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.
You know… in all my time upon this earth, I cannot look back and think of a single instance where I thought: “Gosh, this advertisement which has inserted itself in between me and the desired content has actually made me want to go purchase that product.”
Ads are effective, sadly. And why so much money is poured into them. I believe there are a few effects at play but the direct, see and ad and want to go buy it now is only one ofbhem that mostly only affects some people, or a lot of people occasionally.
I think a bigger effect is familiarity. You are far more likely to pick a product you are familiar with or have seen before over something younjave never heard of. Even if you have only ever seen it on advets and completely forgotten that you have ever seen ads for it. So even if you don’t think they work on you they likely do without you realizing, at least enough of the time on enough people that make them worth while running.
I think a bigger effect is familiarity.
Bingo. It’s not about making you buy something right now, it’s about brand recognition and such.
To wit, if you listen to podcasts, do a little thought experiment. Name a VPN company.
Was it “Nord VPN”? Ads work.
- Just because I have heard of NordVPN doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily use it (in fact I use
archmullvad, btw.) - Let’s see some numbers that ads work. You can’t just calculate how life would be without ads, but I wonder what would happen if ad expenses for all companies would be capped somehow. When cigarette companies were severely limited in terms of advertising they saved a ton of money. Of course people already knew their brands, but still.
I think ad space sellers wildly overestimate the effectiveness of ads and google has made it far worse with targeted ads. People have gotten used to saying things like “ads work” and “brand recognition” but does anyone know the numbers? Or is this just repeating some phrases you’ve heard?
I don’t know the numbers myself, but I’m quite skeptical.
Let’s see some numbers that ads work.
Companies have tested this. A DIY chain ran an ad and people complained it was annoying, so they stopped running it. Their sales started to decline. Started running the ad again and sales went up.
Probably you’re not the target audience and just collateral damage in the ad war, but for the population in general they work.
A DIY chain is the ad I’m most unlikely to see. The only ads I see are usually the same 5 auto makers advertising the same bland cars on a cliff or in a desert. The vast vast majority of ads don’t work and waste everyone’s time for a small bump in sales and recognition. Especially since the variety of the US market is dominated by so few billion dollar businesses. Like Walmart still advertises. Walmart. The company that owns like 40% of grocery sales in the US and can’t pay their workers a living wage. They’ll gladly stop you from watching your shows though because their marketing department needs a salary.
There used to be a business joke you’d hear in the ‘60s, often attributed to John Wanamaker, a pioneer in marketing:
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!”
The joke highlights the dilemma many businesses face in evaluating the effectiveness of their advertising spend. It’s remained relevant in the advertising and marketing industries, reflecting the challenges in measuring the impact of advertising efforts.
Just because I have heard of NordVPN doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily use it (in fact I use arch mullvad, btw.)
No it does not mean you will pick it. It means you are more likely to pick it. Given all else being equal you are vastly more likely to pick something familiar than something unfamiliar. And it all comes down to trends and statistics. The hope is that more people will go for your brand that leads to more sales then the cost of the marketing in the first place. You might not go for NordVPN for other reasons, but can you say that about every product you have been advertised to? If anything the more you know about a product the less advertising will affect you in the familiarity sense - these adverts are not so much meant for you as they are for people not familiar with VPNs at all.
But there are a lot of studies on the topic like this and this meta analysis that seem to conclude that advertising is effective. And there are a lot of studies on what various aspects of adverts make them more effective. I am yet to see any research that says adverts are ineffective overall, though I have not dug that deeply into it.
I think ad space sellers wildly overestimate the effectiveness of ads and google has made it far worse with targeted ads.
Companies are not just pouring money down the drain and paying zero attention to what comes back up. If that were true the advertising industry would be dead instead of the insane massive monolith that it actually is.
You just became an ad for mullvad…
Good products are worth sharing to help shape future products. Grass roots only works if the product is worth using. Vote with your wallet to help shape future products. While the previously poster can be viewed as an “ad”, the post is same as a next door neighbor bringing it up. Mullvad doesn’t do affiliate marketing or pay influencers.
I used to use Mullvad but now I use a different service, but especially like to support open source products.
