back to article Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law

Last week, privacy advocate (and very occasional Reg columnist) Alexander Hanff filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) decrying YouTube's deployment of JavaScript code to detect the use of ad blocking extensions by website visitors. If you use an ad blocker, you may have noticed YouTube has lately …

  1. wolfetone Silver badge
    Pint

    Good.

    I watch YouTube with the AdBlockers on my laptop and I've been given these screens, inevitably stopping playback of the videos after you watch 3.

    Then on the Fire stick I watch YouTube but with the adverts on - what do I get? An advert telling me how Hamas is the same as ISIS, some bloke telling me that there's a secret the insurance industry doesn't want me to hear, toys being promoted that are miniature versions of a Tabasco sauce bottle, and some fucking awful game of someone walking along a wall shooting zombies for my phone. What's more is that if I watch a 20 minute video I'll get these adverts every 3/4 minutes - often two together - and have to sit through it for 20/30 seconds.

    If these adverts weren't so invasive, bullshit, plain questionable and wrong, I don't think anyone would mind them.

    But fuck Google/YouTube - I'll use an AdBlock if I want. And if you don't want me to then I won't use your platform.

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Good.

      But fuck Google/YouTube - I'll use an AdBlock if I want. And if you don't want me to then I won't use your platform.

      And add to that the way YT 'recommendations' don't recommend me stuff I'm at all interested in, and gives me no way to suggest the content I do want to see.

      But I'm curious. YT could 'fix' this by making consent into a pop-up. But I don't run any 'AdBlockers', I run security software that prevents unwanted and potentially malicious code hitting my PC. If YT wants me to disable security to access their service, then that service better be secure. And would that make it easier to establish liability, if YT pushed an ad that contains malicious code.. which it has in the past. Or, because YT offers users no control over the types of adverts, could they be liable for delivering harmful/hurtful/hateful content to users?

      And I'm also curious how the consequences of banning accounts could work, and if those could be a way to finally get rid of Google's data rape. If AlphaGoo terminates my account, it's presumably ended any contract I have with them. Surely this should be a reciprocal arrangement, so if I can no longer access the service, then AlphaGoo should no longer be accessing my data. And there'll be an easy "Google-be-Gone" process that automatically prevents AlphaGoo from collecting any future data.

      Somehow, I suspect AlphaGoo won't do this, or want this given their addiction to people's personal and private data, even after contracts or services supplied by AlphaGoo have ceased.

      1. Yorick Hunt Silver badge

        Re: Good.

        Both of you should hunt down "SmartTubeNext" - only works on Android TV boxes alas, but removes all traces of ads and allows you to permanently remove channels from the recommendations list.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Good.

          and allows you to permanently remove channels from the recommendations list.

          uBlock is working for me, for now on Firefox. Next step may be to abandon that for Brave. But I don't really like the choices AlphaGoo force on us. I go through and do the 'remove channel' thing on a bunch of videos every refresh. This seems harsh, because maybe those channels might make something I am actually interested.

          So why are AlphaGoo so dumb, especially when they're rolling out even more 'granular', probably intrusive and almost certainly incorrect 'interests' categories to match users with ads? Crazy idea. When I'm recommended a video, tell me why. I know there are hidden content tags they use to match content to eyeballs. So show me them. Let me tell them that no, I am not interested in lawncare services, hints, tips etc because I don't have a lawn. I may also have made the mistake of looking up 'nitro racing', but I have no real interest in RC modelling, so stop pushing me that content.

          Even worse is when YT's "Looking for something different?" option appears. Sure, it'll give me something different, but never anything I'm actually interested in watching. So then it's the never ending battle of trying to stop the 'recommendations' algorithm showing me a bunch of carp I don't want to watch.

          1. wolfetone Silver badge

            Re: Good.

            UBlock isn't working for me on the laptop. The only thing that is seems to be Brave with UBlock. But even then it stutters. It'll load a video page but not the video. You need to refresh a few times to get it to work.

            1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

              Re: Good.

              uBlock works (agaiin), but you will have to keep up in the whack-a-mole game.

