Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube’s dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there’s an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Another day and another opportunity to say. Stop using youtube. Thankyou, and goodnight.
Never under estimate the outrage of a nerd.
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Open source Hackers FTW!
Please donate and keep Open Source as it is
I always wondered why YouTube doesn’t stream the ad intermixed into the video? Like, it’s DASH, right? How does that work, can’t the server send a video then switch to another stream source (the ad) and back?
Switching stream sources is the most easy detectable form of ads. Also the most easily blocked, simple dns blocking will suffice.
That’s interesting info, thanks!
Could Google and ad services sue Firefox and extension writers?
I mean, nothing pisses off corporations more than someone coming between them and revenue, and the courts tend to agree.
No, it is your right to choose what code is executed in your browser and which isn’t. There’s a case to be made about accepting the EULA but if you never registered a Google account, then you never accepted any EULA. This is not the case with modded android/iOS apps as in those cases you are violating DMCA 1201.
Anybody who thinks this is “against all odds” doesn’t understand the Internet very well.
Against all odds? This is a game that’s been going on for year, hacker vs Corp, and the hacker always wins. Same shit as anticheat in games, it’s a constant arms race but the hacker is nearly always a step ahead.
Youtube is vying X for a internet death while holding the door open for a less greedy rival
Don’t be evil turned into straight up evil with Manifest V3. Already switched to FF as my primary and started shifting my use of Evil’s services.
They ditch the “do no evil” motto years ago when seeking military contract to help them kill people
Serious question: what is the best add blocker right now? I’ve been using ublock origin, but it doesn’t seem to be working that well these days.
Apparently you need to clear the plugin’s cache semi-regularly.
As sometimes it won’t update itself as fast.
That makes sense. Thanks for the advice!
Vinegar + SponsorBlock on iOS/iPadOS/MacOS.
thank you for recommending vinegar, it is incredible
A question for the tech savy, free alternatives to youtube like newpipe relies on youtube servers to access content, right? I mean, if youtube were to disappear magically we wouldn’t have a palce where to upload and store so many Gb of videos?
Am I missing something (I know I’m probably missing a lot!)? Thanks in advance for the replies!
newpipe is just a client for accessing youtubes servers, yes, so if youtube went away we would need to use vimeo or something else (maybe peertube, open source yt alternative?)
Thank you! Who pays for vimeo/peertube hosting costs though?
Vimeo is a private operation just like YouTube.
Peertube is a “federated” system where videos are hosted among the computers of the people who upload videos.
Thanks!
There really needs to be a way to seed peertube videos without leaving the window open. A firefox extension even. They have extensions that do bittorrent, it shouldn’t be hard. Videos could end with a “click here to seed this video” message
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They can’t afford to do anything that would lose them a large slice of viewers. Same reason websites still support IE.
It’s funny you mention that since YouTube led the web in dropping support for IE 6: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
That kind of thing isn’t quite in their DNA anymore, but you never know.
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YouTube’s users when they adhere to the YouTube TOS:
quoth Rage Against The Machine:
‘fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’