YouTube Crackdown Leads To 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Ad Blocker Uninstalls (9to5google.com) 208
YouTube's crackdown on ad blockers is in full swing, leading to a wave of ad blocker uninstalls. 9to5Google reports: As Wired reports, this rollout has led to "hundreds of thousands" of uninstalls, not of YouTube but of ad blockers. The figures apparently come from various ad-blocking companies, where October saw a "record number" of people uninstalling ad blockers. Meanwhile, it also led to a record number of new installs, as many users looked to switch from one blocker to another in an effort to keep blocking ads.
One ad-blocking company, Ghostery, shared that 90% of users who completed a survey when uninstalling their ad blocker cited YouTube's changes as the reason. AdGuard told Wired that daily uninstalls were up for the entirety of October, spiking to 52,000 in a single day on October 18 as YouTube's notices started rolling out more widely. It was added that use of the Ghostery blocker is up 30% on Microsoft Edge, as some users have noticed that switching browsers at least temporarily lifts the blocking of their ad blocker. AdGuard, meanwhile, saw its paid subscription rise as some users reportedly saw success with containing to block ads using the tool.
One ad-blocking company, Ghostery, shared that 90% of users who completed a survey when uninstalling their ad blocker cited YouTube's changes as the reason. AdGuard told Wired that daily uninstalls were up for the entirety of October, spiking to 52,000 in a single day on October 18 as YouTube's notices started rolling out more widely. It was added that use of the Ghostery blocker is up 30% on Microsoft Edge, as some users have noticed that switching browsers at least temporarily lifts the blocking of their ad blocker. AdGuard, meanwhile, saw its paid subscription rise as some users reportedly saw success with containing to block ads using the tool.
I took a different approach (Score:3)
I cut back on my YouTube use and cleared my browser cache.
If only I could figure out how to block my local paper's annoying auto-play videos.
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Re:I took a different approach (Score:4, Interesting)
ctrl-l
ctrl-c
ctrl-shift-n
ctrl-v
cr
works 100% of the time for now.
Re:I took a different approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... I updated my browser ad blocker plugin with one that actually works and blocks the YouTube ad-blocking detector.
Not exactly a win for Google, is it?
Re:I took a different approach (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if the install numbers for uBlock Origin went up since that one actually does work to block ads on YouTube.
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in my experience it doesn't always work. i use it in brave and sometimes youtube's blocker still manages to get through. incognito mode is still fine though.
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For me, when the ad blocker gets through, it usually means I need to force a filter update (or sometimes I just need to wait for the filters to be updated by the filter devs)
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You can also customize the Ublock origin to filter out specific sections of the pages.
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Maybe not literally 100% but in practical sense, ublock has always worked. Even when YT recently tried this bullshit, manually updating the block lists made it work again immediately.
Then you have to combine it with sponsorblock and it's almost watchable.
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Yeah... I updated my browser ad blocker plugin with one that actually works and blocks the YouTube ad-blocking detector.
Not exactly a win for Google, is it?
What I have seen is ads alongside the videos. The inclusion of random ads inside the videos was dumb and annoying.
The ads alongside are not intrusive, and I'm okay with them
Re:I took a different approach (Score:5, Insightful)
The ads alongside are not intrusive, and I'm okay with them
It's this story that it's the intrusion that matters that needs to go away. There are two primary reasons for blocking adverts.
Firstly, most importantly, ads are the primary way that malware is delivered to computers. Accepting adverts means, instead of connecting to a set of sites that you choose and their trusted partners (like, for example, sites used for user support that they actually pay and have contracts with) you are connecting to an absolutely random set of sites all over the world that pay someone far down a massive chain of resellers who have no idea whatsoever what the advert is trying to send to your computer and, even if they did check would have no way of knowing if one of the advertising servers got compromised and occasionally sent someone else's malware instead of it's preferred malware.
Secondly, less important but still of note, the adverts are a way of spying on you and spreading your data. The data that all the companies secretly have about gets sent in various encoded ways to each of the companies that advertise to you. The advertising companies then get your IP address when they serve you a the advert and finally they get to correlate that with other sites where you also accept advertising.
