They cannot kill Adblocks, because if they would — a lot of html5 embedded YouTube videos would be coming worthless and so would youtube (discord for example)

As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.

Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent

Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL

I did not always use an ad blocker. Frankly my stance is they've made their bed, now they get to lie down in it. If it wasn't for YouTubes ad quality being so poor I would have never bothered taking the 30 seconds it takes to install an adblock those 10 or so years ago

"Is your video not loading ? Check out why, you fucking ad dodging commie" is the feeling i got from youtube's newest message while my video was unexpectedly taking 10s to load

So here's what happened recently:

• I opened the Google News widget on my Android phone, saw a Sponsored link, and found it interesting
• Clicked on it, the link opened in Chrome, opening the googleadservices redirection thingummy
• Took over 5 seconds to process the redirect
• I exited the browser

Guess who missed ad money?

But of course, maybe they got the ad money and the only losers were:

• me, who didn't get to see the website that might actually have had something I wanted
• the website owner, who not only didn't get my business but also had to pay Google, because Google most probably processed the ad first and didn't care to process the redirect

I feel like I understand why they removed the "Do no evil" sign. Because now, they are messing with both, the product and the customers, only providing as much as is required to take their money, instead of the full, advertised service.

I have ublock, with sponsor block and some others, and don't have any issues on yt as of yet. Just in case though, how do I block an element and spoof a user agent?

Also interested in how you can do this.

YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for

That's the really annoying part.

I've been considering swapping to other services for a long time, but to follow the creators I want to follow I'd have to subscribe to Nebula and Floatplane and I'd still miss out on quite a few creators.

DVRs are back in 2025. Who would have thought?

Wait I can do it just for YouTube? Never occurred to me. I'll have to look into this

fixed it by blocking the element

Which one? That'd certainly help to know how to do that

oh i absolutely can blame them, because they made a choice.
either you take my money and respect my privacy, or you sell all of my data and won’t get my money.
however you can’t sell all of my data and take my money, nono, f u alphabet, that’s not how this works.

God damn American companies love fucking up everything for money!

YT's blocked on it.

Just tried it. It works.

How would one DIY HDCP stripping? I've never looked into this.

Been using revanced for months and haven't noticed a difference other than no ads or sponsors on bigger channels.

try to get a ssd from somewhere, that gives devices like yours a second life (and if you switch to linux it gets even smoother - sorry i couldn't resist)

Open PassDCP software is one method, or you can obtain a splitter that strips hdcp

“Do evil.” Google’s official new slogan.