if they outright forced us to stop day one there’d be outrage, so they instead ease us in. first a popup, then a timed popup, slowly leading to their actual goal but without the risk of an initial outrage. i know this is an extreme comparison but we’re like lambs to a slaughter

  • Kindness@lemmy.ml
    96·
    9 months ago

    My blind guess is they are doing split testing with various ad-blocking measures.

    Whenever someone interacts with the message, they know the popup worked. Best reaction is currently to use uBlock Origin’s element picker or zapper to hide the popup.

    The company is likely gathering data in various blocking methods to see which is the most foolproof.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
      362·
      9 months ago

      This is similar to what viruses do to determine if they’re on a real computer instead or just a sandbox. Most antiviruses will run an unfamiliar program in a sandbox (virtual machine) and if it starts doing malware things, flags it and sends it to quarantine. One known weakness of these sandboxes is that they cannot interact with the program, so a lot of viruses will put their payload behind a window. Any interaction with the window will signal to the virus that it’s on a real computer and it will deliver the payload, otherwise it will keep quiet to stay under the radar.

        • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
          51·
          9 months ago

          As with all “why don’t you just” statements I’m sure the engineers thought of that. Personally I think it is kind of nice that someone with technical know-how can completely neuter a virus that’s literally active and running on their computer by doing absolutely nothing.

  • JSens1998@lemmy.ml
    52·
    9 months ago

    I started getting the popups recently. Tried blocking the elements with uBlock, but in turn it would pause the video 2 seconds in. Pretty annoying. So I said screw it and installed an extension that would redirect the youtube watch page to an Invidious instance. Might as well make the transition now before they completely block adblockers for good. Screw Google!

  • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
    432·
    9 months ago

    I’ll be a bit sad if YT becomes unwatchable without blocking ads but I’ll get over it and watch something else somewhere else. Same as I did with Reddit.

    • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
      40·
      9 months ago

      I’ll be a bit sad if YT becomes unwatchable without blocking ads

      YT has been unwatchable without blocking ads for years now.

      • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
        16·
        9 months ago

        I disabled all extensions while trying to fight against that pop-up and I realized YouTube is almost unwatchable even with adblocker if you don’t have sponsor block. How someone can sit thru the ads and sponsored sections just blows my mind. As if sitting on youtube watching videos isn’t already waste of your time enough.

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
          7·
          9 months ago

          Well you can just skip over the sponsors manually, I did it for ages before discovering SponsorBlock. Nowhere near as bad as unskippable ads.

          Plus there are the occasional Youtubers that will actually do entertaining sponsor reads, whereas YouTube ads are always unbearable. Haven’t seen one on my own devices in… Well, I think I was running adblockers before the creation of YouTube. Pour one out for “The Proxomitron”, ancient ancestor of today’s adblockers.

          • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
            3·
            9 months ago

            The only Youtuber I know who shills his sponsors in really funny, creative ways is Jay Foreman - and specifically in the Map Men videos he does with his pal Mark Cooper Jones. He puts actual time and effort to make the fucking plugs amusing to watch (and I suspect he also sells his own talents as a comedian at the same time).

            I watch his plugs. I’ll never buy anything from the motherfucking advertisers who pay him but I sure watch him.

            • Molecular0079@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              CriticalRole’s Sam Riegel also does amazingly hilarious ad reads that have me bowled over laughing most of the time.

              There’s definitely ways to make ads more bearable without forcing them on users.

              • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
                13·
                9 months ago

                Aww God I can’t stand that stupid Piped bot… Here’s another one who shills his open source project I’m sick to the backteeth hearing about.

                Hey Piped bot: if I had wanted to replace my YouTube links with yours, I’d have done it myself. Enough with the autolinks already…

    • DancingIsForbidden@lemmy.world
      123·
      9 months ago

      Get Freetube, it’s FOSSome, you don’t even need a Google account to subscribe. All content and history is local on your machine, it just pulls the feed from the channels you ask it to. No ads, no tracking, Linux client available, you can even skip sponsor chapters and download videos right from the native client app.

  • probablyaCat@kbin.social
    364·
    9 months ago

    Umm I don’t think they care. They have a monopoly on amateur video hosting and only make money off of it with ads. If you are watching without ads or premium then you are costing them money. They do not care about your outrage. This isn’t reddit where it might have caused a long term permanent degradation to their content, the people posting stuff want you to pay or have ads as well. Users do not act as moderators or content providers (I mean I’m sure most content providers are users as well but they want ad revenue). They have just ignored ad blocking for long enough to get monopolies in their areas (browser, YouTube) and are now getting rid of that problem. I’m honestly amazed at how they took over the browser market. Almost everything is chromium based now. Even email. They may not have a monopoly, but they certainly made themselves the standard.

