> Firefox will wait for uBO to be ready before sending network requests from already opened tab(s) at browser launch.
> In Chromium-based browsers, this is not the case. Tracker/advertisement payloads may find their way into already opened tabs before uBO is ready, while Firefox will properly filter these.
That’s a hell of a “bug” in Chromium, that blocker initialization has a race condition with restoring the last opened tabs. What a weird little “accident” that Chromium just moves forward and loads all the trackers, “oopsie”. I wonder which kind of promotion the engineer who made that “mistake” has been awarded.
My workaround is to use Tor. That sails right through.
Excellent job. My tax dollars at work.
Maybe it's lacking a setting to toggle this (Suspend all network until lists are loaded doesn't control this behavior), but I wouldn't want to load pages full of ads on mobile simply because the app got killed.
The real issue for me is my phone killing applications when it has both battery and memory available.
Lately, I've noticed Chrome being really aggressive about this.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/chrome-110-will-auto...
Edit:
Yeah, disabling prefetch:
> This will ensure no TCP connection is opened at all for blocked requests: It's for your own protection privacy-wise.
uBlock holds itself (ideally) to a higher standard than not executing js or hiding an element, it tries to prevent the network connections from even taking place. This is for browser prefetching that happens on many pages even after the environment and extensions are fully loaded, in many different contexts, to speed up requests by having the binary payload of the response already available in cache before it is needed.
This "bug" is in Safari/Webkit too, stop it with the conspiracy theory.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-se...
I figure it's a good time to kick a bad habit. :D
As a consequence, my time spent on the site is way down, and the time I do spend is higher quality material.
But I'm with you. There's no way I'm watching an ad on YT. If they figure out how to only stream with unblockable ads, I will never visit the site again.
Patreon to pay the creators.
That's their goal. If you're not earning them money, they don't want you. You don't exist to them and you not watching their ads/videos is no threat at all.
For me, I've found DeArrow (clickbait "blocker") has had exactly the same effect. I find myself no longer mindlessly scrolling through the suggested feed and am more particular about what I choose to watch.
Used to visit YouTube’s front page as part of my daily routine, effectively using it as a social media site - which it definitely is; it’s just that the posts are all videos, the comment section is like every other but moderated by the video poster, and the front page is completely algorithm driven.
I use this strategy on a lot of sites (which sadly includes stackoverflow lately).
My parents both have been targeted and had to instruct them on how to refresh the quick updates, which has not been easy.
However, YT premium is only 2-3 USD/mo in India. So, I use that to get ad-free experience on YT and also YT music is great.
I like that they at least offer an alternative for the ad viewing part through Youtube premium. I don't know about the US as streaming services seem to have catalogues orders of magnitude more extensive than over here in Europe, but compared to the likes of Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+ and several local offerings, YT Premium is a steal in terms of value proposition.
And like most here I fail to understand how anyone can stand YT with ads.
You wiil seriously start to dislike the podcasts for speaking in video ads though.
How much could they possibly make from ads in a given month off a single user. Best case scenario with a user that watches YouTube like 4 hours a day 6 days a week and clicks through once every week. $4? Probably not even that. And yet somehow YouTube premium needs to be almost $230 a year for apple users?
I bet they’d make way more with a lower premium tier that just removed ads and had no other premium features for like $20/year. Wouldn’t make as much obviously but I bet they’d do way more volume. I wonder if they have some dipshit mba arguing against something like this because it “makes them seem cheap” or “delegitimizes the platform against more traditional streaming networks” or some nonsense to justify charging Hulu prices for YouTube content
I think it's egregious how YouTube treats content creators in general and how expect us to foot the content distribution bills in particular, especially since many of the video themselves are ads (they include product placement, or are straight up teasers for products)
I think there's a case to be made at least for non indies to pay proportionally to the minute viewed of their content, to decrease the pressure on monetizing indies.
If they were not Google, I'd be ready to pay about 10 euro/m.
Since it's Google, they can rot in hell for all I care. I'll happily freeload them as most as I can.
I don't care, I still won't watch ads, and if I pay for something, I want to pay for something for that does actively track my watching habits and sell my data, so they are out of luck.
I'd gladly pay for Youtube sans ads, but not if google also gets to steal my data.
Maybe YouTube isn't the bad habit, but how (metaphorical) you use it?
If you are using Firefox you can open it in a container that is not logged into YouTube no ?
For the information that only seems to be available on YouTube I use Invidious.
But if it came between choosing between uBlock and anything? I choose uBlock!
What do they gain from the 5-10% of users consuming videos but offering no salable data in return? It's a direct hit to the bottom line from a minority who would rather stop using the service than be converted to impressions. Good riddance
Frankly, banning ad-blockers feels like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. There is something wrong with your platform if people hate your ads so much that if they can’t block them they would rather not visit your site at all.
If they stop bundling Music, and possibly lower the cost of YT Premium, it might convert better.
