Avoiding AdTube
October 29, 2023 9:02 PM   Subscribe

So I have been happily using YouTube with an adblocker in a browser window for years. It looks like they have finally sussed out that people do this and are now going to block video playback unless I disable the adblocker or subscribe to YouTube Premium. Do I have other options that do not require a VPN or am I stuck with AdTube?

The crackdown on adblocking software seems to have cropped up in the last few weeks, first with warnings that this is not kosher and won't I think of the poor advertising companies content creators and allow ads? Now it is giving me a countdown of how many more videos I get before they cut me off.

Most recommendations I can see online are about using an adblocker or a VPN. Given I use YouTube (for music) at work a lot, where I am not in control of the network, a VPN won't really help me out.

Suggestions? I am in Australia if that is in any way relevant.

Also if anyone has actually subscribed to YouTube Premium, does it work across multiple devices? Presumably you need to be signed in somehow. If I do wind up shelling out for it, I want to be able to use it on my phone as well.
posted by Athanassiel to Technology (34 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
I watch a lot of YouTube, and I have YouTube premium (in the US). It works on all devices: tablet, phone, tv, Apple TV, computers. Often you’ll get free months through some other subscription, or with a new device, or your ISP, or a credit card.
posted by supercres at 9:05 PM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]


I’m in Australia and pay for premium. I can use it with whatever device I’m on as long as I’m signed in. I also use family sharing to share the premium subscription with my husband with no issues.
posted by poxandplague at 9:27 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


uBlock Origin is in a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube right now. I started getting the ad-blocking messages also, but as of today they're gone. I assume my filter list got updated. If you're not using uBlock Origin as your adblocker I would suggest switching to it and see if you fare any better.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:35 PM on October 29, 2023 [10 favorites]


We do the YouTube Premium family membership, so that we can share it. It comes with YouTube Music, which is nice. I watch enough stuff on YT and I was sick of the cat-and-mouse game with adblockers, and figured... eh... it's a couple bucks a month more than Spotify Family; so I'll just use the included YT Music instead for music streaming... and so I figure that after dropping Spotify Family, for a net cost of a couple bucks a month, I get no ads on YouTube while still supporting creators, and I still get a music streaming service that covers my needs.

Everyone's math re: balancing subscriptions will be different, but for me, it made sense.
posted by xedrik at 9:42 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


Brave Browser on my iPhone (but not desktop) is still ad-free for me.
posted by danceswithlight at 9:48 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


uBlock Origin is in a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube right now.

Ditto this. It's been a hassle to have to keep updating filters & reloading the page, but it has been effective thus far.

I'm told another alternative that can work is incognito mode in a browser so long as you don't care about saved playlists, commenting, or having the browser save your place in the middle of a video.
posted by juv3nal at 9:58 PM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]


uBlock Origin (with auto filter list updates enabled, in Chrome on macOS) has been solid for me so far.
posted by ssg at 10:26 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]


with auto filter list updates enabled
It seems maybe by this point they've slowed down but there was a point where youtube was making multiple updates a day so the auto update wasn't frequent enough to keep up.
posted by juv3nal at 11:20 PM on October 29, 2023


My frustration is I have YT premium but I still get ads in embedded videos!
posted by freethefeet at 11:40 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]


I've been getting the YouTube "adblockers are bad" errors, but I haven't actually been able to get rid of them. I use uBlock Origin and some other privacy and anti-malware plug-ins, plus three layers of DNS-based ad blocking (local PC, network DNS - pihole - and private DNS service that forwards to Adguard). Just turning off uBlock for YouTube and refreshing didn't appear to be enough, and I wasn't going to purge cookies or anything annoying, so I gave up. I just use my PC to add things to my watchlist and I use my mobile devices or "smart" TV to watch stuff.
posted by krisjohn at 11:49 PM on October 29, 2023


I'm also in Australia and have been using uBlock Origin for a long time (Chrome on Mac). For a while and up until last week, I have been getting warnings that I am a bad person and need to turn off adblockers, then I got a final warning and couldn't play any videos until I disabled uBlock Origin. The ad videos were driving me nuts, but I now notice I only get one skippable ad at the start and it blocks the other ads again. Another move in the cat-and-mouse-game, I guess.
posted by dg at 12:01 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


this is really going to be one of the ones where the advice in this thread will be useless in probably even 2-6 months, because this is such a moving target.

But i will add, beyond ublock, the "youtube redux" extension has done a great job of killing it. As of yet, it hasn't failed me though and the worst i've dealt with is refreshing the page a couple times and it starts working great.
posted by emptythought at 12:51 AM on October 30, 2023 [4 favorites]


I run Firefox on PC with UBlock Origin, Ghostery and Facebook Container and the amount of advertising I see on any webpage is miniscule. So far I haven't even seen "adblockers are wrong" stuff on Youtube, nor do I see any ads. Youtube did stop working for me yesterday for a brief period of time (although direct links to subscribed channels seemed to work for some reason), but as of this morning everything seemed back to normal and stuff was loading just fine.
posted by ninazer0 at 1:22 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


Redirect youtube.com urls to invidious.io.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 1:39 AM on October 30, 2023 [7 favorites]