              According to their Github Issues posts, you will have to regularly go through a "export settings->purge->update->import settings" cycle, to get the blocking to work again. It's been stable for a week now, so we'll see if they've come up with a generic approach to GoogleTube's script rotation.

            2. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: Good.

              ublock in combination with noscript and "adblock for Youtube" works

              At least some of the blockers work by shunting adverts to /dev/null so that YT can't tell they're blocked

            3. iron

              Re: Good.

              Firefox is all you need.

              Just open that video in a container where you are not signed in to Google. It'll play fine.

              1. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

                Re: Good.

                ...or just never sign in to Google in the first place.

                1. Grogan Silver badge

                  Re: Good.

                  Then they'll flag every video that so much as has the word fuck in it, and tell you it contains adult content and you must be over 18 and logged in.

          2. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

            Re: Good.

            They're not actually interested in profiling adverts to ones you'll actually be interested in; you are not the customer. They are only interested in giving the impression to their advertising clients that the adverts that they are spewing are somehow targeted at (not targeted to) groups of people more likely to click on them. They couldn't give half a shit if you are caught in the crossfire, as long as they make more money.

            1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

              Re: Good.

              'Half a shit'. I hadn't come across this unit of measurement before, but I'm guessing it's a log-scale?

              1. David 132 Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: Good.

                >'Half a shit'. I hadn't come across this unit of measurement before, but I'm guessing it's a log-scale?

                Yes. Standardised recently. The last ISO committee meeting, after much effort, passed a motion.

          3. Someone Else Silver badge

            Re: Good.

            Even worse is when YT's "Looking for something different?" option appears.

            Well, It might be alright, if one of the options is "Nothing"...

          4. Potemkine! Silver badge

            Re: Good.

            I wasn't convinced by Brave. But the DuckDuckgo browser on Android is fine.

          5. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Good.

            > "So why are AlphaGoo so dumb, especially when they're rolling out even more 'granular', probably intrusive and almost certainly incorrect 'interests' categories to match users with ads?"

            Simple: It was Doubleclick's ethos and why they were boycotted to the brink of bankruptcy

            As such they stick their fingers in their ears and scream "nyah nyah nyah" when stats increasingly show that _UNTARGETTED_ adverts get better results than targetted ones

            This shouldn't be a surprise. If I look for a fridge I don't want to be bombarded with adverts for refridgerators foe the next 12 months and will start avoiding brands entirely if the annoyance doesn't stop - meaning they are paying an opportunity cost of not being able to sell me another one of their products in a different line

            Irritating marketing has been with us forever and the advertisers claim it works. Mostly it just reminds us of a particular tagline (Who remembers Mrs Marsh and Colgate Flurigard - it's WHY I won't buy their products and the "see, it does get in!" tagline is usually associated with annoying individuals you'd cheerfully nudge down an open elevator shaft)

            1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

              Re: Good.

              The marketing executives who come up with these things (and especially the one who "invented" the "word" "poonami") would get thrown out of the airlock of the Golgafrinchan B-Ark by the enraged telephone sanitisers.

            2. Bebu
              Windows

              I guess its halloween...

              《Who remembers Mrs Marsh and Colgate Flurigard - it's WHY I won't buy their products and the "see, it does get in!"》

              That is a long time ago. Apart from wondering at the time why Rod Marsh's mum was hawking this stuff :) I imagined that it would had to have been a pretty terminal case of osteoporosis for ink to penetrate teeth.

              Fastforward a few decades and it does appear toothpastes containing much higher concentrations of fluoride than Mrs Marsh's offering are actually beneficial. See https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional

              So she was possibly not as daft as she appeared.

        2. steviebuk Silver badge

          Re: Good.

          GrayJay is your friend. Android only.

          1. iron

            Re: Good.

            Firefox containers are your friend. Available everywhere.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Good.

