Ask Lemmy

I've heard that YouTube has started experimenting with injecting ads into the actual video stream rather than getting JavaScript in the browser to swap between video and ad. Specifically for the purpose of breaking ad blocking. (Particularly to break ad blocking on Open Source apps/clients like NewPipe.) Though I haven't seen it myself.

There are a lot of doomsayers saying that YouTube ad blocking is a thing of the past if they do that for all videos/users, but I don't think that's the case. Ad blocking will catch up given some time.

It’s a constant cat & mouse game but ublock usually catches up quickly, give them a little time

The whole reason Google is making manifest v3 is to prevent ad blockers from being able to update their blocklists quickly, giving them a much stronger advantage in the cat & mouse game

Ublock will likely catch up, but you should also install sponsorblock. It uses user generated data, I.e someoen clicks "ad started and stopped here in the video" to skip not only YouTube ads, but ads done by youtuber directly, sponsorships/calls to action like buying merc, etc.

Its super good, and will work on tons of video. You can even help by being the one to click the "ad started/stop" time if you see an ad.

I haven't had any issues since April-ish. Try refreshing your blocklists: in your Settings Page > Filter Lists, click the little clock icons next to the list names to force-refresh

Sometimes you have to clear the cache and update the lists manually to fix it.

Hmm haven't seen that yet personally but I'm sure YouTube is always trying things to get around adblockers and probably A/B testing it on various accounts or countries. You could try making sure unlocks rules/definitions are up to date.

Unrelated but I also have been using sponsor block which skips over in-video sponsors which is nice. Though it's community updated so very new videos might not have the sponsor segments marked yet.

Congrats, you’re probably one of the lucky random winners for youtube’s testing. It’ll probably be all good tomorrow assuming nothing’s wrong with uBO and FF. They beta test new features/designs on random users.

It's been coming and going for me. YouTube makes a change, ublock counters, YouTube make another change, ublock counters again. Just make sure your extensions and browser is up to date and it will likely start working again.

How long has it been since you updated uBlock? If I go about 2 weeks without restarting Firefox, they start showing up for me. A quick restart of FF and updating uBlock has always worked for me.

Let us know if it works or not.

I've been using the Freetube client for several months and have not opened YT in my browser the entire time. Love it, and highly recommend it.

Update ublock

Yes that happened to me the other day. It was related to some Invidious fsckery they were also pulling, but I didn’t see any update or steps to resolve on ublock.

It eventually went away - for now. Frickin’ monopolies, right?

Still works for me

It's been working all day for myself. Maybe the change hasn't been pushed universally yet.

Try using strict mode in firefox for the privacy settings and confirm there isn't any DNS shenanigans or malware injecting ads.

Latest version of Firefox?

Try clearing your ublock cache. It's kind of buried in a support/help section nowadays.

FF has been giving me trouble with youtube recently. Vivaldi with uBlock Origin has been solid.