The fact that companies pour millions into ads means it works for them. Don’t assume that just because you and I (and probably most users on here) aren’t susceptible, it doesn’t mean the majority of the population aren’t too.
- Just because I have heard of NordVPN doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily use it (in fact I use
Yeah, I like to think I’m immune to advertising until I see one that makes me think “damn, I haven’t had Burger Restaurant in a while.” The worst part is that I’m fully cognizant of what’s happening, and yet I still want some and it’ll make me think about it for a while afterward, simply because I’m familiar with the food and how it (usually) tastes.
But, joke’s on you, Burger Restaurant! I’m fucking broke, son! Now we’re BOTH having our time wasted
These subconscious effects are indeed the most effective ways for an ad to work. However, if an ad is obnoxious enough for you to remember, it can get you to actively avoid the advertised product as well.
It can. But the average impact is still positive.
Well, things affecting you unconsciously should be plain illegal. Though that’s how ads are supposed to work since like 50s and earlier, and I think I remember a Colombo episode where what you said is mentioned.
Um, No. Basically everything affects you subconsciously in some way. Both good and bad. That is a terrible and unenforceable thing to make illegal.
Have you tried to find a principle by which one can filter out this particular thing (advertising namely)? Like the “25th cadre” etc. Before saying it’s unenforceable and terrible to make illegal.
There are regulations about what you can and can’t put into edible products. There are regulations about what you can and can’t use as fuel. There are regulations on materials used in construction, so that they wouldn’t be as toxic as 50 years ago, on paints, on glue and what not.
Though, of course, there’s a solution from another direction which is fundamentally better, simply abolishing trademark laws. But that’d be kinda revolutionary and highly unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Sorry, I was more talking about this in particular:
Well, things affecting you unconsciously should be plain illegal
It is far too general a statement to be enforceable. There are things you can better enforce that focus on the negative effects of marketing, but things affecting you unconsciously is to vague and affects both positive and negative behaviours.
There are regulations about what you can and can’t put into edible products. There are regulations about what you can and can’t use as fuel. There are regulations on materials used in construction, so that they wouldn’t be as toxic as 50 years ago, on paints, on glue and what not.
These are all specific things though, not general broad reaching unenforceable statements. Which I agree with, there is a lot you can do with regulation that prevents bad behaviours of corporations, but these are generally specific things that are trying to solve some actual problem. And in this case you need to specific what things you are trying to prevent.
Even for just adverts, trying to ban all adverts that affect you unconsciously would be a ban on all adverts and marketing. Is that reasonable? I would not say so. It would be better to go after specific things like the regulations around advertising cigarettes. Or more relevant to today, maybe something around the shear amount of information advertising agency collect on you, IMO that is one of the bigger problems with them these days. Or the shear number of them that you get shoved into every aspect. Or putting adverts in products that you have already paid for. Those would be far more reasonable things that you could enforce.
Even for just adverts, trying to ban all adverts that affect you unconsciously would be a ban on all adverts and marketing. Is that reasonable? I would not say so.
I would. Never in my life has an advert made me buy anything I need.
When you need something, you go and find it. And when it finds you, then it needs you and not vice versa.
When the process is “I identify a need, I look for something matching characteristics I need and then I purchase it”, the results are better than it is “I look at something and suddenly have an urge to buy it most likely formed by many adverts seen, heard etc”, in the latter situation I usually realize that I didn’t need the thing at all.
Thus adverts belong to expositions and catalogues and lists you go and find, and not anywhere else.
Depends on your legal preferences, of course. Most of my life I’m a libertarian, so naturally against banning anything consensual, but also against trademark protection, and abolishing trademark protection would reduce the usefulness of ads.
Or more relevant to today, maybe something around the shear amount of information advertising agency collect on you, IMO that is one of the bigger problems with them these days.
Can’t fight that anyway.
Or the shear number of them that you get shoved into every aspect.
I have a better idea - you can be required to watch through ads to get to the page\video\etc you’ve come for, but don’t get stuffed with them in the middle, that becomes illegal. Like those license agreements for software which nobody reads.
