Technology YouTube tests ways to stop ad blockers: what to expect

[partha_roy]

So you are basically saying that they should not care about their important clients?

Besides, I don't see any breach of agreement; the terms and conditions are clearly laid out

I just think that negotiations would be the wiser choice here

 

[vtqhtr413]

YouTube is an amazing platform, and all these years later, I keep being amazed by the stuff on it. The other night, I watched a 13-year-old video of a dude putting together a crib that is no longer sold, and it helped me do it myself! What!

But YouTube as an app… kind of sucks. You just want to watch a video, and you’re overrun by recommendations, a million social features, and too many ways to buy something. YouTube doesn’t have a single decent way to save something to watch later, and it’s all algorithmic to the point of being unusable sometimes.

So recently, I’ve been exploring a bunch of big and small ways to improve the YouTube experience a bit. I’m not trying to get rid of ads or beat the system, just… enjoy YouTube more. I’ve found some I really like! So I figured I’d share:

Full article

A better way to YouTube

Also in this week’s Installer: Cybertrucks, Spotify Wrapped, and ChatGPT.

www.theverge.com

 

[nicolaasjan]

Meanwhile:
The NSA and CIA Use Ad Blockers Because Online Advertising Is So Dangerous.

 

[Arequire]

So you are basically saying that they should not care about their important clients?

I refer back to my previous post about an ad blocking company being financially dependent on the world's biggest advertising company.

Besides, I don't see any breach of agreement; the terms and conditions are clearly laid out

You know, I wrote a little sentence here about how no one reads T&C's and that you're being pedantic, but I checked their T&Cs and:

eyeo makes no warranty or condition that all ads will be blocked

So touché. I'll give you that one. But failing to block all ads is different than the ad block developer throwing up their hands and saying they're not going to do what's necessary to block ads on the second most-visited website in the world because... they feel doing so is immoral, I guess?

I just think that negotiations would be the wiser choice here

I don't know about negotiations, but there's a statement in eyeo's blog post that I agree with:

We need solutions that facilitate healthy relationships, and sustainable ways for users to have access to content under agreeable conditions, while publishers are also able to earn their daily bread.

But that's not going to happen, because ad networks refuse to either acknowledge or address users grievances. You bring up tracking and they start spouting off about how people want relevant ads. You bring up malvertising and they throw out statistics about how many bad ads they purged last year. Endlessly regurgitating the same corporate drivel all while the negative aspects of online advertising continue to worsen. And when users turn to the only tool we have to fight back, the industry throws a collective hissy fit; calls us thieves, tries to ban us from accessing content, tries to make ad blocking itself illegal, and then they're shocked when we refuse to compromise.

 

[vtqhtr413]

The article includes a quote from the director of product and engineering at Ghostery with some added commentary:

Keeping pace with YouTube will likely become even more challenging next year, when Google’s Chrome browser adopts the Manifest V3 standard, which significantly limits what extensions are allowed to do. Modras said that under Manifest V3, whenever an ad blocker wants to update its blocklist — again, something they may need to do multiple times a day — it will have to release a full update and undergo a review “which can take anywhere between [a] few hours to even a few weeks.”
“Through Manifest V3, Google will close the door for innovation in the ad blocking landscape and introduce another layer of gatekeeping that will slow down how ad blockers can react to new ads and online tracking methods,” he said.

This is (at least partially) not true. The new Manifest V3 standard requires that the Chrome browser handle all content blocking requests, instead of the extension, and the filter list must be provided to the browser by the extension. It’s true that Google wants most of the filter lists in the extension package, which requires submitting a full extension update to the Chrome Web Store. That’s a slower process than the extension just downloading a new text file every day with filter lists, which is how most ad blockers still on Manifest V2 operate.

However, extensions using Manifest V3 can still update some filters the old way, without a full update to the extension and a review process by Google. These are called “dynamic rules,” and starting in Chrome 121 (which arrives in January, several months before Manifest V3 becomes mandatory), up to 30,000 dynamic rules are allowed if they are simple “block,” “allow,” “allowAllRequests,” or “upgradeScheme” rules.

Maybe the filter rules required specifically for YouTube don’t work with those rule formats, I don’t know! If they’re not, then Google still allows an additional 5,000 rules with more broad capabilities. Either way, the statement “whenever an ad blocker wants to update its blocklist […] it will have to release a full update and undergo a review” is not true and can be easily disproven by checking the Chrome developer documentation, Mozilla’s documentation, or a blog post that Google published a month ago.

Real good article on the topic posted here.

Tech News - Tech media doesn't understand ad blockers or Chrome extensions

There's a lot of reporting about YouTube's war on ad blockers and Google's new Chrome extension limits, and most of it is wrong. Google’s Manifest V3 migration for Chrome extensions has been controversal, especially with its changes to how content blockers (ad blockers) are allowed to...

malwaretips.com

 

[partha_roy]

But failing to block all ads is different than the ad block developer throwing up their hands and saying they're not going to do what's necessary to block ads on the second most-visited website in the world because... they feel doing so is immoral, I guess?

But in my experience, adblock plus has always blocked ads in a manner that cannot be deemed as unlawful and I'd like to believe that they intend to continue to operate in the same way

I don't think they are taking an escape route here; their concern for their clients and customers appears to be genuine, and I find no reason to criticize that.

 

[partha_roy]

You bring up tracking and they start spouting off about how people want relevant ads. You bring up malvertising and they throw out statistics about how many bad ads they purged last year. Endlessly regurgitating the same corporate drivel all while the negative aspects of online advertising continue to worsen. And when users turn to the only tool we have to fight back, the industry throws a collective hissy fit; calls us thieves, tries to ban us from accessing content, tries to make ad blocking itself illegal, and then they're shocked when we refuse to compromise.

I agree and that is the reason finding a middle ground becomes so important