        > "Somehow, I suspect AlphaGoo won't do this"

        'Don't be Evil' went out the window when Google acquired Doubleclick. They now ARE Doubleclick - it was a classic poison pill takeover which put DC's execs in charge of Google and explicitly led to the creation of Alphabet

        There are other video services out there and (for the moment) my adblockers are not being detected/trashed by YT, however I'll be more than happy to move on if they become intrusive

        The Internet is littered with the corpses of once-popular sites which did something to offend their users (usually excess adverts or charges). Who remembers Go.com or altavista?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Good.

        for some reason YT keeps recommending right wing nutjob videos.

        it still hasn't realised I report all of them for being dangerous acts

    2. KLane
      Windows

      Re: Good.

      In Firefox, if you right-click the video you want to watch, and choose 'Open link in new private window', it is showing the videos for me without issue, when the 3 strikes block comes up.

    3. JimboSmith

      Re: Good.

      Across YouTube on every (unlinked) device I get the same two advertisers, namely:

      Grammerly

      &

      This revolutionary heater is slashing heating bills across Great Britain. It was developed by two cleaners at a fake dog poo company in Shenzen China, one of whom was fired for using the wrong end of the brush to sweep with and has reduced the heating bills of thousands of customers. It is totally not the same as you can buy at Robert Dyas and elsewhere for far less even though it looks and works the same way.

      I couldn’t use Grammarly even if I wanted to because if I use PII in the document or email I’m writing and it’s transmitted to their servers then GDPR issues crop up.

      The second one should be obvious and to quote Montgomery Scott “Ye cannae change the laws of physics”.

      That’s it those two advertisers and they wonder why people skip/block the adverts.

      1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

        Re: Good.

        I got rather tired of the shitty monocular in green that zooms into a women's breast, then synthetically informs me this shitty thing has been 'banned by the British privacy commission'.

        And they want me to not block ads...

      2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
        Big Brother

        Re: YT Ads

        Many of the ones that his my iPad (that is only used for YT and is reset every month) are for Prostate and Penis Enlargement miracles.

        And that heater ad that in one ad is invented by a Scottish Schoolboy, a Swedish Areospace Engineer or some twat from Germany.

        IT DOES NOT WORK MIRACLES.

        As you quote Scotty “Ye cannae change the laws of physics”

        The whole thing is a con sorta like most YT ads these days.

    4. Mr Sceptical

      Re: Good.

      Adnauseum extension has been working well for me. Slight delay on video start but then straight through.

      Says it's just acknowledging all the ads on the background, making the responses as worthless for profiling as me liking every single item I watch.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good.

      I too have reached the end of my tether with force fed adverts. You'd have thought that waving your advert in my face would be a bad idea because:

      a) Advertisers breaking my block. You have lost a customer for life. I will never ever buy your advertised product and will warn others away from it actively damaging you if I can.

      b) YouTube, currently I can still use youtube download plugins to grab any videos I'm really desperate to see, but otherwise I don't watch any longer. The moment these stop working too I'm done.

      c) Fcuk you both.

    6. Adrian 4

      Re: Good.

      I haven't so far had the nag screen on Brave.

      However I do have two other problems :

      - Watching youtube in a Patreon window doesn't play. The cursor moves but the picture doesn't, and there's no sound.

      - Following the link to watch on youtube works fine

      - Watching youtube via a hackaday article gives a black screen

      - Following the link from the hackaday article tells me the viseo is blocked

      - Finding the video directly on youtube works fine.

      I don't know whether this is a problem with Brave or youtube.

    7. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

      Re: Good.

      I rarely use YouTube because I _listen_ to music and have _no_ interest in watching music videos...

    8. withQuietEyes

      Re: Good.

      I didn't start using adblock until they started playing multiple 5-second-minimum ads before every video. I remember back when they had little banner ads along the bottom, no-one ever raised a fuss about those, least of all me

    9. johnmcAllister

      Re: Good.

      I enjoy watching YouTube with AdBlockers enabled on my laptop. However, YouTube on my Fire Stick bombards me with ads, ranging from comparisons between Hamas and ISIS to dubious insurance secrets. These invasive, often misleading ads disrupt my viewing experience, appearing every few minutes during a 20-minute video. If these ads were less intrusive and more reliable, perhaps they wouldn't be as frustrating. Nevertheless, I choose to use AdBlockers, even if it means not using YouTube.

