I mean, Firefox + uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock makes YouTube usable without giving Google more money
To my knowledge, sponsors do not give money to Google, just to the creator. So SponsorBlock isn’t needed.
But I have to admit that some sponsored segments can be obnoxious as hell, so I can understand why one would use it.When I’m using sponsorblock, I sometimes just stop watching if I see a long sponsor section, regardless. If the poster has like 20% of their video used to talk about shilling something, then they’re probably not someone I trust.
Ah, yes, you’re right. If the focus is just on not giving money to Google then SponsorBlock is unnecessary.
However, I also find most sponsored segments obnoxious as hell so SponsorBlock still helps with making the YouTube experience better in general
“I’ve found a workaround”
Workaround (according to article): “First of all, YouTube Premium”
The actual workaround (according to article): “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”
Seems like they are being paid by Google. Actual workaround should be to drop Chrome.
Imagine using Adblock/Adblock plus in 2025.
Just stick with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
Especially since Adblock Plus take payment to whitelist adverts.
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?
This is what makes Librewolf better.
I got a question in my head just now.
DNS sinkhole doesnt help with youtube ads but UBO does. DNS doesn’t help with twitch ads and neither UBO does. Why is that youtube doesn’t do the same what twitch does?
On a side note, my ads on twitch are basically “ad is in progress” screen and not an actual ad. And lately YT has couple of seconds with no video in the beginning as if it loads (1Gbit connection) but eventually loads up and plays with no interruptions after.
I don’t work on uBlock or even webdev but it doesn’t take much of a stretch to think YouTube’s servers will refuse to immediately transmit a video stream after the webpage is requested; probably waiting for a typical user to skip 2 30-sec ads.
Tom’s Hardware, Ad Block Plus, paying for YouTube Premium as a “work around”?
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
No, author of this article, paying for premium is not a workaround.
People still use Ad Block Plus? Didn’t it start allowing sponsored ads like 10 or 15 years ago?
Hence the part “nobody noticed” in the headline
“If your adblock doesn’t work, a workaround is to pay for YouTube Premium”
AW NO I HADN’T FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT
lol chrome
I hate when they say paying the premium is a “solution”. It’s worse. That’s why nobody is doing it.
Stop using Adblock Plus and start using Firefox with uBlock Origin.
If you’re on iOS, swallow your pride and install Brave and just turn off the crypto features. You’ll thank me later.
Stop using youtube and start using peertube. WE DONT FUCKING NEED GOOGLE!
WE DONT FUCKING NEED GOOGLE!
Unless you make extremely popular video with hundred thousands views in the first day, in which case, yeah, good luck with peertube.
That does not apply to most people. Also, peertube is really getting better recently.
It’s not a matter of “getting better”. It’s a matter of having the bandwidth. You can’t serve a video to ten of thousands of people from one or two servers. And you can’t do it with P2P at that scale either. There’s nothing technical to do about that; it’s basically a physic limitation. To address that you’d have to publish your video in dozens or hundreds of servers beforehand, and the system have to handle load balancing and source lookup efficiently. Basically, work as a full CDN. And that’s expensive to do. The reason youtube can do that is not that they have wonderful, almost magical software running on their servers, it’s that they have a lot of them.
And, sure, it doesn’t apply to most people. Which is irrelevant; most people are not what are driving the masses. One large enough youtuber going peertube would give it more visibility than thousands of individual people. That’s the reason people are still using youtube; because people go where the content they want is.
So my parents use chrome even though I constantly install Firefox and hide chrome. Problem there is they end up with Edge so I stopped doing that. (Didn’t windows get in trouble for this kind of market control in the 90’s?)
So I had Ublock origin on chrome for them but it’s “not supported” anymore and my usual method of ignoring what it says and turning it back on are now failing.
Any help?
You can disable Edge if you don’t want people launching it… “accidentally.” There are a myriad of ways. Most recently I’ve used Edge Blocker, which does what it says on the label. Note that this will cause the opening of any file types associated with Edge by default to silently fail if you don’t reassign them to some other program.
