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YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround

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  • Have you noticed uBlock Origin being a bit hit and miss on YouTube lately? I’ve had it happen a few times lately where the video won’t play, or an ad comes up but doesn’t play. I’ve had to keep refreshing until it gets to normal where it just plays the damn video.

    I sometimes get a popup warning from YouTube that my account will be blocked from viewing videos if I keep running an ad blocker. But the warning goes away after a while and YouTube still works. I don't see ads except on mobile.

    Oddly, they also keep begging me to "return" to YouTube Premium, though I have never paid for YouTube Premium.

  • I think you stopped scrolling too early

    That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    They even link to what I assume is that process.

    But...

    It costs the same as Spotify

    I used Google Play music and it was awesome, when it shuttered I tried Spotify and didn't like it.

    YouTube premium is worth it just for music on your phone/car, getting YouTube ad free is kind of just a bonus. But there's a couple podcasts I watch on there, and I've found a couple really good channels for all the crazy science stuff that's been happening. Not to mention a lot of UK shows upload full episodes, and there's more than one account that somehow uploads full runs of shows after being upscaled to 4k.

    I really don't understand why so many people are against YouTube premium. It makes sense if someone just pirates all their other media. But people pay for a music streamer and a couple TV streamers.... It seems like an arbitrary line.

    Edit:

    The article is from "toms guide" not "toms hardware".

    The guide has every article like this where it reads like paid advertising. The "hardware" one is a good resource.

    But yeah, pretty much anything from "tomsguide" is going to read like paid advertising for something. I legit don't know if they're affiliated or it's a ripoff site built to confuse people with the "hardware" site.

    People on Lemmy might be more likely to be trying to do things like de-google in general, or try to cutdown on account based usage for big corporations.

    So not really want to give Google their payment information for YouTube and sign in to use YouTube.

  • "If your adblock doesn't work, a workaround is to pay for YouTube Premium"

    AW NO I HADN'T FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT

    Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

  • Or even better, Librewolf.

    Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER?
    In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?

  • Three out of four of the paragraphs in the article's solution were spent convincing people of the benefits to buying premium. Still feels like an ad despite the tiny mention of uBlock Origin at the very bottom.

    I do agree that Youtube, premium isn't bad value. But I refuse to support google or youtube directly with my money. If I ever want to support a creator, I can throw them a couple dollars on patreon and help them far more than buying premium ever would have.

    Yeah, the site is pretty garbage and every article reads like an ad.

    "Tom's hardware" is still an amazing resource, but "Tom's guide" is so shit I can't tell if it's a ripoff site or just how they find the good one. Especially since the sites look the same, just different background color.

    I'm used to it now so I didn't mention that, but for people who don't know about the site it makes sense why they were thrown off.

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    Adguard still works too

  • Maybe it is a regional thing? I was watching YouTube 30 mins ago with no issues and haven't ever had any unless I open a new tab but don't try to watch until the next day. Then I just need to refresh and it is off to the races.

    Work PC and I have to use edge there with Ghostery (ugh). Was trying to find a decent coding tutorial. Every page load of a video was a playback error that instantly vanished when I hit reload. No problems on FF with uBO today, though.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    I don't care what YouTube's costs are, I don't want to pay. I'll leave that to people like you.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    For my wife and I, whose main background noise/entertainment is Let's Play style videos on YouTube (Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, RTGame and such), paying for premium just makes sense. Like you said, we can and should criticize them for how they handle things, but everyone making a fuss about premium existing just makes no sense.

  • Sadly i have to stop using it. Librewolf has start getting some graphic bug, i also can't upload pictures to some website (it show just lines). Now i'm trying Floorp.

    This is caused by not allowing the website to access your html canvas data. You can fix this in the address bar by clicking the icon on the left of the URL to grant permissions.

  • Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER?
    In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?

    Yes. I consider it better because it's preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla's telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.

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    That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    Or..... You could just ditch Chrome altogether!

    I don't know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It's a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.

    I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that's become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don't even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.

    And if you don't want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.

    All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).

    Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.

  • I think you stopped scrolling too early

    That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

    They even link to what I assume is that process.

    But...

    It costs the same as Spotify

    I used Google Play music and it was awesome, when it shuttered I tried Spotify and didn't like it.

    YouTube premium is worth it just for music on your phone/car, getting YouTube ad free is kind of just a bonus. But there's a couple podcasts I watch on there, and I've found a couple really good channels for all the crazy science stuff that's been happening. Not to mention a lot of UK shows upload full episodes, and there's more than one account that somehow uploads full runs of shows after being upscaled to 4k.

    I really don't understand why so many people are against YouTube premium. It makes sense if someone just pirates all their other media. But people pay for a music streamer and a couple TV streamers.... It seems like an arbitrary line.

    Edit:

    The article is from "toms guide" not "toms hardware".

    The guide has every article like this where it reads like paid advertising. The "hardware" one is a good resource.

    But yeah, pretty much anything from "tomsguide" is going to read like paid advertising for something. I legit don't know if they're affiliated or it's a ripoff site built to confuse people with the "hardware" site.