Annoying pop-ups are the least worry about adverts. In fact they are good because they warn you that somebody else has control over your computer which silent data capturing doesn't do.
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Maybe it's $5 where you live. You need to multiply that by 3 for my area. You can get 2 free months if you sign up and pay for a year at a time.
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Youtube adfree is like five USian dollars a calendar month.
Try five times that; $25USD/mo.
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Youtube adfree is like five USian dollars a calendar month. If you can't justify that
I can afford five dollars. Youtube can't justify it. I just close the browser window and do something else.
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How do you filter for demonetized videos? Do you add "+gun" or "+trump" to your queries?
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I used stickK for a month to force myself to not use youtube unless I needed a specific piece of information (including encountering a link when pursuing some other purpose). It broke the habit. I haven't browsed youtube for entertainment in months. I would recommend this to anybody that wants help breaking a habit or making a new one. (I'm also reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, but stickK is a blunt instrument that works quickly where it works.)
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To clarify, I'd already decided YouTube is not a good source of entertainment for me. It is the wrong psychological dynamic; it was not a valuable addition to my life, except when I need something specific like information.
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Just pipe the videos (Score:2)
Then they get nothing.
The feeling of not caring is exquisite (Score:2)
Screw these people.
Strange to do, why not use a dedicated browser? (Score:5, Informative)
Rather than expose your entire browsing experience to malware and an ad onslaught, you'd think people would just use a different browser for youtube.
Around here the youtube adblock bans have led to at least several installs of FreeTube, and the users are incredibly happy with it.
For those that want to watch youtube on the command line, I recommend mpv which uses yt-dlp as a backend. Still works great for me.
A comment in the last slashdot story on this topic mentioned that updated rules on uBlock Origin seemed to mitigate the youtube ban blocks. Is this true?
Re:Strange to do, why not use a dedicated browser? (Score:5, Informative)
I use uBlock Origin, and I haven't seen any new behavior yet. YouTube's working the same as it has for a long time.
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My feeling is that if youtube doesn't want me to visit, I shouldn't visit them. So I've stopped. I don't know whether their behavior has changed or not, nor do I care. (OTOH, I never viewed things there unless someone asked me to anyway. Now I've an excuse not to.)
Re:Strange to do, why not use a dedicated browser? (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw the block messages for about two days until they blocked me completely. I set uBlock Origin back to default settings, cleared the cache, updated the filters, and have resumed as usual since (over a week ago now). YouTube with ads is unwatchable ... it's bad enough without the ads. If Google somehow succeeds in blocking ad blockers and other methods of watching without ads I simply won't visit. It's 99.9999999% garbage, only 3 or 4 channels I actually enjoy watching.
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What's worse is that they tune the service to be addictive, even "training" content creators to make addictive videos since they penalize channels that don't follow the most beneficial behaviors for them. There is no denying that YouTube offers a lot of value, but they want to screw their users.
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I use it too and I noticed a message or two from Youtube when they started this. But like, at most two days later it all went back to normal.
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I use uBlock Origin, and I haven't seen any new behavior yet. YouTube's working the same as it has for a long time.
uBlock Origin is still getting beat by YouTube, then uBO catches up, then YT beats them, and the cycle keeps repeating. uBO is updating their filters every (12) hours in order to win against YouTube and I'm not sure how long they will continue doing that. If you haven't encountered a blocked video, it's just lucky timing on your part.
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That and a Pi-Hole will improve the internet experience exponentially,
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Depends. I've heard of reports where Firefox is extremely unreliable with uBlock Origin and YouTube.
But strangely, Edge works great with uBlock Origin and YouTube. Edge with uBlock Origin works fine. It's become my dedicated YouTube browser now.
Go figure. I'm guessing Microsoft is probably wondering why there's an uptick in Edge usage all of a sudden.
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It's more or less true. There were a couple of days where Youtube told me that blockers were EVIL but gave me a exit X from the pop-up and then played the video without ads... but that now is also gone. uBlock wins again.
Welcome to the Youtube arms race.
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A comment in the last slashdot story on this topic mentioned that updated rules on uBlock Origin seemed to mitigate the youtube ban blocks. Is this true?