      1. iron

        Re: Good.

        Gogole SmartTube Next, your Fire stick will thank you.

    10. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Good.

      What's worse is all the scam adverts for clearly scam products. I've reported some several times but they still appear. I remember once, YouTube having the cheek to blame AdSense for all the scam adverts, ignoring the fact they fucking own and run AdSense.

      How YouTube get aware with consistently showing scam adverts with no fines is anyone's guess.

  2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    For now...

    ...it appears that you can still watch youtube videos in a private window, even if you've been blocked.

    1. UCAP Silver badge

      Re: For now...

      You can also watch videos if you log out of your Google account.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: For now...

        I'd have to log into my Google account first! Why in hell's name would I have done that just to surf the web?

        1. Snake Silver badge

          Re: Why log in?

          Because, sheeple! Don't you WANT to stay logged into the Dark Empire Google, just because??

          BTW, I / we use the word "sheeple" but you really want to know exactly how sheeple these people have become?! A lady friend had to move out of her shared apartment one week after moving in. Why? Because, during that first week, she went to the bathroom a few times in the middle of the night and her roommates said that they noticed this on the cameras the next day.

          The main roommate had installed interior cameras in the shared areas of the house. Without telling her before she moved in. The main roommate is a male, and ALL the sub-renters are females.

          And the females didn't complain about it one little bit. It happens to be against the law. But the sheeple city females believe that 'it's in their best interest' to have the only male in the house have inside cameras that monitor their actions.

          ----------------------------

          The friend felt threatened (as she should) and moved out immediately. The other [female] roommates...simply stay.

          Sheeple.

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Re: Why log in?

            I trust you arranged for the full force of the law to be applied to said male.

            1. Snake Silver badge

              Re: Why log in?

              That's exactly what I told her to do. But she just wanted out, she felt threatened and saw no personal benefit from fighting both the male and female housemates for her legal rights when leaving just seemed simpler.

              I told her to have the book thrown at him after she left. She just wants to wash her hands of the entire situation; if the the women of the house are that stupid, let them simmer in their own juices.

          2. JulieM Silver badge

            Re: Why log in?

            Surely it would be just as illegal if all the housemates were the same sex?

            1. Snake Silver badge

              Re: housemates the same sex

              Certainly it would be. But it just makes it 2x creepier that the male of the house, who 'conveniently' sub-rents to [all] females...is the one who installed and monitors the inside cameras.

              Deviant, anyone??

          3. Ideasource

            Re: Why log in?

            There is no real privacy in a shared living environment anyway.

            Anything the cameras see in common areas could just as easily be noticed without them.

            The cameras merely make it more obvious that no one is a ninja in shared space.

      2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: For now...

        I have a painstakingly curated list of channels I never want to have recommended to me, and logging out of the google account I created for that purpose would, unfortunately, open the floodgates.

        However there are already suggestions for alternatives elsewhere in this comments section, that I'll be investigating.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: For now...

          "However there are already suggestions for alternatives elsewhere in this comments section, that I'll be investigating."

          Like bookmarking the channels? All I do, if I find a channel I like, is go to the "Videos" tab, 2nd from left, which defaults to showing the videos in date order, latest first. No need to "subscribe" or sign in. If I want to support them, there are other methods than "likes" etc. and most seem to get very little from Youtube, making their money in other but related ways, eg Patreon, merchandise etc. It helps if you can maintain and manage you bookmarks in folders properly and stick to it of course :-)

          1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

            Re: For now...

            I use RSS for all of the channels I "follow". You don't only watch what you directly follow, surely?

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: For now...

        "your Google account."

        What's that?

  3. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Newpipe for your phone, Smarttube for your Android TV / Firestick and Minitube for your PC it is then. They are standalone apps so the recently added Google adblock detecting JS doesn't do anything to their ability to play back without ads (for now at least)

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      There is also Grayjay which Louis Rossmann has got something to do with.

      Haven't tried it yet as it didn't install on my phone for some reason so I can't say if it's better or worse than NewPipe.