All in all I see it as a net positive.
Even SEO spam is dealt with with uBlocklist, so that the main offenders are gone. I forgot about Pinterest and all the Stackoverflow clones.
Then I use my iPad in a pinch and remember that most people are used to a much louder, annoying web. I can't believe that people use Medium without an ad blocker.
I wonder if people notice that this website is much quieter, or just enjoy it more on a subconscious level. I like to think that it's a competitive advantage.
We use Confluence to do document reviews at work, and sitting there attempting to read a document while Confluence is popping up that annoying dialogue box over and over again as people comment on the doc is insanely annoying. With uBlock Origin I was able to (after a few false attempts) sniff the specific element and filter it out.
All I had to do was manually trigger an update for uBlock Origin's filter lists then restart firefox.
The filter lists update automatically, but a new youtube change got around them and the filter had a fix inside an hour (too short a time for my extension to auto-update it's filter lists).
This is different to other ads, which is a crowdsourced list of filters, and isn't on a small or single individual to keep up. There must be a better way to utilize the crowd to make it work.
If UBO stops working, I'll use newpipe, if that stops working I'll use yt-dlp and if that stops working I'll use whatever else people have come up with, and if nobody has anything that gets rid of the ads I'll just stop watching youtube.
I don't see that happening though. As long as we have computers that still work for us, I doubt google will come up with a way to stop ad blocking entirely. Maybe we'll have youtube re-release groups that manually edit out the ads and re-upload videos from popular channels to P2P sites. Maybe we'll get AI that can download videos and edit out the ads for us. We'll figure something out.
Don’t underestimate what open source can and will do just to spite things they despise
If I could get the uMatrix "skin" on top of uBlock Origin that would be great.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17kw0vc/ubloc... has the usual “it hasn’t completed review yet” guidances as well how to rush ahead of the app stores for those that are impatient.
I know youtube does but I didnt know Chrome does.
News at 11.
Recommended extensions undergo full code review by staff security experts to provide a strong additional security check.
[1] - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/extensions-addo...
uBlock Origin – Wiki : https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki
``` www.linkedin.com##.relative:has-text(/excited to/i)```
between that, blocking images, and user taglines my feed is much more concise and readable.
I probably should see if someone has a linkedin script to remove non-1st connection content.
For instance, I use it to switch HackerNews to dark mode, and restrict the width of comments to about 10-12 words: https://gist.github.com/aclarknexient/c39c83f2f97c3c6b1c307c...
It's a great alternative to GreaseMonkey or other user style extensions.
I tweaked it a tiny bit since overscroll on FF on osx was showing as white, figured I'd share it back. It's not perfect, but the BG color differences are close enough to not bother me.
! Invert the colours of the site, making a dark mode that I like
! `invert(95%)` does most of the work,
! but you can tweak the hue-rotate value to fine tune the colours
news.ycombinator.com##body:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white)
news.ycombinator.com##html:style(background: black)`No good deed goes unpunished.
In general, I view Reddit as a complete cesspool; I'm not really sure what any sub there really needs to exist. Most OSS projects get along just fine without it (in fact, I've never heard of one that used it).
I mean, it sucks that abusive users are out there, but it is Reddit after all. For communications with users, I think the old-style method of having Bugzilla and requiring an account to file bugs is probably the best.
We should also not forget to give accolades to the heroic people who tirelessly maintain the filter lists.
I have since cut my youtube viewing by about 50-80% and am not using Chrome anymore (except for testing/security). Great success Google and thanks for all the idiotic brainwashing content.
I do get that youtube needs to make money somehow and adds are the way. Unfortunately the experienc is so bad, perormance is suffering etc. that I'd rather have no youtube than youtube with adds.
- Ublock (still works for me, maybe it's a Firefox thing) - News feed eradictor (hides reccomended vids) - Pocket tube (how subscription management should have been) - Sponsorblock (auto skip sponsors which are typically gambling or predatory games)
I couldn't think of how horrible the web browsing experience would be without uBlock Origin
Since Firefox is not owned by Google, uBlock still works.
If the browser just does block ad-blocking on YouTube. If I would be hosting a video platform, can I add my site to the list?
Context - I've used UBO on Google Chrome in the past and now using Brave browser for the last few years. I don't see much difference how web feels with UBO and Brave.
> But if you choose to see Brave Ads, you can earn.
And the Basic Attention Token concept is something I hope takes off since the current state of online advertising is pretty abysmal.
uMatrix has completely changed how I use and experience the web, and going away from it (even to uBO) is such a big downgrade that I don't know what I'll do on the day it stops working D-:
If it's true that YT is actively trying to avoid ad blockers then I guess I may have been pushed down their priority list because I occasionally run a video or two while logged in on my phone via official app where ads actually run.
The same should be applied to that cookie non-sense. Default: no cookies and website should ask for permission to enable them. Or make it an option in the browser setting to reject all cookies.