Yes. I've seen people who work on the filters say that YouTube is updating its scripts about twice a day. The uBlock Quick Fixes filter auto-updates every 12 hours (and possibly every 6 hours once .patch filters are implemented). This page has been keeping track of uBlock's ability to bypass YouTube ads: https://drhyperion451.github.i... [github.io]
Basically, once YouTube updates the script to bypass ad-blockers, uBlock will shorty follow with a fix. Unfortunately, it isn't instant, and you may have to manually upd
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It's an arms race.
The next step is for YouTube to start inserting ads as part of the original video, by encoding different versions of the video on the fly for different audiences. Try to use a download tool, and you'd get a version of the video with one or more ads as part of the downloaded version, all tailored to the IP address range from which it was downloaded.
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Fortunately that has been too expensive for Google to do up til now. But that will likely change. I'll be completely done with youtube at that point.
Re: Strange to do, why not use a dedicated browser (Score:2)
Inb4 they come up with a new codec specifically with a feature to allow splicing together of clips of video without tons of processing.
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The next step is for YouTube to start inserting ads as part of the original video
Ughhh, imagine if YT does this on top of videos that already have the "I want to thank XXX for being one of our sponsors. XXX will help you with this and that and blah, blah, blah..." for 2-3 minutes.
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So far, using adblockplus and blocking a few elements additionally, I get no warning, but there are two "bugs":
1. Video stops after a second or so I need to click play for it to continue - not really a problem, I dislike auto playing videos anyway.
2. Scroll is disabled (I cannot read the comments), until I make the video fullscreen and then go back in a couple of seconds. Then I can read the comments.
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This happens to me, in Firefox, with Ublock Origin, and NoScript. Sometimes Firefox hangs, where F5 is required to get it to continue, other times moving the mouse will get it to continue (I usually have youtube playing on a 2nd pc where the mouse won't move for hours,) and sometimes I have to click Play a 2nd time. I have installed an ad-silencing add-on, and it works just ok. usually you get the first 1/2 syllable of the ad spiel, or worse, a 2-note blast of music before its silenced. This is incredi
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This is the least technical answer: It's interesting that changing the ad-blocker is more common. Maybe, the people with half a clue number the same as the idiots being bitch-slapped by Google for using 'free' entertainment.
Welcome Hackers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't it still true that lots of malware gets into computers via ads?
If so, then ad-blockers perform an important role for society in defending people from criminals.
It feels to me as though there is a fundamental problem with copyright law here: copyright owners should not be able to prevent people from defending themselves against criminals, even if that reduces by some amount their ability to monetize their 'property' in certain domains or markets.
This feels like what we might call a "systemic legal ethics problem", where the lawyers are writing - and passing - and upholding - laws in a fashion that contradicts reasonable expectations regarding the law, and thus creates an artificial demand for the services of lawyers. By the laws of supply and demand, an artificial demand increase the total pay of the legal profession as a class in society, hence the ethics issue.
Normal formulations of ethics demand that even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided when alternatives exist (something certain US judges don't seem to understand) - so there is a clear need to change how the laws are written here, and a clear responsibility for judges upholding those laws to recognize that there is a legal ethics issue here.
In any society based on the rule of law, the right to ethical practice of law is certainly an universal and inalienable right - and this most certainly includes protection from systemic legal ethics problems as well as individual ethics problems.
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Isn't it still true that lots of malware gets into computers via ads?
Partially. The bigger problem is ads masquerading as malware (aka: scareware) that trick the user into installing actual malware and/or parting with actual cash to "fix" the problem.
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Isn't it still true that lots of malware gets into computers via ads?
Partially. The bigger problem is ads masquerading as malware (aka: scareware) that trick the user into installing actual malware and/or parting with actual cash to "fix" the problem.
Site owners need to put pressure on ad networks to stop serving those types of ads. If that doesn't do it, regulation may be required.
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Isn't it still true that lots of malware gets into computers via ads?
Not through YouTube, at least. YouTube transcodes all of its ads the same way it does uploaded videos. I suppose it's possible that someone could find a way to encode an exploit that survives the transcoding, but I don't believe it's happened yet, and it's a hard problem since nearly all video codec-based exploits rely on inserting some invalid data.