      1. heyrick Silver badge
        Pint

        I can't say either as I've only just heard of it (I use NewPipe), but it's good to have options so thank you and have one of these --->

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      FreeTube on the PC, with the TakeOut subscription list. Just the vids, no ads. Should have done that way earlier, but hey, uBlock Origin worked perfectly...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Btw, just need a good plugin with the same functionality. Should not be too much of a stretch.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "Newpipe for your phone, Smarttube for your Android TV / Firestick and Minitube for your PC it is then. They are standalone apps so the recently added Google adblock detecting JS doesn't do anything to their ability to play back without ads (for now at least)"

      Years ago, TuCows was THE place to go for PD/Shareware and blocking the ad server when it got more and more intrusive was easy enough. But then they directed all the download links via the ad server. I never went back again. "TuCows who?" you say? Exactly :-)

    4. iron

      You could just use Firefox on your PC. Open the video in a container or private tab where you have not signed in to Google.

  4. Dinanziame Silver badge

    It's a smart move going for YouTube, even if they are not actively blocking users who use ad blockers. Any privacy complaint related to Google gets a much harder look than if they'd gone for Forbes or Wired.

    It's going to be very interesting how this ends up. I'm not convinced it will be successful though. On one hand, the likes of Google can use extraordinary means to make sure you see ads if they put their minds to it, and on the other hand, there are so many websites that depend on advertising for revenue that there will be a lot of pressure going the other way as well. Regulations in that space tend to hurt small players more than big ones.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great article and all power to Alexander Hanff against Google. Posting anonymously because, on behalf of a website client, I do have to work with some of Google's crap analytic and shopping software, most of which is over-engineered, badly documented, and absolutely diabolical to implement and get working nowadays. When on online calls with their engineers, you get a different engineer each time and a different solution to whatever today's problem happens to be.

    Regarding YouTube adblock blocking, I use uBlock Origin but, as yet, haven't seen any warning messages. However, if they do start appearing for me and I do want to watch a video then I will just use some software to download the entire video and watch it offline without interruptions.

    Screw Google and YouTube.

    1. blackcat Silver badge

      Another ublock user and all seems good for now.

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Meh

        I use UBO but last week I was getting the popup until I did the filter cache clear and reload.

        If worst comes to worst I'll just exclude YouTube from my search results. It's never been a significant source of entertainment for me. Just a way to get answers. Even then most of the time I'd rather have text to read than listen to boring pratt droning on and taking up ten minutes of my time when I could've read the equivalent text in half a minute.

    2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

      uBlock origin does the job for me and you can use it to permanently block that annoying row of "shorts".

      I started getting the warnings a couple of weeks ago and last week I was completely blocked. I tried deleting youtube and google cookies and deleting cache with little expectation that it would work but it seemed to. The only difference is that playback is delayed a lot more than previously; presumably because there's a battle going on in cyberspace. Like you, if there's something I'm really interested in I download and watch it later.

    3. myhandler

      UBlock is fine so far on Firefox but it does not work on Opera where I get the lovely little countdown timer.

      The timer thing is rude and patronising and I don't watch at all when they pull this stunt.

      They can FO and then FO some more.

  6. Craig 2

    I'd have thought advertisers would have caught on to the fact that anybody actively blocking adverts really does NOT want to see them. If you've taken the extra steps to install software and deal with all the other crap on most websites that breaks when you use blocking software then you are probably not a ripe target for advertising. My initial reaction to unwanted adverts is pure hate and that's not the kind of brand awareness most companies are looking for!

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      My initial reaction to unwanted adverts is pure hate and that's not the kind of brand awareness most companies are looking for!

      This! So my usual example of why I turned to the dark side. There was a Twix ad. Catchy lil jingle, 2 blokes, 1 factory. Nah, don't fancy a Twix right now, I'm trying to watch a 10min video. Couple of minutes later.. same ad. Nope, still don't want a Twix.. and again a couple of minutes later.. Guess what ad?