IRL that would be - no big unavoidable ads on billboards, but you can come to something like a gazette stand and look through brochures.
The point is that if you look at an advert, you do that consciously, with intention to do just that.
That’s even explainable to geriatric lawmakers.
Or putting adverts in products that you have already paid for.
Yes, that’s a good idea and an already popular one.
Yeah, people love to shit on it but everyone knows raid shadow legends
Ads work. These companies wouldn’t spend millions in them otherwise. Consumer behavior is among the most studied psychological phenomenoms in the world. If you show an ad to one person it’s near impossible to tell if it had an effect or not but show it to a thousand people and you’ll see it.
I have a couple times but every single time it turned out the ad was blatantly misleading or simply lying. Fuck ads and every person involved in that industry.
You are not the target market. Advertising is a massive industry for good reason. It works. I know because I own a business and brand name recognition is everything. When people buy things they most often don’t do any research, they just think of the first thing that comes to their head and that’s usually what they buy. Or the first thing that comes up in their product search.
That’s not really how they work, or that is not the only way. Their point is to put the logo, slogans, company etc into your memory. This way when you’re shopping for something specific, then the brand pops out to you because you’ve seen it and it gives you a sense of familiarity and hence, higher trust.
To be honest, I once fell victim on reddit to an add that promoted AFK-Arena. It turned out to actually be a decent game.
Likewise. I don’t think I’ve ever been moved or compelled to buy, check out, or even pay attention to a YouTube ad.
the “open source hackers” are always going to win this one, for a simple reason. if the data of the youtube video is handed to a user at any point, then the information it contains can be scrubbed and cleaned of ads. no exceptions.
if google somehow solves all ad-blocking techniques within browser, then new plugins will be developed on the operating system side to put a black square of pixels and selectively mute audio over the advert each time. if they solve that too? then people will hack the display signal going out at the graphics card level so that it is cleaned before it hits the monitor. if they beat that using some stupid encryption trick? well, then people will develop usb plugin tools that physically plug into the monitors at the display end, that artificially add the black boxes and audio mutes at the monitor display side.
if they beat that? someone, someone will jerry rig a literal black square of paper on some servos and wires, and physical audio switch to do the same thing, an actual, physical advert blocker. i’m sure once someone works that out, a mass produced version would be quite popular as a monitor attachment (in a timeline that gets so fucked that we would need this).
if that doesn’t work? like, google starts coding malware to seek and destroy physical adblockers? then close your eyes and mute your headphones for 30 seconds, lol. the only way google is solving that one is with hitsquads and armed drones to make viewers RESUME VIEWING
as long as a youtube video is available to access without restriction, then google cannot dictate how the consumer experiences that video. google cannot win this.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
good bot
I’ve tried to like Piped but half the time, the video just stays buffering indefinitely
It’s how we did it with MythTV and over the air or cable tv. The algorithms will just save a file in post, that has the ads removed. And that was 15yrs ago.
I don’t see how we escape ads if YouTube splits the video in two and ads play on a third of the screen alongside the video. Or in a chiron
And if Google went nuclear and starts embedding the ad into the videos themselves?
the current solution for that would be similar to the current “sponsor block” plugins, here’s an example
crowdsourced start and endpoints for embedded sponsorships
something like this tool, but for future embedded google adverts
Without talking about the resources it would require, youtube could totally only serve the ad until it has been “watched”. And no amount of sponsor block or similar software would help. These software only work because youtube allow you to navigate the video. If they decide that you have to fully download a 30s ad video, and that you can’t ask for the video for the first 30s, then you wouldn’t be able to do anything (or at the very max, just hide the ad and wait 30s on a blank screen).
then you wouldn’t be able to do anything (or at the very max, just hide the ad and wait 30s on a blank screen
i would choose the blank screen over watching an ad, every single time
Or the adblock could buffer the video and play it on a delay ad free. People will be fine with doing something else for a minute.
Better yet, have it done in the background – particularly for new videos on channels you’re subscribed to.
People could do that out of protest, and upload videos as proof of them doing it. Advertisers would start pulling out if they think they’re being ripped off like that.