It feels to me as though there is a fundamental problem with copyright law here: copyright owners should not be able to prevent people from defending themselves against criminals, even if that reduces by some amount their ability to monetize their 'property' in certain domains or markets.
Copyright law isn't even relevant to this discussion. Copyright law would only come into play if you were trying to download and store the streams, not just wat
Re: Welcome Hackers? (Score:3)
Do you use your brain for anything other than preventing your skull from collapsing? You can simply white list youtube on your ad blocker. So you get the protection of blocking ads on the rest of the Internet and not have to pay cash for YouTube.
drive by downloads did happen with ad's (Score:2)
Isn't it still true that lots of malware gets into computers via ads?
If so, then ad-blockers perform an important role for society in defending people from criminals.
It feels to me as though there is a fundamental problem with copyright law here: copyright owners should not be able to prevent people from defending themselves against criminals, even if that reduces by some amount their ability to monetize their 'property' in certain domains or markets.
This feels like what we might call a "systemic legal ethics problem", where the lawyers are writing - and passing - and upholding - laws in a fashion that contradicts reasonable expectations regarding the law, and thus creates an artificial demand for the services of lawyers. By the laws of supply and demand, an artificial demand increase the total pay of the legal profession as a class in society, hence the ethics issue.
Normal formulations of ethics demand that even the appearance of conflict of interest must be avoided when alternatives exist (something certain US judges don't seem to understand) - so there is a clear need to change how the laws are written here, and a clear responsibility for judges upholding those laws to recognize that there is a legal ethics issue here.
In any society based on the rule of law, the right to ethical practice of law is certainly an universal and inalienable right - and this most certainly includes protection from systemic legal ethics problems as well as individual ethics problems.
drive by downloads did happen with ad's in the past
you need ad block to remove all of fake download buttons on some websites so you can find the right one.
also years ago some sites had so meny ad's that they maxed out browsers that where multi core
Hosts File (Score:4, Interesting)
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You also have to block 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, and either host your own DoH/DoT server, or disable it completely.
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Been running pi-hole for years. It does nothing to block YouTube ads, given that they’re served from the same domains/addresses as the actual content you came to watch. Blocking one with a DNS resolver like pi-hole blocks the other as well. Without doing packet inspection (which involves MitM-ing traffic and then parsing Protobuf packets in realtime [ericdraken.com]), your best bet is DOM inspection via a browser-based ad blocker, which is fairly trivial for them to combat.
Use incognito mode (Score:5, Interesting)
I just load the videos into incognito mode to watch. If I want to like/comment then I load it again in normal mode and comment/like there (video won't play but who cares I already watched it)
Works enough for me.
MID-ROLE ADS ARE AWFUL!
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forgot to mention, ad blockers work fine in incognito mode, presumably because it can't tell if you've hit your limit yet.
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I listen to a reasonable amount of music online.
An ad popping up in the middle of an extended-play song ...................... enragening.
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I still don't understand why people do this - rent music. Just buy the bloody music.
In the decades before music was rentable, I had accumulated over 700 CDs and LPs (not to mention a few 45s, 8-tracks, cassettes and digital downloads), probably at a cost of about $20K in today's money.
That sounds like a lot of music, but it's really not. Much of it is the essential stuff everyone has, so it's overplayed and I'm tired of it. A lot of the rest is styles that didn't age well, or things that I bought based on one hit song that otherwise sucked and I regretted from day one.
Now I can rent basic
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Because some of the music hasn't been for sale, comercially, for decades upon decades. I don't want to listen to a remastered album and I will never buy one. If I'm listening to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, I want to hear the original 1988 version, not the 2015 remaster. If I'm listening to Tales of Mystery and Imagination, I want it to sound like its playing off of a record with its seamless transitions. I don't want it broken into separate jarring tracks.
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The secret sauce (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll probably get nailed eventually or someone else will talk about it. Duckoduckgo privacy essentials + ad blocker works fine.
I.E If they can't track and monitor everything you do and you keep their hands out of your system as much as possible it works fine, just like incognito mode.
Stay safe. Stay sane. Keep blocking ads. (Score:3)
Ad blockers keep your computer safe from malware.
Ad blockers can save bandwith and computer resources.