    Tldr: they aren’t doing it slow for fear of outrage. They did it slow to get a monopoly.

    • echo64@lemmy.world
      31·
      9 months ago

      Premium absolutely does not cost them money fwiw, it wouldn’t exist if it did, they aren’t that stupid.

    • rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
      1·
      9 months ago

      The youtube thing is an annoyance. The one that’s REAL concerning is what happens when Google eventually forces Firefox out of the market by convincing everyone to build their websites in such a way as to only run on Chromium based browsers. I mean, American Anti-Trust laws are just completely fucking gutted, so it’s not like there will be any consequence to them doing that. But once they do, they’ll have a veritable monopoly on the internet. At least the internet most people interact with.

  • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    9 months ago

    There’s outrage alright.

    https://lemmy.world/post/6811788

    https://lemmus.org/post/1138230

    https://lemm.ee/post/11471091

    https://links.roobre.es/post/451

    https://lemm.ee/post/11383162

    https://lemmy.world/post/6755067

    https://kbin.melroy.org/m/til/t/52393

    https://lemmy.world/post/6702422

    https://lemmy.myserv.one/post/3116340

    https://infosec.pub/post/3519906

    https://lemmy.world/post/6697059

    https://lemmy.world/post/6689222

    https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/6089078

      • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        No offense, but you went to a subreddit that’s likely to have people who enjoy google products and because of that are less likely to be critical even when they don’t agree with the company. Have you looked at the r/technology subreddit posts about this issue? Or r/privacy or any of the other subreddits that might give a better view?

        This is like going to the apple subreddit to find out if people are outraged bout the price of iPhones.

      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
        2·
        9 months ago

        I love these types of posts and comments. I get about halfway in to realize I don’t know shit about my fellow human beings and how they’re navigating/viewing the world. This is one hot glittery pony show of a society circling the sewer drain.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        9 months ago

        Each one of those posts has hundreds or more comments and upvotes. Lemmy is still relatively small. I’m positive this is all over Reddit but I’m not gonna go check. The outrage is here and it is thriving where posts directly pointing to solutions are not (they get maybe ten to twenty upvotes and a handful of comments each). There have been multiple articles in the news cycle about it.

        It was similar with the Netflix price hike and the Netflix anti-password sharing going public. Remains to be seen whether that outrage will actually amount to anything.

        • freebee@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          9 months ago

          It won’t amount to much if there’s no viable alternative.

          Moving to piped, invidious, freetube etc is what most with big enough outrage are doing (including me) but let’s face it: that’s just kicking the can a bit further down the road. Can’t “FOSS” YouTube, what they’re rendering usable again still is fully owned by Google and they’ll look in to deploying techniques to put an end to that Foss frontending too, eventually.

  • Miku Luna \ she/it@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    19·
    9 months ago

    I would call it pretty fast, I got the popup for the first time less than a month ago and I already rely on the magic uBlock does to even be able to watch YouTube.

  • RotatingParts@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    9 months ago

    I got the pop ups for a while, then they went away. They are back again. Fortunately I am still able to ignore it and not see any adds. If there is a time where I am forced to watch adds, it will hurt, but I will give up YouTube. I hope others give it up and don’t cave if it comes to that.

    • Retiring@lemmy.ml
      271·
      9 months ago

      I gave up reddit the day apollo stopped working and I will quit youtube the day I have to see any ads whatsoever. It just frees up time to do other, more fulfilling, things.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        101·
        9 months ago

        What, you mean that clicking “not interested” in the fourteenth WW2 documentary in a row about “What if the nazis won” isn’t fulfilling??

  • chillsmeit@lemmy.world
    131·
    9 months ago

    The solution is to use Firefox or even better librewolf with uBlock. If you already have these, purge the filters cache and then update it back again. If you still have problems with this after doing these steps, there’s probably some extension conflicting with it or an extra manual filter you added. Cheers

    • bouh@lemmy.world
      5·
      9 months ago

      At some point YouTube kind of block your account with the message instead of the video.

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yeah I don’t see that as a solution, more as a stop gap for the time being just like Vanced and any other tool that stands/stood between Google and more money.

      • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
        4·
        9 months ago

        It’s a privacy oriented fork of Firefox. Removes telemetry, pocket button, sync to cloud, etc.

        https://librewolf.net/

        This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom.

        LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. This is achieved through our privacy and security oriented settings and patches. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.

