youtube getting more aggressive.. i've got firefox and ublock but this shit is still coming up
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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It's currently working, but every few days youtube will tweak something, and sometime later (minutes to hours) there will be an ublock update for it.
Sometimes you have to wait a little longer, but this is the arms race.
I find it funny that a company as big as Google is loosing to little ol uBlock
It's often far easier to attack than defend.
Google has to find and block every way, ublock just has to make a new way to bypass the blocks.
Classic mantra of cybersecurity. "We've up be right every time, they've to be right only once."
They're working on a final solution to the ad blocker problem. If they're successful in pushing their Web Environment Integrity API, there's nothing Firefox or ublock will be able to do.
EU as the final boss battle
What about piped like solutions hostux, invidious etc? How do they work? Is it through API? Can Google block it like reddit did theirs? Also if google is so concerned about ad blockers why do they allow those extensions in their Chrome store? I thinks its going to get really tough to get Youtube for free without ads. Eventually Youtube might become something like Netflix or something.
Piped/invidious work by scrapping the video chunks directly from google and proxying them through volunteer servers. They will stop working as soon as google gets around to locking down the APIs that they are abusing, or blocks their server IPs.
I'm not having any fun. How dare they! With all the evil virus attacks nowadays and most of them starting through online ads, using an adblocker is a matter of security. And it is my decision, not theirs. None of their business.
Especially funny since blocking ublock is illegal in the EU
Some arms races aren't what they appear to be: https://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-the-black-sunday-hack/
I might read the article later, but your thesis is right.
This isn't a arms race, it's also convenience race.
Is it more convenient for me to turn off ublock, or go through ublocks menus and update its filters? Do I dislike ads that much? Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But some people will turn off their adblock of choice, even if it technically still works if you update it. Their conversion rate of viewer to ad consumer will (probably) go up.
It's worth the read. I really only posted it because you have to respect the technical prowess involved. Also it's kind of funny.