The install Firefox and uBlock origin. Unless your parents deliberately go out of their way to download and install Chrome (and depending how heavy-handed you want to get you could even prevent this by busting them down to a limited user account) they won’t have any choice but to use the correct browser installed on their system. That is to say, the only one.
Oh my. THANK YOU for that edgeblocker! Going to get that on every computer in my home.
Yeah I’m not “the boss” of my parents. My dad was very tech savvy, but he doesn’t have the same memory and cognition as he used to so when I set it up nice he likes it, but any friction sets him off to “solve” the problem… By doing some random totally different thing that doesn’t so much solve the problem as “gets it working, sort of” with a browser he recognizes. Then because there are ads he loses interest and just puts on the 24/7 news cycle. :(
On the off chance that you have not heard that Linux is way more user friendly now, I recommend switching over. Especially if you are able to update the computer frequently.
Thank you. I have heard that, and I’m interested in switch my home computer and “Netflix and YouTube on the tv” computer over.
Any recommendations on where to start with that?
I used Linux as a 11 year old back in… Late 90’s? And it was not user friendly but I was so cool it didn’t matter…
Until I couldn’t get a game other than Quake 2 running on my lan network.
Haven’t checked on it since but I’m overdue and ready.
You were a good 10 years ahead of me. I was using AOL and Netscape on a 386 Pentium back then. I started on Ubuntu, but I dislike Canonical who makes it. Therefore, I would try Linux Mint. It is a Debian distribution. It is good out of box. At this point I would give it to a grandma. If you want to be cool again, there is still Arch and stuff like that, but I have that and maintaining it gets old sometimes because custom built things break more during updates. Linux Mint or Fedora. I also hear good things about OpenSuse but never tried it.
I’ll give Linux Mint a go! Thanks
The workaround: Switch from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin.
ABP has had random issues that break it often for years now. It’s crap.
No uBlock on my phone. :(
On Firefox on Android you can use extensions. I’ve been using uBO for years on my phone.
As much as I hate to say it, if on iOS use Brave. You can disable the crypto shit, but it’s got the best adblocking on iOS, and paywall bypass built in.
Never. I hate Brave more than the few ads that get through on iOS with AdGuard or the recently released uBlock Origin Lite.
Why?
It’s Chromium based, has a history of doing sketchy things, and spite.
Spite has been a powerful driver in my most recent software choices recently. I know how it is.
The workaround
Quit using YouTube directly and proxy your request through an Invidious instance.
Your requests are mixed in with everyone else’s, ad’s are blocked and most importantly only 1 machine touches YouTube directly and that’s the server hosting Invidious.
Not a solution for most people, unfortunately…
Could you elaborate on why not?
You see how often growing youtubers complain about more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed to the channel, or how just some videos have more views than their main content? The issue is that Invidious doesn’t have the algorithm Youtube provides to everyone, and that not a lot of people really watch their subscribed page.
more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed
Why would you have an account in that hellhole?
Some of us made Gmail accounts long before Youtube even existed, and still rely on youtube for tutorials and other things of that nature that aren’t found anywhere else.
Don’t be a pretentious dick about it.
I was just thinking that I should host a “how to” peertube instance.
Who uses Adblock Plus? Isn’t uBlock Origin (Lite) the shit to go to?
ublock origin non-lite is the shit to go to
Lite was delibaretly in brackets :)
I see, but lite is much less effective. google has worked hard to make it lose its capabilities. it may still be effective at blocking youtube ads (though as it cannot use frequently updatable blocklists it probably has a higher delay for fixes when something breaks), but it cannot have specific rules for less popular sites, because of chrome’s low limit on allowed filtering rules, and even though it can hide ads, that’s not the sole function of ublock origin. ubo is a complex content blocker, with versatile tools to defuse site tracking on lots of websites. lite cannot do that anymore effectively, because both its capabilities have been reduced (e.g. it cannot edit network traffic anymore I think), and the number of filtering rules that it can load.
and even before lite, ubo could not be as effective on chrome as on firefox, because of slight differences in the extension api, with not so slight practical differences.
yeah, lite is worse, no arguing there
Luckily I use Maxthon which stll supports uBlock Oriigin non Lite. When it stopps, Firefox here we go :)
