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Tell HN: This is how you can bypass YouTube's Anti-Adblock mechanism

16 points by mrkramer ↗ HN
This is what I found out so for on desktop web version of YouTube;

I'm using uBlock Origin and I started getting that annoying pop-up notification about adblokcers not being allowed and after few days YouTube blocked my video playback so I disabled my adblocker for like 3 days and I got fed up of ads and I turned it on again and I'm using it ever since....without ads and without YouTube's pop-up notification on how adblockers are not allowed (4 days now without ads and without YouTube bothering me). My understanding is that my account and/or browser id or whatever got marked as "converted" in YouTube's/Google's database so they are not checking my account and browser again. Maybe it's just A/B testing or a bug idk but after they blocked watching videos for me, I gave in for a few days and I turned adblocker again later and now again I'm watching YouTube without ads.

Oh yea and funny thing I found out; if you put your video playback speed on 2, your video ads will also play on 2x speed, meaning an ad will end sooner. Funny thing to know and to play with.

11 comments

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muzani
The easiest approach I've seen is just paying for YouTube premium. Support your favorite content creators.
singedproxy
Supporting youtube by paying for Premium is not even remotely close to "support your favorite content creators" and everyone knows it.
muzani
YouTube takes 45%. Same with ads. The rest goes to the creator.

Seth Everman reported that about 35% of revenue came from YouTube Premium: https://youtu.be/WmAD8lyU9TY?si=oMGhR0skLgWUiq_8

But that's music, where ads are less profitable. So he made that quality financial content to get to the 100x CPM from quality financial content.

But if you mostly listen to music and memes like me, Premium is a good source of income.

satvikpendem
I just copy the video URL into mpv which can play videos when yt-dlp is also downloaded. Plus, it even supports SponsorBlock via a script.
hknmtt
i have been using firefox+uBlock Origin and until last week i only had to log out, clear all app data from brwoser and as precaution flush ubo cache, once a day and that worked. but since couple of days ago i have not had to log out and it works just like always. either ubo got some new filter or youtube reverted some intrusive changes.

i have also installed freetube which works great except recommendations because you are not logged into youtube so it lacks history.

mrkramer
>This is what I found out so far*
gnicholas
> if you put your video playback speed on 2, your video ads will also play on 2x speed, meaning an ad will end sooner

Aren’t there extensions that allow for more than 2x speed? Wonder if you can set to 10x or something just during commercials.

safsfasguahgwag
> if you put your video playback speed on 2, your video ads will also play on 2x speed, meaning an ad will end sooner someone PLEASE make an extension that both makes much faster speeds (100x) and automatically sets the speed to 100x during an ad and returns it to whatever the speed was before after the ad
mikhailfranco
First, I stopped using Google search, because it gave me a CAPTCHA whenever I used a VPN (or that was my impression of the correlation), but ...

...I am pedantic with my CAPTCHAS. I would tag all the wing mirrors and tires on the motorcycles. That obviously diverged from normal human behavior (maybe autistic, but not-a-bot :)

Googlenazi would give me another CAPTCHA, and another, sometimes 10 in a row! Enough already. DuckDuckGo here we come.

Now, Chrome blocked the YouTube AdBlock, so I see all the YT ads.

Next step is to change browser, probably for Firefox (hello again, old friend).

If that doesn't work, I will never look at YT again. Let's hope the YT (music) downloaders manage to stay one-step-beyond. I cannot spend all my time trying to second-guess the Search-Chrome-YouTube-industrial-complex. F*GOOG.

mikhailfranco
P.S. Kudos to Joe Rogan to see this collapse of YT so far ahead - and also the CA political woke tax-hike covid-madness general stupidity implosion.

Two good early calls. Not just seeing it and bloviating to his pals, but switching to Spotify and moving state.

Impressive (independent of whatever you think about his other personal or political beliefs).