Eventually at some point, the nuclear option would be if the government decided that sending back false information saying an ad had been viewed is computer fraud.
I don’t think the relative amount of people that would do that would be high enough to really end up mattering, and it’s not like, in that circumstance, advertisers can tell whether or not people are actually watching their ads anyways, which has always been the most dubious part of ads. And, is the biggest advantage of the internet and youtube, is that you can tell, you’re allowed access to those metrics. I don’t see a reality where youtube just goes to basically like, shittier cable advertising, forcing everyone to watch all the ads all the time, and that becomes somehow attractive to advertisers. I think, if that were the case, advertisers would probably pull out just on that basis and go where they know exactly what content they’re putting their ads in front of, which has always been the disadvantage of youtube.
Even if they did that it’s not impossible to find some exploits. No software is free of bugs which can be exploited, especially networked ones which are often finicky because they have many systems in place to pretend flawless execution. Just look at the TCP protocol, it’s dropping packets left and right but users usually don’t notice because they get spammed till one gets through
How do those extensions that skip download countdown timers work then?
Those are usually handled by JavaScript being run on the client side, I think, so it just speeds that up
Sure but my point was if there’s a practical way to do what the guy above me was proposing, then I would assume those sketchy ass sites would employ the same tactics. Not a programmer though.
All other hope forlorn, there’s still ML to recognize and cut out ads.
Or one can download the same video with as many as possible metrics different, so that ads would be different, and then compare the two videos. Ugh.
This type of war happened 15 years ago with Hulu vs Xbox. Hulu won because despite there always being an exploit it was always several days before a work around was uploaded. Eventually it was Hulu on xbmc for 1 day, then 3 days no Hulu on and on until everyone gave up.
To ad blockers, thank you for your service!
At least one popular ad blocker, AdBlock Plus, won’t be trying to get around YouTube’s wall at all. Vergard Johnsen, chief product officer at AdBlock Plus developer eyeo, said he respects YouTube’s decision to start “a conversation” with users about how content gets monetized.
Shitty AdBlock Plus.
AdBlock Minus
AdBlock Divided by Zero
Too bad Google doesn’t want to have a conversation, at least one that isn’t at gunpoint. I wouldn’t mind unintrusive ads. If it stayed at banner ads and things like that, I would probably enable them. Shoving crap in the middle of videos just makes it a horrible experience, so I’m going to get rid of them.
And I am fucking loving it. With this move, Google has effectively started an arms race between the team they have implementing this Adblock-blocking crap and the vast majority of the technically competent internet users in the world.
Unless the rules of how the internet works fundamentally change, Google is not going to win.
Why do you think they were pushing so hard for WEI? They did try to fundamentally change how the internet works.
Precisely.
i wouldn’t be surprised if this was partly a war between the team they have implementing this and the team they have implementing this, in their spare time
I’m not that optimistic. They could implement some sort of aggressive DRM. In the US, all they have to do is label protection as DRM and then it becomes illegal to even have any discussion of how to circumvent it. The overwhelming majority of users aren’t going to bother with any ad blocking. In the end, this could end up hurting Google if people build decentralized Youtube alternatives and then they could take viewers away from Youtube.
They would end up shooting themselves in the foot. They are on shaky ground already and it would only take a new platform that can entice a few of their top content producers over to lose enough chunks of their revenues to hurt. And all they have do is keep fucking around to find out what a tech-literate group of nerds who hate big corps can do when they are aligned in a certain direction.
They can get the rest of Big Tech and the MSM to start smearing the platform as “far right extremist” and spreading “fringe conspiracy theories.”
Yeah, that is easy enough to build into the algorithm. Deprioritizing that sort of nonsense effectively would mitigate it gaining a foothold. The only reason why the current platforms don’t (in fact they prioritize it in many cases) is because discord is being equated with engagement and they see that as good for business. If you aren’t worried about business, then you can set up your priority algorithm to be more rational and egalitarian.
Well, in the US you can legally talk about it so long as you do not actually do it. It’s similar to how an actor is able to talk about commiting murder without getting in trouble.