        • chillsmeit@lemmy.world
          2·
          8 months ago

          The only annoying thing libre doesn’t turn off automatically is WeRTC which can be turned off in the flags with media.peerconnection.enabled set to false.

        • turbonewbe@lemm.ee
          2·
          9 months ago

          Can those settings be disabled in firefox but are not as default?

          Sorry for ly aweful English.

          • chillsmeit@lemmy.world
            2·
            8 months ago

            They can. Though it’s just easier to use librewolf in my opinion. There’s a project called arkenfox which makes this easier to config settings manually for Firefox. Take a look into it.

          • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            From the description, it seems to all be things I usually disable manually. So yes, at a glance they are just disabled

          • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
            3·
            9 months ago

            Pocket is an add on for storing articles to read later. Used to be a separate product, but Mozilla bought them and integrated it into Firefox.

  • hottari@lemmy.ml
    101·
    9 months ago

    You are goddamn right about that one. Though I think Youtube is being petty with this war against adblockers, none of the major browsers block Youtube ads by default afaik.

      • hottari@lemmy.ml
        4·
        9 months ago

        Sure. A huge untapped market of people who don’t want anything to do with VPN ads.

    • deegeese
      523·
      9 months ago

      Client side web DRM is coming, which is why Google makes browsers and OSs now.

      Adblock will be prohibited for “security”.

        • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
          1·
          9 months ago

          And how much power does Google have to force that on websites that reject it and users who use Lbrewolf or IceCat?

          • ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ
            2·
            9 months ago

            All the power that an advertisement network can buy. Especially youtube since it’s owned by google. And advertisers will be happy to have a way of forcing site visitors to run ads/malware or else they will not get served the content.
            It’s similar to certain bank apps refusing to function on Android devices with an unlocked bootloader: you want the convenience of an e-banking application (/ad-driven corporate website)? – Your device (/web browser) “security” must be verified by the “authority” who actually owns your operating system, else you won’t. Everyone* will “be loving” their secure devices, because they “just work”.

            *who is a potential customer buyer and therefore relevant

            Google is trying to use their dominance to actually own the www. The comment/issue section of the github site of the proposal is quite enlightening, if you have the time … especially their reactions on the general dismissal and condemnation of the proposal as unethical.

            • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
              1·
              9 months ago

              I do not use the native YouTube website. I do not have a Google/Gmail account. I do not use chromium, Chrome, or Edge, or Brave. I disable webscrpts and manually temporarily enable them as needed with all webscripts disabled again after Ivclose the browser. I don’t use nathive Android or iPhone. I have all 3rd party scripts and cookies blocked by default.

              I never interact with any Google tracking or Google service on any of my electronic devices. I do not use Google search. Whatever happens with Google I will not see since I do not access anything Google on a monthly basis.

          • probablyaCat@kbin.social
            1·
            9 months ago

            Well if your bank website and the websites to pay your bills only work with their drm, then ff, ice weasel, etc just won’t work on those sites if they don’t include it. And tech like that, oh big business would fucking love.

            • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
              0·
              9 months ago

              I use IceCat with NoScript, PolicyBlock, DecentralEyes to block 3rd party, and some other add-ons to access bank and pay bills.

              • probablyaCat@kbin.social
                1·
                9 months ago

                Yes and that works currently. But recently Google put a proposal in the chromium engine that could essentially function total webpage drm. If that proposal goes through, and websites such as your bank and electricity company start requiring that feature in order to login, then other browsers would be completely locked out. Changing user agents wouldn’t work, because it is a client side check requested server side. Google argues that it would give websites a way to verify they are interacting with a human and limit abuse. That we wouldn’t need captchas and such. That it would increase security. But it could also mean you are totally locked out using alt browsers.

                There is already a similar thing done on ios with safari. But ios doesn’t have a monopoly on users and obviously businesses like your bank or your electric company won’t decide to lock out anyone from paying except with an iPhone. But if Chrome did it, and ios already does it… boom.

                • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
                  0·
                  9 months ago

                  While I do not outright dismiss your argument, I believe this general discussion is getting amplified or heightened by people who are neither programmers nor hackers. For the record, hackers are typically good people, it’s the crackers that cause the problems.

                  I have faith too many people who are I.T. engineers would strongly resist for Google to have a complete stranglehold on the entire internet. The more people are hurdled into a single way of thinking, the more diverse the resistance becomes.

                  I’m not going to be concerned until the intermet has a collective whole says Librewolf doesn’t work for websites, ungoogled chromium doesn’t work for websites, and Brave browser doesn’t work for websites. Less than that, I will dismiss it as sensational drama.