YouTube Could Be Testing a Three-Strikes Policy For Ad Blocking (androidauthority.com) 205
Some YouTube users with ad blockers are seeing a new three-strikes popup menu while watching videos. "The popup menu in the screenshot suggests users will be barred from YouTube viewing after watching three videos with an ad blocker enabled," reports Android Authority. From the report: "It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback will be blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled," reads an excerpt of the screenshot. The service presents users with two buttons, prompting them to either allow ads in their ad blocker or letting them buy YouTube Premium. YouTube confirmed to The Verge that it's currently running "a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium."
They have me scared (Score:2)
Re: They have me scared (Score:3)
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Just use https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-d... [github.com]
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If they start detecting and blocking ad-blockers in the browser, what makes you think yt-dlp will continue to function? I'm sure it probably will, but it's not a sure thing.
Re: They have me scared (Score:4, Interesting)
what makes you think that a tool can't download the javascripts, download the ads, but discard them and show you the video anyway, tricking google that the ad was shown when you really bypassed it
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Exactly. If they make me go that route, then that's the route I'll go.
And if that turns out to be too much trouble or unworkable, then I guess I'll stop visiting Youtube. It's no life and death to me.
This is one battle they won't win, not with me at least.
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psst, if you use a chrome based browser, it is full of IDs, that permit that browser to access several google services ... they can block that.
hint: use a non chromium based browser
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>"hint: use a non chromium based browser"
Translation: "Use Firefox"
Since that is the only multiplatform non Chrom* browser left.
Re: They have me scared (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been doing so for years and have never seen the popups. Hell, I didn't even know they existed for so long that
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>"More like use palemoon."
I won't recommend that due to poor performance (it is not based on Quantum), lagging in security and compatibility, and no Android version. It is only going to get worse over time. At this point, there is no Addon I can't reasonably find for Firefox, and that was PM's only really compelling "feature." UserChrome can be used to tweak the UI of Firefox, although I admit it can be annoying to deal with and still don't understand why Mozilla has to be so UI-customization-hostile.
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poor performance (it is not based on Quantum),
Being multi-process just means bypassing per-process limits set by the OS. If anything it's a hack and completely dependent on OS scheduler behavior / the number of CPU cores you have. Assuming you have a decent web-site that isn't loaded down with megabytes of constantly running JS, palemoon works just fine. Where it does have problems is YouTube and other Google properties, but we've known for a while now that Google loves serving up different JS that intentionally slows things down if the web browser us
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Are you sure that Edge, for example, uses any Google services? Don't forget that Chromium is open source software.
Disclaimer: Of course, Microsoft services could prove to not be any better than Google ones (in other words, pot is probably not any blacker than the kettle, nor the vice versa).
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Get a grip.
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What 'rare stuff' are you talking about?
Rumble, and several other services, have been increasingly growing as YT demonetizes an increasingly large amount of content, nevermind banning it outright. There are many channels "dual homing" to try to avoid being completely deplatformed for "political" speech not approved by the regime, or simply having a channel topic which is judged "controversial".
Re:They have me scared (Score:4, Interesting)
to avoid being completely deplatformed for "political" speech not approved by the regime,
Yes, that can [imgur.com] be an issue [imgur.com].
Re:They have me scared (Score:4, Interesting)
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At this point I'd say an apt analogy...BUT, I hope your conclusion is wrong.
YT needs a viable competitor.....and right now, Rumble looks to be the only real candidate to do so...
It is growing and as another poster said, people are moving or at least dual posting to both....so, maybe.
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That's not how the GDPR's "right to erasure" works. If the entity holding your data still has a "legitimate interest" in processing the data which you previously consented to them collecting they're allowed to hold onto it even if you withdraw consent.
To take the point to absurdity: Imagine I check in to the presidential suite at the Hilton, run up a bill of thousands of euros, trash the place, and then scram without paying. I can't (successfully) send the Hilton a request that they delete the data indic
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As much as I enjoy watching some things on YouTube, they can bite me. I will continue to block ads until all work-arounds no longer work, and then they can just fuck off. It was fun while it lasted.
Re:They have me scared (Score:4, Informative)
I ended up paying because I started watching a lot of videos from my TV and the ads on the TV app were annoying as fuck.