Ad blockers keep your eyes safe from objectionable content, and content that can even cause some people physical harm.
YouTube's use of ads is unacceptable. A little while back an office place I was at told everyone to watch a training video on youtube. Over the next hour as people randomly starting the video, youtube forced everyone to listen to a very sick political advertisement over and over and over. Long story short, this caused some serious problems. But apparently nobody cares. Oh, and apparently nobody knows how to use "mute audio" on a computer any more.
Youtube does not deserve the privilege of advertising. They don't deserve your ears, eyeballs, or attention. It needs to DIE.
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Ivermectin is NOW listed as an safe and mildly effective drug for Covid-19
Care to cite this?
When I went looking:
No discernable effect [jamanetwork.com] - Feb 2023
Ineffective [kumc.edu]. "No measurable decrease" - Dec 2022
The main problem with youtube blocking is the usual thing - they hit innocent or compliant parties because they try to do everything via algorithm, so somebody giving a completely truthful summary of a study risks being treated the same as the nutters recommending horse ivermectin in doses well beyond safe for humans.
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Where is Ivernectin listed as a "safe and mildly effective drug for Covid-19"? The closest I can find (from a source that would previously said it wasn't) is "Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures. However, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans." and that goes
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Ah, that must be the video they uploaded to replace their 2012 era N95 mask effectiveness Q&A video that they removed 3 years ago.
One of the (many) nice things about Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
It's very simple to set things so cookies only last for the current session by default. I do this, then whitelist the few sites for which I find it convenient to allow persistent cookies. That, plus uBlock Origin, make for a decent browsing experience.
However I will say - no matter what browser you use, why go so far as to uninstall the ad blocker? You can set per-site rules for most of them. If you really want to watch YouTube ads, just whitelist that site.
Re:One of the (many) nice things about Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, FireFox user here too. As soon as I close FireFox all cookies are eaten. I have been doing this for years. When I set up FireFox and uBlock for people they can't believe that the web can exist without ads. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on the Internet, at least 10 to 15 years now.
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the internet is now YouTube? (Score:2)
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I'm amused at work (where nothing is blocked) and some of the sites I visit have ads on top of ads, three deep.
How the hell do people use the www without ad blockers?
Premium (Score:2)
I just got this email today from YouTube:
Thank you for being a YouTube Premium member. To continue delivering great service and features, we’re increasing your price to ARS 1,569.00 /month.
This is over double the previous price of ARS 699/month! Still a very good value.
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I'm guessing that ARS is Argentine pesos. I've no idea of the value of the currency, and I still disagree with "Still a very good value", I won't watch youtube even for free. (Now if they were paying you, the value of the currency would matter.)
I'd pay.... (Score:3)
if they stopped censoring channels that talk about current news events without having to walk on eggshells around certain words and phrases.
Adblock uninstalls (Score:3, Informative)
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That idea may be too complex for the average user. At least I see no other explanation that makes sense.
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They are uninstalling ineffective ad-blockers and then installing effective ones like uBlock Origin. YouTube is trying to put a spin on this making it appear that the only recourse you have is to uninstall your ad blocker. Have you tried using the Internet without an ad blocker? It's disgusting and vile.
Google established mandatory Javascript (Score:3)
Now they're banning ad-blocking. Making the internet a worse place seems to be their thing. "Be evil" - Google.
Still not seeing any ads (Score:3)
No idea whether that is because of my geolocation (Europe, so GDPR) or other factors.
And I will certainly not uninstall any ad-blockers. As long as ads are a primary malware vector, they stay blocked. As long as ads are annoying, they stay blocked. As to "premium", yes, I may actually pay for an ad-blocker if that becomes necessary. I occasionally donate to mine (ABP) at the moment already, because they are doing valuable work in keeping the web usable.
Have I ever bought or even looked at something advertised on the web? No. Have I sometimes made a point to not ever buy some product or from a company with a particularly disgusting or intrusive ad? Yes. I really do not know why ads are a business at all. Are the statistics just fundamentally broken or are there enough morons that buy stuff based on ads?
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Clueless (Score:2)
Completely uninstalling an ad blocker just over YouTube shows how clueless those users were. Any ad-blocker I've ever used allows you to pause / disable it for a website with just a click or two. That's bread and butter usage with an ad blocker.
