Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update

I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.

I can’t speak for the future, but I’ve had this for probably 5 years and I haven’t seen a single ad, only the videos that I’ve asked to see.

Syntax: www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w

This also works for playlists, and auto-repeats.

edit: is this getting downvoted because it works and people are worried this service might disappear should this bypass become too popular..? Just curious.

Best to try it out yourself. I can't watch Youtube with Ads ever anymore.

If a 100% Ad-free youtube premium at the current price point ever went away, something would have to change about the ads.

The family plan is nice to share with family to reduce how much everyone's exposed to ads.

In-Video sponsorships are a pain, sometimes they are chaptered out enough and can be skipped.

If I could pay for an ad-free google search I probably would. Off the shelf, not doing API calls.

Ads are a violation of the sanctity of our minds. They are not entitled to our attention. It's not currency to pay for services with.

I can't possibly go back to non-Premium YouTube, and if they mess around with Premium I'll probably be moving on from YouTube.

Then they have to go to advertisers and say, “advertise on our network where all the wealthier people are not.” A brand like Tiffany’s or Rolex (both huge advertisers) aren’t going to opt into that.

At some point some shareholder value maximizing CEO is going to sit down and notice just how much money he's leaving on the table by not advertising to paying customers like you. It's simply a matter of time.

Take a third option. Don't pay them and block their ads. Block their data collection too. It's your computer, you are in control.

And yes, attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things. Like any other voluntary transaction, no one is entitled to my attention unless we both voluntarily agree to it.

You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for example.

I do. I think it's a form of mind rape. You're trying to read something and suddenly you've got corporations inserting their brands and jingles and taglines into your mind without your consent. That's unacceptable.

> attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things

No. Attention is a cognitive function. It has none of the properties of currency.

These corporations are sending you stuff for free. They are hoping you will pay attention to the ads. At no point did they charge you any money. You are not obligated to make their advertising campaigns a success.

They are taking a risk. They are assuming you will pay attention. We are entirely within our rights to deny them their payoff. They sent you stuff for free with noise and garbage attached. You can trash the garbage and filter out the noise. They have only themselves to blame.

I got fed up and stopped paying for premium, now I get no shorts and no ads, it's a win-win.

If you truly have those beliefs the right moral action is to not use YouTube at all but god forbid you'd have to make any sort of sacrifice.

And that's not to mention pretty much every single creator stuffing sponsored sections into their videos now. We have Sponsorblock for now, but I imagine Google will try to introduce random offsets at some point which will render Sponsorblock mute. Maybe an AI blocker will rise up in the future?

At any rate, fight fire with fire. Just use every bit of adblocking on desktop, Revanced on Android and hope that Revanced or Youtube++ comes to iOS 3rd party stores at some point.

[0]https://imgur.com/a/3emEhsF

Edit: since people are too lazy to click on the link and instead ram the downvote button in blind rage, image 1 and 4 contain straight up ads, unconnected to creators.

Edit: let's step through this. If I use a towel placed over the computer to block ads, that's morally the same as using blocking software, I think? If I block the ads by putting my fingers in my ears and staring at the ceiling, also the same thing, morally. If I block them by watching them in a negative frame of mind, saying that I dislike ads and won't do what they suggest, I'm still doing the bad thing, the same as using an ad blocker - if it is a bad thing. My obligation, if it is an obligation, is to be receptive. Otherwise what, it's a sort of mind-fraud?

Apart from that, you can bet that YouTube is pricing it in a way that they aren’t losing out compared to ad revenue.

It works amazingly well provided a video's been out for at least a half hour or so. It also has the option to skip the "like and subscribe" parts too.

I also tried the https://dearrow.ajay.app/ extension to replace clickbait titles, but decided I'd rather know when a channel/video is too clickbait-y so I can block/unsubscribe.

Creators can just as easily pop a Patreon or BuyMeACoffee these days in a few clicks. In fact, most creators constantly admit that Google pays them peanuts for their view counts. But support the leviathan for reasons unknown I guess.

People really live like this... ? Like those who watch movies on their phones lmao.

Also, Brave works on iphone -> m.youtube.com adfree :)

Then again I went years not using conditioner and moisturiser for my skin, only deo... We all need tips from people who know better you know. (Im white.)

Adtech cannot be trusted. I refuse to support their empire whether that's financially or with my data and attention.

Also, isn't patreon also a middleman by your definition?

Personally I do like YouTube Music, due to all the user-uploaded content that isn’t available on other platforms.