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I would probably pay for YouTube premium if it cost a reasonable price, between 4-6 bucks, maybe even up to 8. But why does it cost as much as Netflix when YouTube crowdsources all of their content?
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect for many people who use adblockers youtube isn't that important to them to allow ads. I expect their small test will result in them not enforcing this policy. I feel they have the right to do this but I personally am so not interested in ads, and not interested in paying for most content on youtube, and I'll get the content I want directly from content creators on patreon.
Maybe I'm wrong and people will just watch the ads but it'll go the other way.
Re: Good luck (Score:3)
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4k downloader is probably just a wrapper for yt-dlp.
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Funny thing, my browser (Vivaldi) came with an ad-blocker that works nicely for YT and is default-on. I actually do not even know how to turn it off.
As to creators, those I like and watch regularly (not many) I support on patreon, so I do not feel guilty in any way.
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I control my network connection. My bandwidth is not unlimited even with an unlimited account. Anything that is funneled into a computer that was not explicitly asked for is a very real additional and avoidable security risk as well as a waste of my bandwidth. I will not allow ads on my machine for any reason. Every network that I control is a whitelist based system. I spend massive amounts of time tweaking my systems so that only the things that I legitimately need can function and everything else fails by
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough, but youtube also has the right to not show you something unless you agree to watch an ad. They cannot force you to watch something you don't want to, but you cannot force them to show you something they don't want to either. Just saying.
That said, the day I cannot watch with FreeTube, NewTube, or yt-dlp is the day I stop watching youtube. Most of my channels exist in other places including Odysee, so I'm sure I'll manage. Might even suddenly get productive doing useful things instead of watching youtube.
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Fair enough, but youtube also has the right to not show you something unless you agree to watch an ad.
A present legal right, certainly. But not a moral right. To me it feels somewhat unethical for Google to (a) purchase youtube (b) use their financial resources to subsidize it into becoming essentially the default video viewing platform (c) once they have captured all the content and users turn around and put onerous burdens on users to drive profit, when those users never would have given their patronage to youtube initially if the same policies had been in place. You can probably point to other video hos
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I'd get YouTube Premium if it wasn't ridiculously priced. It's more expensive than Netflix, and YouTube barely makes any content of its own. I don't even want the YouTube Originals or whatever it's called.
They should do a basic tier for say 5 bucks a month. No YouTube Music or Originals or anything else, just ad free core YouTube.
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Google won't care if you play the ad but don't watch it, if is played the advertiser will pay.
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Be careful what you wish for.... :P https://slashdot.org/story/06/... [slashdot.org]
Patents?? There is a prior art, though. Anthony Burgess invented it, and published it in the Clockwork Orange.
And build it up and build it up... (Score:3, Insightful)
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As a full-time creator all I know is that my ad revenues have been declining for quite some time now, as have those of others I know who are also full-timers.
The reality is that YT has created a *glut* of adspace on this platform and that pushes prices down.
I've been in the YTPP almost since it first started and although I get far more monetized views today than I used to back then I'm actually earning a tiny fraction the amount of ad revenue.
YouTube, for their part, are probably doing very well but they're
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Maybe we need a different type of ad blocker? One that downloads the ads and then "clicks" on all of them in the background, so, as far as the site is concerned, the user appears to have clicked on all ads. This should mess up the metrics enough for them to revert their decision on blocking. Also, such ad blocker should be harder to detect.
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The way you describe this is the kind of tug war that we've seen in other spaces. They tie things up, we circumvent, they tighten up even more, we circumvent even more.
My guess is this youtube ad war will go on indefinitely just like in those other places. Chances are we'll end up with some kind of unenforceable legislation like we have with movie torrents.
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The very last resort for me would be to play the video, record it to a video tape (or some other format) then watch it and fast forward though the ads.
Anyway, there should be a way to make the ad blocker undetectable. Load the ads in the background etc. I don't think Youtube can do too much about it - if they start requiring users to write short essays about the ad, well, there's chatGPT, but also it would really piss off the people who don't block ads.
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The way you describe this is the kind of tug war that we've seen in other spaces.
