Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update

The best bypass is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Never realized anything was happening as I was on Firefox, until I saw ads as my wife was browsing youtube despite installing ublock for her years ago.

Switched (back) to Firefox from Chrome years ago and haven’t looked back. Between uBlock and Privacy Badger my web experience is pretty good despite the endless assault on end users.

YouTube recently started showing ads through uBO in Firefox.

On what platform? I've been using Firefox and uBO on Linux and Android for over a decade and never seen a YouTube ad.

They do staged rollouts, maybe a-b testing. It seems to generally be region based rather than platform.

You might need to check that you are using all appropriate blocklists as well. The subreddit usually has a sticky/pinned post for YouTube related issues as this has been a slow moving target for about a year now.

I'm on Windows 10.

I can’t help seeing ad blockers as fairless content consumption, like choosing to download films, musics and books without paying the creator and the distributor (VOD, MOD, concerts, libraries…). Sounds great for you but how would that work if everyone would do the same?

Although we all be happy to se more competition, using an ad blocker on Google sites (and G-add financed-sites) have no positive effect for the competitors.

Don’t take me wrong, I hate Ads and Google methods but we can’t all rob the same store and hope there will be infinite food on the shelves and that the next store will benefit from that.

Speaking of 'works best in Firefox'... I mainly use Chrome (kinda have to), and it's practically impossible to use it for reviewing big GitHub PRs with many files changed (UI just freezes), but everything's perfectly fine in Firefox!

Almost all content I consume is not funded by adverts, it’s funded by passion or subscription or donation.

Adverts have no positive effects for anyone other than the advertising firm. They cost the viewer more than the provide the advertiser

I sincerely hope that having produced a comment like that, you are not using ad blockers of any kind in any browser, including the reduced functionality Chrome uBlock Origin on manifest V3.

For me, ads broke the informal social contract between provider and end user years ago. Small, unobtrusive advertisements might've been okay, but ads eating an inordinate amount of my time and bandwidth, which exfiltrate my personal information, and which are served to me via SEO tricks and dark patterns are not okay. If sites want to ban me for not viewing their ads, fine. In the meantime, I won't lose any sleep over using my adblocker.

For you, if you are lecturing us on the moral imperative of viewing ads, then you better be viewing those ads yourself rather than only espousing cheap rhetoric.

if they’re not funded by adverts then you don’t need an ad blocker, right?

Google doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not written in the stars that Google must succeed. If Google's business model doesn't meet web users expectations then it's perfectly alright for Google to fail as a business. Businesses fail all the time.

Google is not special or different. Google can adapt or die.

Remember also that as Google has grown and captured more of the available attention and advertising dollars, other businesses that rely on attention and advertising such as free-to-air TV or print media have contracted and even failed. Google has shed no tears for them and, correspondingly, there's no need to shed tears for Google.

I principally agree with you. But in reality, the ad-funded model has failed. It failed a long time ago.

There were never any restrictions placed on it, so it became a self-sustaining downward spiral to the current state of things. When I see the internet without an ad-blocker it is completely unusable. Quite frankly, I would most likely stop using most of the internet altogether if I couldn't block ads.

So what is the alternative? Same as always: paid services. A service / platform can either work out a pricing model that works for people, or it shouldn't / can't exist in that form.

Some people will argue that they'd rather have ads and also content for free and that's fine. Maybe some people can tolerate them. I cannot. I find them to be as close to experiencing physical pain as possible. It's like pure mind-poison and I will bend over backwards to avoid ads.

I am waiting for the age of smart-glasses to begin so that I can filter out ads in real-life as well. I simply never, ever, under any circumstances want to see any advertising ever.

If I want a product or service, I'll go search for it. I don't need anything to be suggested to me. And this is just my battle-hardened mind. I daren't think of what ads do to un-developed, children's minds.

It should be the government's responsibility to severely restrict advertising until it nearly doesn't exist. But that's not the world we live in, so I have taken matters into my own hands.

bbc news is full of tracking despite not showing adverts.

Could this be a subjective experience? Is it reproducible on multiple machines? And have you tried it with a new profile?

This is a comical view. If protection of downloadable material that someone wants you to pay for, is removed by an ad blocker, then that is broken by design. Make a website that is suitable to sell things, is the solution.