      So I went from being an occassional Twix buyer to never buying them again. I can look at a Twix bar, and hear that sodding jingle. So in some ways, the ad worked, but probably didn't get the call-to-action Mars was hoping for. All because of AlphaGoo's brilliant advertising platform! But this also coincided with an ad for Virgin Trains trying to convince me to travel from London to Manchester that was on heavy rotation at the same time. Not sure why, or if the Twix sold in Manchester are somehow better, and I should travel to London, then Manchester and buy one.

      So that's just me. AlphaGoo has awesome data collection, customer profiling and ad matching prowess, all powered by the world's most sophisticated AI technology. But I still can't figure out how or why it would think I'd be interested in travelling to London, then Manchester.

      If only there was some way I could actually express my interests, or preferences, then I may actually get to see stuff I might want to buy. Surely the big brains at AlphaGoo could understand and implement such a simple concept?

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        FAIL

        AlphaGoo seems to have difficulty categorising someone who is as likely to watch a video on how to build a wooden wagon wheel as a recipe or a flat earth debunking or a RISC-V demoboard... so on the recent 'open your force-field, earthling!' events when I've actually turned off ubo, I get offered video games for a phone I don't have...

        1. katrinab Silver badge
          Flame

          Yes, I got recommended a load of flat-earth debunking videos as well.

          Of course the earth is round, and anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot, or someone trying to make money off idiots; but I'm really not interested in watching loads of 15 minute videos of people explaining that to me.

          1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
            Pint

            Flat Earthers

            Promoters of untenable theories are given a voice-amplifier by social media. After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion so ought to receive equal air-time?

            Advertisers seek gullible fools, and laugh all the way to the bank. We who are caught in the scatter are just dismissed. So what? We'd never buy from them anyway.

          2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

            I can highly recommend a 76 minute video on flat earth...

            Folding Ideas: In Search of a Flat Earth

            1. blackcat Silver badge

              We all know that if the earth was flat then cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.

              1. Richard 12 Silver badge

                I spent quite some time at school working out how to build an apparently flat Earth.

                It's more difficult then you'd think, the edges turn into impassable mountains.

          3. A.P. Veening Silver badge
            Joke

            Of course the earth is round

            Heresy, everybody knows the earth is square.

        2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

          I often tell youtube "not <category>" (e.g. road cycling videos listed as "downhill mountain biking").

          Yes I know it probably doesn't help one bit.

        3. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          AlphaGoo seems to have difficulty categorising someone..

          The late, great Bill Hicks was right about marketing. They may be in the business of pushing products in conveniently standardised and wel defined boxes, but their customers aren't as easy to put in boxes as cats. Then again, supermarkets have struggled with this ever since introducing 'loyalty cards' for customer profiling. Especially when the card might be shared between say, 4 students, who may have a varying number of partners. Or just visitors who borrow the card because we lived close to the supermarket. Admittedly we encouraged this because we knew 'loyalty' meant 'profiling'. But it was amusing when said supermarket sent a researcher to try to profile us better. In which we learned there was a category for 'schizophrenic shoppers' that defied convenient categorisation.

          And it's much the same for the online stuff. Normally, I'm the only person using my account. Sometimes, that may be someone else, or if they're trying to profile by device, someone else using my devices. Or if they try to profile by IP, they'll get some data from other people as well. So the data quality isn't going to be reliable to build any profile. I guess AlphaGoo's trying to 'fix' this by trying to flog YT 'family' accounts so they can try to relate the data, but that'll probably end up contaminated the way Netflix's data did when people share passwords.

          But that's back to some common sense, which 'Big Tech' seems to lack. Want to know my interests? Ask me. Let me have control over my 'recommendations'. I may watch a video showing how to fix a leaky tap, but once I've fixed that tap, I don't want 300 other recommendations for other videos showing me how to do the same thing. It's much the same when anything vaguely interesting does pop up. I'm usually reluctant to watch them because I know it's likely to recommend me more of the same. I may want to watch the occasional flat-earther video for amusement, it doesn't mean I want loads of videos telling me the Earth isn't flat.. I kinda know that already.