I imagine the next step in ad-blocking will involve local running AIs. There may be a point things will be based on the original site running in a browser in a VM, with an in-VM AI simulating a person using the computer normally to throw off server-side usage-based detection of real persons, then an AI agent outside the VM receiving the VM's video and audio output, plus information from the in-VM AI, interpreting all of it, cleaning the whole thing up, and presenting the real user the cleaned content.
And th
Well... (Score:2)
Maybe some people think Youtube is vital. I don't. Another place not to go.
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More money for EU (Score:2)
Please, force us to disable adblockers in EU...
Come on, the game's on.
Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that. I know many places adblock at the gateway for security reasons: they don't want their users clicking ads which lead who-knows-where. Anyone who wants to use youtube at work will either need to do it anonymously or through proxies, if this continues.
Maybe they shouldn't have bought a free service and tried to monetize it with both ads and a very expensive subscription model (which doesn't even exempt you from the ads).
Between the increased amount of partisan censorship on the platform over the past years, there are few reasons for me to go to youtube at all anymore.
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a very expensive subscription model (which doesn't even exempt you from the ads).
What? It does too exempt you from ads. And the price is very worthwhile for a family account IMO. I haven't seen a youtube ad in ages. Now some channels still do sponsorship BS directly in their videos, which isn't skipable... You know what would make youtube better? If they detected sponsorship segments and skip them for premium users.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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To me, ad blocking has ALWAYS been about security. I lived through the era of ActiveX, and know fully well how little companies really care about security.
I remember when PDF exploits were everywhere. There was an art web site that infamously permitted their ad partners to do stuff like that, even though they spent months telling the community that it wasn't happening.
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Seriously. The internet is the only medium I can think of where ads are 1) not necessarily delivered from the site publisher and/or 2) able to present a security threat via various vectors.
If you go to a website you are asking to be shown content hosted on that website, you aren't giving every other random site or 3rd, 4th, or 5th party ad farm that site decided to add to their code access to your machine. I remember cleaning up thousands of machines that were compromised by ads or other 3rd party crap site
Arms race? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "end game" is to use an inefficient* ad-blocker that looks like a normal web browser to the server, but replaces ads with dummy content or saves the content without ads locally.
By definition, this will be indistinguishable to the server from watching a video in a web browser.
* "inefficient" meaning the ads are actually downloaded in full.
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I'm confident I can find something to do for the 30 seconds or so it takes for it to complete. Refill my glass, go pee, stretch, respond to an email, pet the cat, etc
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Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's "take time watching black screen" or "take time watching ads" give me the black screen.
Unless the ads are "Superbowl-quality" of course - that's entertainment.
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Re:Arms race? (Score:5, Insightful)
On youtube ads take time to play. Are you going to sit there watching a black screen while you wait for the ad to finish running in the background every time you change videos?
Personally, I queue almost everything I watch on YT through the "watch later" playlist. I presume that it would be possible for someone to write an extension that pre-fetches from videos there in a way that's indistinguishable from watching ads. Not to mention, I usually look at at least a few of the comments for every video. They could pre-fetch while I'm doing that, as well.
The next step in the arms race: Goggle could start demanding that you correctly answer a quiz on the ad content before proceeding. Then someone would have to write an extension to feed the stream to an AI to complete the quizzes.
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Are you going to sit there watching a black screen while you wait for the ad to finish running in the background every time you change videos?
I'm already doing that. If I (rarely) have to watch a video on youtube, I scroll down the page to hide the ad and only the the yellow ad progress bar remains, and I do something else for as long as I can see a yellow bar.
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Haha, I'm now picturing an ad-swap program instead of adblock. With the purpose of providing 5-30 second clips of entertainment while it waits for the real ad to 'play'
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It would be preferable to watching an ad.
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Indeed. And it is not even hard to do. And they will definitely not survive if they start to require people to solve catchpas in the middle of videos or the like.
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By definition, this will be indistinguishable to the server from watching a video in a web browser.
At their turn of the arms race, they can decide to pause videos that are not on a foreground tab.
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At their turn of the arms race, they can decide to pause videos that are not on a foreground tab.
And how would they know they weren't the foreground tab, if the web-browser-impersonating ad-blocker lied and pretended to always be in the foreground?
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I thought browsers were already doing that. Part of the reason for moving to Google's new extensions platform was to ensure that extensions only have the privileges to hide ads from being displayed, but cannot block the traffic/scripts completely.