By some argument, section 103 of the DMCA (which is what grandparent post is referring to) does make it illegal to even talk about DRM circumvention methods.
illegal to: (2) “manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in” a device, service or component which is primarily intended to circumvent “a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work,” and which either has limited commercially significant other uses or is marketed for the anti-circumvention purpose.
If youtube implements an “access control measure” by splicing the ads with the video and disabling the fast-forward button during the ad, and you go on a forum and say “Oh yeah, you can write a script that detects the parts that are ads because the button is disabled, and force-fast-forwards through those”, some lawyer would argue that you have offered to the public a method to circumvent an access control measure, and therefore your speech is illegal. If you actually write the greasemonkey script and post it online, that would definitely be illegal.
This is abhorrent to the types among us for whom “code IS free speech”, but this scenario is not just a hypothetical. DMCA has been controversial for a long time. Digg collapsed in part because of the user revolt over the admins deleting any post containing the leaked AACS decryption key, which is just a 32-digit number. Yet “speaking” the number alone, aloud, on an online platform (and nothing else!) was enough for MPAA to send cease and desist letters to Digg under DMCA, and Digg folded.
Thanks for the heads-up. Definitely hope that if something like splicing ads in that some country like Russia or any other country that doesn’t care about US law or US copyright law would be able to write, host, and update methods to get around it on a server they control.
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’
Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.
sigh developers will ALWAYS be able to outsmart companies stealing from others.
I was gonna say, the Internet wouldn’t be what it is today without those so-called open source hackers. They’re the giants that Google and all the rest are standing on the shoulders of.
We’re going to relearn this lesson with LLMs. Open source is a maximalist approach to productivity.
Meshkov said that assessment [that scriptlet injection is the only reliable method of ad blocking for youtbue] is accurate if you limit yourself to browser extensions (which is how most popular ad blockers are distributed). But he pointed to network-level ad blockers and alternative YouTube clients, such as NewPipe, as other approaches that can work.
How exactly do these youtube front ends survive Google anyways? Why can’t Google simply block all the traffic coming from these front ends in order to kill them off entirely? Kind of interesting that some ad blockers are having a hard time being effective on YT while these front ends seem to be having no issues accessing videos on the site.
There is no way to determine if the request comes from an alternative frontend or a legitimate user. Even if they start blocking all public instances of alternatives, which is highly unfeasible since most of them use VPN and blocking all VPNs is extremely restrictive for legitimate users too, you can host them locally.
Client side versus server.
To use a metaphor: the internet is a mailperson, and a YouTube video is a package. The mailperson hands it off to me. Then I have to fumble with opening the box to get the item inside.
Well, let’s say I have a butler. The butler can take the package from the mailman, and rip out all the unnecessary stuff, and give me what’s inside the box. The butler is adblock.
YouTube/Google cannot mess with my butler. Why? Because it’s outside of their power. They can try to do things like force a signature before giving me the package. But guess what? My butler can sign off my package. YouTube knows to get to me, they have to go through my butler - period.
So there’s no “blocking traffic” because once the package is sent, they have to deal with my butler. And they can make all sorts of detectors on the package, but we’ll keep finding ways to bypass it and convince the package that my butler can totally sign for me.
If someone hosts their own front end, Google has no way of knowing whether or not it’s legitimate.
Really enjoying LibreTube on my phone, for listening to long videos without the video on screen. Its audio mode is very clean in my opinion.
Google could implement Widevine DRM for all videos.
In order for someone to experience the video, it has to go from digital to analog. That will always be the weakpoint of DRM. Someone can always put a middleman application in that point. Expect corporations to push for chip implants that allow them to directly control what you experience.
Against all odds
lol someone hasn’t been paying attention to how this stuff generally works…
my wife watches a lot of youtube via PS4, so ads aren’t blockable. but she discovered when an ad starts playing if you go to the ‘i’ icon, select you don’t want to see this ad, then click resume video, the video starts playing again. not exactly a blocker and requires those manual steps, but beats watching 30 second unskippable ads every 5 minutes
Open source Hackers FTW!
Please donate and keep Open Source as it is
Another day and another opportunity to say. Stop using youtube. Thankyou, and goodnight.