I use Edge on both Win + Android, and uBlock Origin works perfectly on both.

This is a candide view: IRL store use RFID doors for a reason, and customers do pays indirectly for those doors.

However I’m not 100% sure to have understood your phrase so please tell me if I missed your point.

Well, many people have complained about this very issue, and it was actually from this [1] discussion that I learned that Firefox handles big PRs just fine. No amount of jumping through hoops, including creating a new profile, helped to make it work in Chrome.

[1]: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/39341

> Sounds great for you but how would that work if everyone would do the same?

I guess we would be free from companies such as Meta and Google? Where do I sign up?

You also seem to think that advertisement has no impact on alternative distribution methods. The fact that other viable options are scarce currently only shows that ad companies have a stranglehold on creative industries through their monopoly.

Sorry, I skipped some part while writing. Edited to make sense.

My wife was pissed when I installed an adblocker for her - turns out she likes the ads.

Running ad blockers for me is a matter of principle. The amount of tracking and telemetry that exists on the Internet is 1. massively invasive from a privacy perspective and 2. massively wasteful from an energy, bandwidth and time perspective.

If you have something worth selling, then sell it.

“Heavy sigh.”

Ubuntu.

I wouldn't mind if Google et al. went bankrupt. Only Youtube would be somewhat of a loss.

There was a podcast I was listening to this week, and they were discussing the purpose of marketing emails, and they came to the conclusion that they're for women who actually open all of them lol. It was half sarcasm and pretty funny, not trying to by misogynist or something

I recently saw my GF's inbox, it's full of marketing emails, and when I told her she can unsubscribe or block them, she said she likes them as well.

Do you have other extensions? For example, I can see that uMatrix is also blocking all requests to doubleclick.net

It seems to me that adblocking adoption increases the more companies actively fight it/ramp up their advertising and drown us in it. I mean you have Microsoft injecting ads straight into their OS last I heard (correct me if I’m wrong) and they even charge for windows.

People clearly will live with ads but there is a point where it becomes way too much and some people simply won’t tolerate it at that point.

Most people are not thinking deeply about the nuances. But it seems fair: Google take away thing, for fake reason, Google bad.

Yes, they do open them all with so much eagerness it makes me wonder how they are able to manage so many emails. But eagerness and window shopping is their calling.

Last time I used Edge (early this year), it asked me if I allowed to track me (the usual cookies message) when I opened a new tab, so while they still support Mv2, I'm not sure if it's the browser to use if you want some privacy and block ads.

Massive generalization but sure lol

The other funny thing is Google could probably exist purely from its innovations. Its just too hard to convince the shareholders to give up on the safe and lucrative ad business.

Adblocking is security

Our CTO was giving a hybrid presentation in a conference room on zoom, and his M3 Mac kept complaining of high memory usage. Chrome was rated at taking 60GB of memory.

No single consumer application should be taking over 60gb of memory.

Part of it too is that unlike circa 2012 we are all far more aware that it's not simply an ad. An ad means you're basically under corporate surveillance, and they gleefully not only use that info to "better serve you ads" (i.e. better manipulate your purchasing), they gleefully sell that info to other parties 1) without your consent or 2) alerting you to who has it. Every ad you see is another pandora's box opening up and spreading your info to basically anyone who wants it, and you're not really aware of what exactly is happening under the hood. There's no transparency, and certainly no way to undo the damage. Even the services that purportedly help you with that get caught turning around and selling your data all over again.

Point being, it's not just an ad. It's not just some cereal commercial broadcast to everyone watching cable based on the viewing habits of large swaths of the population - relatively general stuff. It's decades of investment and research weaponized against us to extract as much info about us as possible to use it against us for maximum profit with no concern for how it impacts us or ability to ever opt out.

I've not seen the ads at least not yet.

There was a few times when Youtube try to top me from viewing because I was blocking the ads.

Alphabet has unfortunately reached a size where it is completely self-sustaining and acts outside of 'normal' market forces affecting businesses that need to make something or sell a certain volume of products. They just keep growing because now it's a good investment to have. There's a few companies like this now. They could just completely stop doing anything tomorrow and they'd probably remain one of the biggest market-caps in existence for decades.