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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
YouTube’s users when they adhere to the YouTube TOS:
“opensource hackers” lol
I believe this phrase uses the original, older meaning: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/309252/has-hacker-definitely-gained-a-negative-connotation
A question for the tech savy, free alternatives to youtube like newpipe relies on youtube servers to access content, right? I mean, if youtube were to disappear magically we wouldn’t have a palce where to upload and store so many Gb of videos?
Am I missing something (I know I’m probably missing a lot!)? Thanks in advance for the replies!
Don’t be evil turned into straight up evil with Manifest V3. Already switched to FF as my primary and started shifting my use of Evil’s services.
They ditch the “do no evil” motto years ago when seeking military contract to help them kill people
Against all odds? This is a game that’s been going on for year, hacker vs Corp, and the hacker always wins. Same shit as anticheat in games, it’s a constant arms race but the hacker is nearly always a step ahead.
Anybody who thinks this is “against all odds” doesn’t understand the Internet very well.
Another day and another opportunity to say. Stop using youtube. Thankyou, and goodnight.
Open source Hackers FTW!
Please donate and keep Open Source as it is
Never under estimate the outrage of a nerd.
Serious question: what is the best add blocker right now? I’ve been using ublock origin, but it doesn’t seem to be working that well these days.
Apparently you need to clear the plugin’s cache semi-regularly.
As sometimes it won’t update itself as fast.
That makes sense. Thanks for the advice!
I apologize for my strongopinion but I believe yours is misguided or similar. Ublock origin is objectively the best ad blocker , they are an extremely talented team, dedicated and have been for a long long time.
The enemy is getting stronger, not the defense not working well.
:)
Thanks!
Hell yeah brother
Vinegar + SponsorBlock on iOS/iPadOS/MacOS.
thank you for recommending vinegar, it is incredible
Lololol it’s been like 2 weeks.
Youtube is vying X for a internet death while holding the door open for a less greedy rival
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