, applying public broadcast laws to YouTube would be a monkey's paw deal. Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I'm not considering.
Now if they made a law specifically for youtube and other online video platforms that dealt with advertising in that context, that would be a different story.
- Sure you might get tighter control over advertising, but youtube would also be forced to do things like show you x% of content made in your country/language, resulting in state mandated control of the content you see online and potentially limiting/warping international audiences for content creators, and potentially other ramifications I'm not considering.
  This is false. You can create laws restricting advertising without creating other laws forcing companies to display domestic content. The point about the Canadian government wanting YouTube to promote domestic content is irrelevant.

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.

Install smarttube

I just use revanced

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

Can anyone tell me what's up with LibreTube not playing videos recently?
- It's probably due to Invidious and Piped instances getting rate limited. LibreTube uses them as the source of the videos, i think.

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

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

I hope they understand soon why we have ALL of those tweaks and adblockers. Because vanilla youtube SUCKS, Ads everywhere, not customizable and tracking even if you are paying.

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.

Reddit managed pretty well, let’s be real. The 3rd party app protests were essentially a speed bump that lost a tiny subsection of users that advertisers didn’t want anyways. Everyone else just migrated to the official app or website.

Lol

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