I refuse to use it.
You guys are missing out
On what?
There is nothing on there that you couldn’t find an equivalent of in text form(web or paper) or in the millions of hours of TV and film available on and off the web(both legal and not so legal) or on other platforms like twitch/nebula/peertube/lbry.
Are we really not okay with using YouTube but are okay with using Twitch?
And don’t deny that using Peertube amounts to using YouTube
I’m not a fan of either and would advocate everyone not consume large amounts of video content because of how heavy it is from an environmental point of view and move away from corporations from an anticapitalist/freedom point if view.
Let’s not kid ourselves though, as shit as twitch is, it does not come close to having the same grip google has on the internet and our lives.
Peertube is a completely different platform, perhaps you’re mixing it up with YouTube clients like newpipe or invidious?
What Google seems to forget or simply not care about is I can always just… leave.
I used reddit a lot more than I use YouTube.
If enough viewers and content creators were to jump ship, they’d scramble to change their tune.That’s a big if though. Unless an actual creator-exodus happens, it’s not going to happen.
And creators wont leave despite making less and less from youtube and relying more and more ftom direct support from fans, like through patreon.
I don’t disagree with you, I’m just saying that YouTube is nothing without both its creator and viewers.
A viewer-exodus and a creator-exodus would be tied together, they both feedback into each other.I even get why YouTube doubledown on catering to their advertisers over the creators and viewers, that’s just money talking.
I’m just saying I don’t owe them my time or attention.
They would hardly be the first Internet giant to fall, thinking they’re too big to fail, not that I see it happening soon though.Very true. But if Reddit didn’t fall I very much doubt YouTube will.
Perhaps you and I might leave, but it won’t be enough.
Exactly, I had people tell me that we should support YouTube, because it costs money and if we don’t it will disappear.
I would celebrate the day it would happen, YouTube is actually the reason we don’t have much competition there. They used their position and Google monopoly in other areas to establish this monopoly.
That is and big if though. Yeah you, me and half the people here might leave over this, but we block ads already and so are not highly valued to YouTube or a lot of the creators and are only a small drop in the ocean of viewers.
YouTube is betting on more people turning off ad blockers then those that leave. And i am glad to see that it might be having a small effect on more people actually discovering ad blockers instead. Which I bet is something YouTube did not expect to see.
No one in the 90s could imagine the internet without AOL or Yahoo either, and yet…
Or the great Myspace collapse of 2008. Digg before that. Tumblr most recently.
Big sites go boom fairly often.
Now, watching Google go Boom, that’s gonna be like modules breaking loose of the ISS and rez-entering the atmosphere. Drawn out over months, as one wing goes, government breaks up another wing, class action lawsuits bankrupt another wing.
Alphabets circling the drain. And good. Fuck em. Fuck Apple, Fuck Meta, Fuck Amazon, Fuck Reddit.
Just a couple more years now and imma nominate Craig from Craigslist for all the years nobel prizes for officially winning the internet.
Specific niche forums, Craigslist and Wikipedia are the last bits of honestness and fun online. And ymmv with Craigslist people being honest.
Can’t fucking wait to see Google disbanded hopefully in my lifetime , then Amazon
Top execs fucking dragged to the street and get their just desserts drawn and quartered.
Why would creators leave? They only earn money from users that watch ads or use premium. Ad blocker users leaving doesn’t affect them.
And if you “just leave”, guess what? You just saved them a few bucks in bandwidth. It’s a win-win for them.
It’s YouTube, they don’t need “exposure”. They are out to make a profit.
I donate to creators I like.
“against all odds” lmao what. Anyone who’s been paying attention since the dawn of the internet would know that youtube isn’t winning this one. The odds were 100% in the favour of the hackers.
$ mpv "youtube-url"best youtube adblocker.What’s this? How to use it? Can someone please ELI5 ?
For some reason I’m getting:
Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=" [ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred Failed to recognize file format.Seems weird.
Probably need to update. With plain yt-dlp you just run “yt-dlp -U”
That was correct, but yt-dlp is disabled on Debian and Ubuntu (apt), so I had to go to the Debian archives and install manually.