This is going to be great! (Score:3, Insightful)
No ads for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a strict zero ads policy. If I'm forced to watch ads on Youtube, I stop using Youtube.
I'm not going to let malware scumbags that constantly hack ad systems to even attempt to infect my box just so you can make $1 per year on the ads you show me.
And no, I'm not going to pay for Youtube Premium either. You make enough money selling my demographics and watching habits to the highest bidder to pay for my Youtube usage.
No tracking for me (Score:2)
I have a strict no-tracking policy - enforced from my end. Importantly, there's no selling of my behavioural data as a result.
The fact that most ads then don't get delivered is just incidental in my books. If they then choose to still deliver ads, which they don't, not based on my behaviour then I'd be okay with that.
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And no, I'm not going to pay for Youtube Premium either.
Especially since every content creator has 2 minutes of sponsor ads and tons of self-promotion. Even if you pay for YouTube, you'll still be bombarded with crap anyway.
I watch only a fraction as much YouTube as I used to years ago, and I never "surf" anymore. I only watch small hobby channels I trust.
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I don't care about those, a few presses of the right arrow key makes it go away.
Let the arms race begin (Score:2)
Quite frankly, this is going to be ridiculous. Before I let YouTube interrupt my videos every other second with yet another ridiculous bullshit ad, I just stop using it.
I'll miss Youtube if they implement this (Score:2)
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>"but I will be regaining a lot of my life from watching those addictive cat videos."
I was just thinking that myself. I waste too much time on there anyway.
I, like others here, have a zero tolerance for ads. I will not use anything that FORCES me to watch or read something I don't want to watch or read. If YouTube had ads I could right-arrow through, like I can with content-embedded ads, that would be fine. But they don't, they are "unskippable" (forced) content, so I find that unacceptable.
And yes,
Sorry if I sound like an addict... (Score:2)
But my god, please kick my ad blocking ass out. Neither of us will be sorry to see me go.
Allowlisted? (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean...whitelisted, ya potbrownie-eating woketards?
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You've been bitchlisted.
In the march of history, you're next in line (Score:2)
> Sshh, there there. The scary whooshing sound is just history passing you by. It'll be gone soon. (That sad burning feeling is irrelevance. I'm afraid you're stuck wit
Nobody believes this stupid meme you guys started saying that your positions will inevitably win, because if anyone spends even 2 seconds thinking about your theory that moral progress will constantly advance, they'll realize that this advance implies that you will inevitably eventually be seen as the future equivalent of baby eating monst
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The tastes and demands of ree rees in the most neurotic sector of the American public are not indicative of history anything, which contrary to morons like yourself has no inherent arc.
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I'd instead suggest it probably does have an arc, but that's not a good thing. Every iota of progress is accompanied by at least the same movement downward. "Rise and Fall" are cliched words in history. Every time someone thinks the rules of the world have changed, they are reminded that they haven't most directly. A dark age or something like WWI are the inevitable results.
For example, a couple years ago, the UBI bugs were thinking they'd cracked the code on mass transfer payments not causing inflation
YT can only count strikes if the user is logged in (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, don't log in to watch Youtube videos.
Reminder: you can enjoy ad-free anonymous Youtube with local subscriptions and playlists (local as in, your local computer knows which channels you subscribe to and which videos you like, but Google doesn't) using the following clients:
- Android: NewPipe [newpipe.net] - or better, NewPipe x SponsorBlock [izzysoft.de]
- Linux, Win, Mac: FreeTube [freetubeapp.io] (FreeTube features SponsorBlock out of the box)
Better: those two clients have very similar interfaces and are interoperable, i.e. you can import subscriptions exported by NewPipe in FreeTube.
There ya go. You need never hit the Youtube website or use the Youtube app and suffer Google ever again.
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Nice! Currently I still know which channels I watch, but should that ever not be the case then FreeTube is probably it.
YouTube has ads? (Score:2)
It's not ads, it's tracking (Score:3)
I don't like ads, but I understand that they have to pay for content, so I don't use ad blockers, don't have any installed.