I subscribe to premium and use it on multiple devices. I use YouTube a lot, both for music and for things like cooking shows… ok it’s mostly cooking shows. But still, it’s one of the few media subscriptions I have and I have no problem paying it (while uBlocking ads everywhere else in my life).
posted by tubedogg at 1:57 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


Opera browser in incognito mode on Mac desktop gets round this for me.
posted by multivalent at 2:25 AM on October 30, 2023


I've been having the same issue. Using containers on Firefox means you can have persistent cookies associated with the container and so have positions on videos and history etc without ads. Similar to an incognito window but with more persistance of history. It's as simple as right click and open the link in whatever container you're using.
posted by deadwax at 3:30 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


Oh, and Newpipe on android instead of the YouTube app
posted by deadwax at 3:33 AM on October 30, 2023


I was having the same issue. I use Vivaldi and the built in ad blocker has worked a treat for months. Then last week it didn't, then a up date came for Vivaldi and worked again. Yesterday it stopped working again. Not sure what to do.
I'd get premium if it offered better bandwidth (? is that the word?), it sounds awful when connected to a good system.
posted by james33 at 3:42 AM on October 30, 2023


IgeBlock on Android seems to work so far, just not on PC.
posted by kschang at 4:25 AM on October 30, 2023


I have a premium family subscription. I originally got it for music streaming. The music app has some odd behavior (for example, if you shuffle a playlist, you get the same order every time), but overall it seems like an OK deal to me.

Obviously, there are youtube videos that have advertising as an integral part of the video, and neither premium nor an adblocker is going to do much about that.
posted by bfields at 5:50 AM on October 30, 2023


Best answer: I've been thinking about this problem too and decided to go with paying for premium. For context: I haven't experienced internet or videos with ads for over a decade and the occasional times I use someone else's browser and realize what the normal experience with ads is like these days I find it alarmingly overstimulating and can't concentrate! So I'm definitely not turning my ad blocker off on youtube.

So I've been looking through various forums for content producers, and the general consensus appears to be that producers get more revenue from views through premium than they do from ads. So if it's an ethical choice, I'm ok with paying up if it means some/more of the money goes to the people making the stuff I'm watching. ymmv.
posted by EllaEm at 7:22 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]


I've used both Newpipe and LibreTube on Android. They don't always work, but they're fine when they do. I'm using Invidious on all my devices a lot more. There's just too much nonsense going on with YouTube web pages. I've noticed that people get confused when I send them Invidious links; they don't know what it is. People really want that handful of really powerful tech companies to run everything for them. Sigh.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 7:23 AM on October 30, 2023


there are youtube videos that have advertising as an integral part of the video, and neither premium nor an adblocker is going to do much about that.

Incidentally, that's what SponsorBlock is for. It crowdsources data about segments of videos that are basically ads, and then skips over them.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:47 AM on October 30, 2023 [3 favorites]


Does anyone here use a Raspberry Pi-hole? I love the idea, but I broke all the USB ports on my RP 3+ by plugging game controllers into them many times and it is now essentially unusuable.
posted by sindark at 6:43 PM on October 30, 2023


Response by poster: Thanks everyone for your advice, I have tried uBlock Origin in Chrome and if it is enabled, YouTube won't let me view anything. I've checked and it's up to date with filters, so... YouTube redux extension had no effect on the "you are using an adblocker, no videos for you!" unless I turned off the adblocker, in which case - unsurprisingly - ads! The incognito window just gives me ads.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something.
posted by Athanassiel at 8:57 PM on October 30, 2023


I dunno, uBlock Origins works for me on Youtube.
posted by kschang at 9:40 PM on October 30, 2023


Best answer: Just in case you want to give ublock origin another go (like kschang, it works for me), the official recommendation is to disable all other extensions first (you can reenable them one by one afterwards to identify what might be causing the issue).
posted by juv3nal at 2:12 AM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]


I've heard that there's also a difference between which browser you use with your adblocker, at least for now. I use uBlock Origin with Firefox, and it still works; I've heard that it does not work any longer with Chrome.
posted by taltalim at 5:45 AM on October 31, 2023


FWIW, I'm on Chrome 118.0.5993.118 (Win 10 x64), uBlock Origin 1.52.2, with built in list (5x), EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware list, and Peter Lowe's list.
posted by kschang at 10:42 AM on October 31, 2023


Response by poster: juv3nal, that trick seems to have worked, thank you thank you!
posted by Athanassiel at 3:22 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]


This is only feasible if you tend to watch longish videos on Youtube, but you can use a video downloader to plug in the URL and download individual videos to your desktop to watch.
posted by fire, water, earth, air at 12:30 AM on November 1, 2023


I'll note that if uBO doesn't seem to be working even after doing an update, someone made this page to check the status of the latest uBO update versus the latest youtube script. I think the most I've seen is something like a 22 hour lag, but only the once. It's usually less, but it is run by volunteers so you get what you get.
posted by juv3nal at 1:24 AM on November 11, 2023


Strangely, I'm getting weird blocking results from... Reddit. I have UB active on Reddit and only today I'm getting some weird results like a white error page that asked if I was blocking my user-agent... Youtube is working fine for me.
posted by kschang at 8:14 PM on November 14, 2023


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