    I read that. But the way the article is written suggests that the workaround they're implying is to buy YouTube premium.
    I am not per se against YT premium, after all its normal business to take money and serve a product, but what my biggest cons are

    1. The price
    2. I already use all of the mentioned premium features and more but for free

    For example:
    YT music -> ReVanced (background play, no ads)
    YT App -> ReVanced (no ads, Sponsorblock, no shorts)
    YT on browser -> Extensions (uBlock, Sponsorblock, block yt shorts)

    If I were to pay for premium and use the regular app, I would lose that functionality and 130€ per year. This money would support a company whose business model involves extensive collection of personal data, which is then sold to third parties, effectively contributing to the global surveillance infrastructure.

    I would rather not use YouTube than pay for it.

  • I am willing to completely ditch YouTube and not access it, but there are a couple of channels that just aren't anywhere else that I do enjoy watching.

    Currently, I use RSS feeds in order to stay up to date with their videos, and I use new pipe to actually watch the videos, but still, it's annoying. I would like to stop using them and cannot. I feel as though I'm being held hostage.

    I have this running on a local server: https://github.com/alexta69/metube

    It’s a frontend for yt-dlp and whenever I want to watch something I just download it and have a copy saved locally. It makes it harder to binge youtube feeds that the algorithm tries to shove down my throat, and that’s a good thing.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don't or can't block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn't deserve our money for Premium.

    Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads... how long did that last?

  • Yes. I consider it better because it's preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla's telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.

    I'm more worried about the updates not happening in a timely fashion. Is it just a passion project by a handful of devs, or is there some kind of funding?

  • I don't care what YouTube's costs are, I don't want to pay. I'll leave that to people like you.

    I care about making google lose money. They deserve it. I will only make accounts on big tech just to abuse them.

    All of big tech deserves to be bankrupt, convince me otherwise.

    They only care about money. No ethics, no rights, no environment, just money. And money IS NOT more important than ethics, rights, etc.

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    Sure, if paying them ment that they also didn't data mine the shit out of you and sold it to 3rd parties...but no they insist on double-dipping so they can get fucked.

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    Everyone breaking the website so they can watch gigabytes of content without ads or subscription: You're not allowed to break things just because you disagree with the other party! You should find an amicable alternative!

  • Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.

    I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.

    I don't watch enough YouTube to make premium worth it. If they had a lower tier with a cap on ad-free watch time, I probably would pay.

  • 12 Stimmen
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    This has nothing to do with training a GPT or model. It’s a point form guide to using the Custom GPT feature in the ChatGPT app. It’s really mostly just “write a prompt and upload pdfs”
  • Does anyone remember Webdog??

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    Nothing. What’s up with you?
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    They don't have to be decided at all. That's why it's smart to avoid them.
  • Google failed to warn 10 million of Turkey earthquake severity

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    Yeah, I get "severe weather" notifications on my phone, even when the storm isn't super concerning (and certainly not in my area). I do make decisions based on that, and I get plenty of notice. None of this is sourced from Google, it's purely our government's notification system.
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    They didn't ask what the comic was, they asked "but why not both?". It can be both unethical and a lesson
  • Apple acquires RAC7, its first-ever video game studio

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    I'm not questioning whether or not the game is good, just wondering why Apple would want to limit their customer base so much.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
  • Microsoft's AI Secretly Copying All Your Private Messages

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    Forgive me for not explaining better. Here are the terms potentially needing explanation. Provisioning in this case is initial system setup, the kind of stuff you would do manually after a fresh install, but usually implies a regimented and repeatable process. Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots are like a save state in a game, and are often used to reset a virtual machine to a particular known-working condition. Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka ‘network boot’) is a network adapter feature that lets you boot a physical machine from a hosted network image rather than the usual installation on locally attached storage. It’s probably tucked away in your BIOS settings, but many computers have the feature since it’s a common requirement in commercial deployments. As with the VM snapshot described above, a PXE image is typically a known-working state that resets on each boot. Non-virtualized means not using hardware virtualization, and I meant specifically not running inside a virtual machine. Local-only means without a network or just not booting from a network-hosted image. Telemetry refers to data collecting functionality. Most software has it. Windows has a lot. Telemetry isn’t necessarily bad since it can, for example, help reveal and resolve bugs and usability problems, but it is easily (and has often been) abused by data-hungry corporations like MS, so disabling it is an advisable precaution. MS = Microsoft OSS = Open Source Software Group policies are administrative settings in Windows that control standards (for stuff like security, power management, licensing, file system and settings access, etc.) for user groups on a machine or network. Most users stick with the defaults but you can edit these yourself for a greater degree of control. Docker lets you run software inside “containers” to isolate them from the rest of the environment, exposing and/or virtualizing just the resources they need to run, and Compose is a related tool for defining one or more of these containers, how they interact, etc. To my knowledge there is no one-to-one equivalent for Windows. Obviously, many of these concepts relate to IT work, as are the use-cases I had in mind, but the software is simple enough for the average user if you just pick one of the premade playbooks. (The Atlas playbook is popular among gamers, for example.) Edit: added explanations for docker and telemetry