What burns me is the sites that tell me to turn off my ad blockers - which I know I don't have. When you dig just a little deeper, what they really want is to track me. I've DO have stuff installed to prevent tracking, and I'm not about to remove that stuff or turn if off. I have tried to give site feedback about this, but they won't let you to the site feedback page without allowing tracking.
They lose my eyeballs. I turn away, go somewhere else.
The other big burn is that one of the sites that has done this is "alternet.org", which should be a site that understands not wanting to be tracked - yet they, or their advertisers, are insisting on it.
By my observations, youtube isn't doing this. They serve me ads and don't trip the tracking stuff. When it lets me skip, I do. Sometimes I end up watching ads, or let them run while my eyeballs are elsewhere.
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>"I don't like ads, but I understand that they have to pay for content, so I don't use ad blockers, don't have any installed."
You are far more tolerant than I am.
I, too, understand the need for ads. But I don't understand the need to FORCE the content. If it just played as part of the video and I could right-arrow through them like any other part of the video (like I can on my DVR), no prob. And yes, sometimes I even watch ads that look interesting. But that isn't good enough for them so I am left wi
Invidious is another option (Score:2)
https://piped.video/ [piped.video] or install it on your own server
Let me login to YouTube separately from Gmail (Score:2)
Honestly I would have been fine paying for YouTube premium a while ago, except that other than my cellphone and laptop I don't really want to be logging into the same account as my all important Gmail and Drive. Some devices like a smart TV using the dedicated app can be logged into with a system that I assume is generating a YouTube-only token, but there is at least one laptop I would like to be logged in with that I don't want to have access to my personal email at all.
Give me the ability to have a YouTub
Ads Are Deal Breakers (Score:2)
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Plus, there are other services like Odysee and Playeur that offer a lot of the same content that YouTube offers. If they get too obnoxious with the ad blocker blocking, people will start going to the other streaming sites instead.
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>"If I wanted to have ads, I'd have a TV set in the house. I don't and I don't."
I have never been without TV. It is made tolerable by using TiVos for decades. I don't mind there being ads in video, as long as I can choose to FF through them, like I can with anything else in a video I choose not to see.
Testing on me as well (Score:2)
Yesterday I got served up static ads (no video) that could be skipped instantly with the button on Youtube. I think at least 3 pageloads in a row. (This is with Adblock Plus enabled, obviously. For people who aren't familiar, that usually means no ads.)
I've noticed they've tested the same thing on occasion, periodically, for years. But never more than 1 pageload in a row, for me. So it looks like they are ramping up the testing significantly now. They may actually be getting ready to make a change.
By the wa
No way (Score:2)
Youtube isn't worth it.
Oh no! The big bad wolf (Score:2)
The big bad wolf is huffing and puffing. My house is made of bricks. I could care less. There will ALWAYS be a way to view content without the need to view the shit filled ads. If marketing companies hadn't acted like such psycho ass-hats in the past on the Internet I may not have the complete and total negative attitude I have toward them now. Pop-up, pop-under, pop-over, auto-play, etc.. You lost my eyeballs years ago. Ad-Block for the win!
Nice! (Score:3)
Price (Score:2)
Price for youtube premium is the biggest issue. I could live with paying 2€/month for not having ads for me and my family members, but 18€, which is about the same price as both amazon prime video and audio and the highest netflix subscription together is a big no no.
Good (Score:2)
This is exactly what Youtube needs.
Fewer people actually watching Youtube!
Ad blockers are an important part of personal security and privacy. Any site that tries to block you for using an ad blocker is NOT a safe site to visit!
Ads Are Getting Worse - Therefore Ad Blockers (Score:2)
Youtube ads are getting worse and more annoying, breaking into the middle of programs now. The ad content also sucks and is usually stuff I'm not interested in and don't want to hear about. We should be able to give immediate feedback on the sponsor, the ad, and the product. I don't mind watching good ads, but they are rare.
I would be ok with static image ads. Now they have mostly flashing video ads intended to distract you.
Web pages of some sites with good content are so filled with ads that they are o
Goodbye YouTube (Score:2)
Twitter, Reddit, and now Youtube. (Score:2)
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Well, here in Europe this is still called a "whitelist" and nobody has any problem with it. In fact I did need a second to even understand what an "allowlist" is supposed to be.
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To be fair, some TV stations also do it that way nowadays, and it's extremely annoying.