          1. Adrian 4

            I might search and watch Youtube vidos intensively for a day on one subject, but then want to return to an 'ordinary' mix because that research is done. The algorithm knows nothing of this. It is unstoppably stupid.

          2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

            Then again, supermarkets have struggled with this ever since introducing 'loyalty cards' for customer profiling.
            One of Australia's big two supermarket chains recently began gating some (but not all) of its regular yellow ticket specials behind a loyalty card. I can't articulate why very well, but it feels completely bizarre to me. I suppose I'll be using the other one of the big two more regularly?

      2. heyrick Silver badge

        You should write a letter and send it to the highest person at Mars you can find the address of. Maybe if people start pointing out that internet advertising is not the same as TV advertising. It's aggressive, invasive, and often repeats the same thing over and over (that some company is paying for), maybe if people higher up the food chain than the advertising wonks start getting the idea that advertising may be actively alienating people, things might start to slowly change?

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "But I still can't figure out how or why it would think I'd be interested in travelling to London, then Manchester."

        It doesn't care whether you're interested in that at all. It only cares about selling advertising to Virgin. Virgin should be interested but YouTube is selling to Virgin's advertising department. If the advertising department get their views that's all they're interested in, that's what they get paid for. The fact the ads might piss off potential Virgin customers is beyond their comprehension.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Google's execs are the new Sirius Cybernetics marketing division

          And I wish they WOULD stick their heads in a pig

          1. Adrian 4

            Some would say they already have

        2. katrinab Silver badge

          Surely the advertising department's performance is measured in terms of sales numbers?

          If I, living in the South of England, get adverts for Northern Rail as I sometimes do, they are not going to get any sales from me, so they won't get their sales related bonuses.

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            It seems not

            That department appears to have no connection to reality of any kind.

    2. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      That is because the likes of YouTube are blind to what viewers want - only how many $$$ advertisers will pay to have their shit rammed down our throats.

      Which, as you rightly say, is a virtually guaranteed way to ensure I will NEVER buy any of the products in the ads.

      This must be a new emerging concept in online advertising - pay mega bucks to instil hated and loathing of your products and brand.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "pay mega bucks to instil hated and loathing of your products and brand."

        Could it possibly be that all these ads are placed by the competitors of the brands they're featuring? It's the only explanation that makes sense.

      2. ITMA Silver badge
        Devil

        After turning my ad blocker off to watch YouTube content today, I was bombarded with ads for highly offensive, sexist violent, disgusting video games glamourising such things as physically assualting homeless people, a scantilly clad mine with a dirty smile on his face as his smacked the backside of a scantilly cald women to squash an insect.

        Utter awful shit YouTube are focing out as "ads".

        Digusting

    3. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Not quite the principle involved

      " [...] when you use blocking software then you are probably not a ripe target for advertising"

      The ad brokers aren't interested in those who respond to ads versus those who just put up with them. They're only interested in the number of pages viewed that display ads, as that's what they promote as exposure (and therefore "value for money") to the advertisers. The deal is between the brokers and the advertisers -- we're merely incidental to that deal, unless we block ads, thereby actively reducing 'exposure'.

      1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        Re: Not quite the principle involved

        This merely exposes (natch!) the lie that "exposure" is a useful measurement and that advertising clients should pay money based on this made-up number.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Not quite the principle involved

        The way to REALLY fuck that model up is not to block the adverts, but to /dev/null them

        There have been more than a few scripts intended to bankrupt those hiring advertisers by generating fake clickthroughs. Lessons don't get learned though

        I'm minded of me experiences using newspaper for advertising in the 1990s - where entire ad campaigns got zero responses (vs advertising in other mediums) where the response was "oh dear, that's no good. Would you like to buy an enhanced advertising campaign from us for $lotsofmoney?" and not taking "no" for an answer

        (In one case I got more custom from ONE classified advert in a national newspaper than a 2 month campaign in local papers. In another, 3 radio adverts resulted in being swamped for business)

    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "I'd have thought advertisers would have caught on to the fact that anybody actively blocking adverts really does NOT want to see them."