Ads are so powerful that they've even managed to twist the truth about plenty of horrific shit happening to the point of affecting the health and safety of real people, sometimes literally on a global scale. Chiquita bananas, De Beers, Nestle, Oil & Gas companies, and must I remind you of Tobacco companies (and surprise surprise, the same people who were doing the ads for Big Tobacco are the ones doing ad campaigns for O&G companies now)? There have been SO MANY examples from all these companies of using advertisements to trick and manipulate people & politicians, oftentimes just straight up lying, like the Tobacco companies lying about the adverse health effects despite knowing for decades what the adverse health effects were, Or Oil & Gas companies lying about climate change via comprehensive astroturfing & advertisement campaigns [1].

This all barely scratches the surface, too, especially these days where you have platforms like Google and Meta enabling genocides, mass political interference and pushing things like crypto scams, gambling ads and other similarly heinous and harmful shit to the entire internet.

The TL;DR of all of this is that yes, advertisements absolutely are psychological warfare. They have been and continue to be used for absolutely vile and heinous activities, and the advertisers employ huge teams of people to ensure that their mass influence machine runs smoothly, overtaking everyone's minds slowly but surely with nothing but pure lies fabricated solely to sell people products they absolutely do not, and will never need.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE

People who choose that without much thought - because it's barely an expense for them - are definitely tending towards "higher net worth" nationally, let alone globally. A lot of those people just don't realize it, because the entire point of seeking that kind of status is so that they can enter a socioeconomic bubble and not have to care about annoyances (like advertising).

Youtube isn't free, and unlike a simple blog, requires tons of infrastructure and content creation. None of that is free, and people wanting that to be free is why we're in adscape hell.

Edit: I'd love for a competitor to youtube, but there isn't. Rumble isn't a real competitor, and none of my favorite channels place their content there either.

I wish there was a youtube alternative that was more of a federation, but every attempt I've seen of federations have been mess.

Browser extensions don't fix a chromecast skipping ads, for example. It'd have to be written into the casting client, I'd presume.

If someone gives you an ad filled magazine, you can rip out the ad pages and throw them in the trash, leaving only the articles you actually want to read. Same principle applies here. If some random person on the street gives you a propaganda pamphlet, are you obligated to read it just because some businessman paid for it? Of course not.

They're giving their stuff away for free instead of charging money for it. They gambled on the notion that people would "pay" by watching ads. Unfortunately for them, attention is not currency to pay for services with. We will resist their attempts to monetize our cognitive functions. The blocking of advertising is self defense.

They have absolutely nobody but themselves and their own greed to blame. Instead of charging money up front like an honest business, they decided to tap into that juicy mass market by giving away free sfuff. Their thinking goes: if I give them free videos with ads, then they will look at the ads and I will get paid. That's magical thinking. There is no such deal in place. We are not obligated to look at the ads at all. They don't get to cry about their gamble not paying off.

Then charge for it like the other streaming services. If they send me ads, I'll block and delete them, manually or automatically, and I won't lose a second of sleep over it.

> requires tons of infrastructure and content creation

Not our problem. It's up to the so called innovators to come up with a working business model. If they can't, they should go bankrupt.

> which a majority of the developed world uses

... the USA? It's not a majority in any other country that I'm aware of

I've got a Eurocentric view though, I have e.g. no idea if Singapore or China has a majority of Apple users or where you draw the line on 'developed' (critique on the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Factfulness&oldid...)

They’re one of the most profitable media platforms on the planet. They’ll be fine. Nobody is crying. There are just willing participants—as you say, on both sides—in what I consider a pretty silly battle one can opt out of with a small amount of money.

As for paying for the content you consume, most of the costs aren't on Google's side. I can understand paying for Youtube as a shortcut to hopefully giving some pennies to each person you watch, though, at least for those with no moral objection to making Google's/Youtube's monopoly in online video stronger

Once someone reaches a level of individual support that’s fine.

YouTube remains a place for discovering channels and people and some people especially the majority who are not technical, can outwit a simple family fee.

I use YouTube premium more than I ever used for paying Netflix for far longer. Value (and proven convenience) is in the eyes of the user.

Fortunately I mainly watch the videos which are not made by "creators" looking for $$$ but just people sharing something interesting and useful; the ones which have no annoying intros or outros, "like share and subscribe" drivel, and are often not much more than raw unedited content. They still exist on YouTube.

I would have bought the argument of the commenter if they talked about buying Premium to support the platform. But buying Premium to support the content creators? That's a bunch of horse manure.

Basically any rich country has a majority of iPhones. And let's not even talk about tablets.

Anyway, it's also the user's own choice if they want a closed ecosystem. I find it relatively irrelevant if someone chooses a jail and then complains that the jailer is too strict and they can't run the ad blocker software they want: that's the deal they picked and they're free to choose an open platform any day of the week. I don't even mean open source, just the zeroth, most fundamental freedom ("The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...)

Ad blockers are an existential threat to them.

One thing is for sure - an ad-free family is much more peaceful and able to enjoy the content itself, which can bode well for connecting with the content creators and appreciating the platform for what it is, and once was.