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A lot of those people are probably just uninstalling the crappy ad blocker they *were* using, and then installing uBlock Origin, an ad blocker that actually works pretty well at blocking Youtube's ads. I'd be interested to know how many new users uBlock Origin added during this same period.
If YouTube is doing this now (Score:3)
If you want to see ad blocking come back you're going to have to see antitrust law enforcement come back and that means you're going to have to put people in charge of the legal system who enforce those laws instead of undermining them
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. And if you think these small ad blocker companies can keep up with Google's engineers... I don't know what to tell you.
I think they can. Google engineers used to be pretty good, but not so much anymore. I know a few people that left Google because engineering became fearful and opposed to any changes or experiments. At the same time, unless you start fitting ads with CAPTCHAs and stop playing videos unless people solve them, the actual functionality is in favor of ad-blocking. An ad cannot actually tell whether it is being shown, after all. Sure, this may mean some pre-loading or just blanking the ads, but that is still bet
What about ad muting? (Score:2)
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Are there any ad muters? They can't force us to listen to an ad.
Yes, thare are a few. I have "Mute Youtube ads" installed. ...badly... badly enough to cause firefox to hang.... I don
Does it work? Yes. sometimes the first couple of notes of theme music, or a single syllable is heard, but its followed by 15 to n seconds of silence before the actuall video's audio begins playing again. Some times, I don't hear any part of the ads. With NoScript and Ublock Origin also installed, sometimes videos will start playing, approx 2 seconds, before the first ad is blocked
Uninstalled completely or just replaced? (Score:2)
How many of these uninstalls due to failed youtube blocking resulted in not abandonment of adblocking in general, but rather a switch to a different adblocker that continues to shut down YT ads?
Myself, I've had no problem with ublock origin; every time I find an ad showing up I'm simply reminded to update the filters and the problem is already solved.
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I am now also using uBlock Origin, however I didn't uninstall AdBlock - I just disabled it for YouTube.
Premium can be a good value (Score:2)
There's a lot of content and channels on YouTube I like so combined with the music service it's a good value for me as a music subscription would cost me like $10-20 anyways. If I had to pick one streaming service it would be YTP, hands down.
Now if you only occasionally use it for linked videos and don't utilize it as a service then have to agree the ad experience is pretty infuriating at times and it's an integral part of the Internet now, bordering on a utility. If YouTube was more reasonable with their
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Has Youtube ever reported a profit to the IRS or SEC? I think the answer is 'no'. brb, going to google...i'm back and I wasn't able to find out because youtube is a division of alphabet and they only report revenue for youtube, not what it costs to run youtube...or google search sucks.
Haven't noticed yet (Score:2)
But if I'm ever looking for something on YouTube and it tells me to disable AdBlock... I click away.
I cut the cord almost 20 years ago, I'm not going back to 1/3 of my time watching ads.
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So... (Score:3)
Given their average monthly unique users is 2.7b, that's less than 0.02% of their userbase who were using adblockers dropped them.
Now, given the good adblockers have been keeping up with Youtube's shitfuckery quite well, and Youtube cannot detect them as running an adblock, that would tend to imply that a portion of that userbase who were using bad adblockers have converted over to using the good ones.
Youtube should be applauded for finally applying a filter that will push people to the better adblock solutions.
This is a disability accessibility issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of autistic people and folks with sensory differences use adblock to *survive* on the internet. And before people say 'oh why not pay 12 bucks a month,' fun fact, a lot of us are barely making ends meet as it is, and if we had to pay for an ad free experience on every website, we'd be functionally expelled from the internet.
Ads are disruptive, loud, unexpected, alarming, and massively dysregulating. When you're trying to listen to some calm music that is your special interest this week to be able to survive at work, having a sudden disruption to that absolutely wrecks everything. All that calm you were working to cultivate so you wouldn't spend 30 minutes in the bathroom just trying to center yourself is gone, and you're getting written up again. I wish I were joking, but shit can be this bad.
But google doesn't give a shit about people with disabilities. Instead of forcing advertisers to be more accessible and have more customization around how they affect people with sensory differences, they fuck over people with disabilities.
Invidious works fine for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahhh, who am I trying to kid? Ads are so intrusive & annoying anyway & take away my precious time that could be spent more enjoyably elsewhere! So, ad agencies, you've got us into the habit of blocking your ads because you've made them so annoying & so dodgy & we'll keep doing it whatever because we just don't trust you. What are you going to do now?
Alphabet outlet claims rise in adblock uninstalls. (Score:3)
If I had to chose between: a) blocking adverts on the internet at the inconvenience of giving up all Alphabet services and b) continuing to have the option to use all Alphabet services, but giving up blocking adverts on the internet? My choice isn't going to be b). No advertising giant will never address how they facilitate harm though bad actors paying for advertisements. "All advertisers are good bois. All adblockers are dirty mean freeloading pirates!"
The internet is damn near unusable without adblockers.
The claims of adblock unstalls are also... bizarre. What matters is adblock usage, not install or uninstall. I can't juke usage figures. Install figures? Through money on a stupidly large number of VPSs, install browers, install adblocks. Want uninstalls, slap a uninstall the adblock add-on into the script.
It's just money to make meaningless figures happen. I don't know what to conclude. Is it part of a propaganda effort to demotivate those working on adblock software? I don't doubt they would do it, I just don't know if that's what they are doing.
A chrome update also 'corrupted' my adblocker. (Score:3)
I tried with the ads on, but when there are 2 ads every 3 minutes during an hour long video I don't see how anyone can tolerate that much abuse.
More important than a Virus scanner. (Score:3)
In this day and age, I would argue that having a competent ad blocker is just as important, if not more important, than having a virus scanner.
99% of infections come from Website ad's. Period. End of story. We blocked ads at our companies' firewall and malware alerts from our antivirus system went from 5-10 a day to literally 1 every 3-6 months, and all of them being secure e-mail bombs that happened to escape our mail and URL filters. I get a call once a month for a "Call Microsoft" Scam vs 1 at least daily before the block.
Oh, but Web browsers block malicious ad's. Yes they do. And they are absolute trash as it. By the time they block a malicious URL, Half the world and dog has already been infected and every competent Adblocker was already blocking it in the first place. Every single one of the calls I have got from a "Call Microsoft" Scam has either come from the Microsoft Start Page in Edge, The Recommended By Pocket in Firefox, the or the Front page of Google Search. If they can't even keep their home pages clean, then why the hell would you trust them to keep your PC clean?
Also, you would think that the companies that serve ads would screen them, They Don't. Period. If they do anything it's a quick skim, the URL pops up a GIF or JPG and it's off to a million+ hit site to become a bomb within 20 minutes.
The absolute, dumbest, most "Pants on head Retarded" thing that ever happened to web ad's was allowing any form of active content. If in the off chance I ever went nuts and started to run an ad company, and was accepting ad's from a third party, I would only accept two things.
1) the GIF, JPG or WEBM of your ad, which would be screened for malicious things like timed frames or code injections and possibly re-encoded on the fly through a screener for maximum protection.
2) The URL that the ad goes to when you click on it (which would be only to a direct site such as whatevermysitenameis.com, not whatevermysitenameis.com/obfuscator/reallylongrandomcharacterssoyourscreenermissesthe/infectomaticscript?uniqueinfectionvectorID or absoluterandomcharacters.stupidTLD)
I would absolutely, never ever, EVER let anyone other then my company serve the ads to save on bandwidth or other stupid things. I'd save bandwidth by the re-encoding process and try to win on customer trust rather than profit maximization. This is exactly what Google did when they started their Adwords campaign back in the day when the world was full of noisy flash ads, popups and monkeys trying to get people to punch them for $20. No Pictures, Ad's were off to the side and easily identifiable and prices were equable to the point that everyone went with them. Now a Days, they might as well rename adwords to TreeLoot.
Ad's lost my trust when they started becoming less about adverting something and more about being an infection vector. There is no turning back. I will not risk my security (or my coworkers) because you need to make a buck or two, and if anyone in our company gets an infection from any site because YouTube coerced them into removing or disabling their adblocker you can be damn sure that there will be a lawsuit against Google for the malware cleanup cost afterwards.