      Advertisers are basically marketroids, narcissists who believe the entire world is waiting for their next frt, brain or otherwise. They cannot comprehend that anyone will not wish to see their ads or may react negatively to their product when the ads are thrust into their unwilling faces.

      The advertising industry, in the meantime, has no interest in whether ads promote dispromote or have no effect at all on their customers sales. The only thing they sell is ads to advertisers.

    5. DJO Silver badge

      My initial reaction to unwanted adverts is pure hate ...

      You're missing the point, the people placing the adverts are not the people who made or commissioned the adverts. The people who sling the adverts are only interesting in impressions not conversions, so as long as there is an eyeball in the vague vicinity of an advert they have succeeded - if the advert has a positive or negative effect is not important to them.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        " if the advert has a positive or negative effect is not important to them."

        It is if they want repeat business

        The problem is that the kind of noxious shit we see is a direct result of sales droids not CARING about repeat business

        And people wonder why large companies keep imploding

        1. phuzz Silver badge

          It is if they want repeat business

          It really makes no difference to them. Most internet advertising does absolutely nothing, because the majority of advertising 'views' are invented. At one end of the chain you have bot-farms 'clicking' on ads, and at the other you have Google inflating the numbers, and the most important part is none of the companies advertising know or care. None of them track how effective their advert is, and they couldn't even if they wanted to. In every case where a company has tried just not using online advertising, they've found zero impact to their business.

          tl/dr online advertising is a crock of shit, but there's no shortage of businesses wanting to give money to advertisers, and so no shortage of people waiting to take that money.

  7. Piro

    So view it in a different way

    Freetube on desktop, NewpipexSponsorblock on Android

    1. Long John Silver
      Pirate

      Re: So view it in a different way

      I use FreeTube on my Linux devices. It is excellent. Not only no Google 'ads' appear but also 'messages from sponsors' are stripped out.

      I heard that Google has made an attempt to get FreeTube shut down. Fortunately, FreeTube is not easy for Google to grasp.

  8. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Brace yourselves

    You know what is going to happen right?

    After many years of battles, YouTube is going to get a fine that is smaller than profit generated from blocking ad blockers.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google/YouTube Terms of Service...

    A Clockwork Orange.

  10. Jusme

    I've always been curious...

    I've always been curious why the ads aren't burned in to the video stream on YT. The technology to do this certainly exits, and they would be unblockable and unskippable, so the reason must be commercial.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this as a solution (and it's fairly likely someone at YT has thought of it already...), and if they ever did implement it my YT hours would drop from negligible to nil. Maybe that's the reason - there is nonzero value to the borg in having me watch the occasional Big Clive or Photonic Induction video, and nonzero x 10^100 buys a lot of yachts...

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: I've always been curious...

      I've always been curious why the ads aren't burned in to the video stream on YT. The technology to do this certainly exits, and they would be unblockable and unskippable, so the reason must be commercial.

      This is going to be "easy" to fix, but maybe not so convenient. Just have an AI watch the stream and record it sans ads and then have it ready in your media library to watch at your leisure.

      1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

        Re: I've always been curious...

        "I'm sorry, but as an AI instance paid for and trained by Alphabet Corporation, I am unable to remove adverts from Youtube"

        As someone posted in a comment here many, many years ago, the difference between AI in fiction and the AI we have is that it's not yours: it's the corporations.

    2. Belperite

      Re: I've always been curious...

      Because the ads are targeted at different markets/people. They'd have to encode and store at least 10x the initially uploaded video, and then re-encode every time the ads get rotated.

      1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        Re: I've always been curious...

        This, or real-time (or faster) video encoding for every targeted advert they insert into the playback stream, which is computationally expensive, and thus expensive in terms of hardware and power usage in a data centre. I suspect the ads would exactly have to match a "gap" in source video to avoid having to re-encode the next chunk of that (until the next video 3 minutes later). Far easier to have the ads pre-encoded at selected qualities, and inserted as a separate stream

        1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

          Re: I've always been curious...

          "I suspect the ads would exactly have to match a "gap" in source video"

          The could put a little swirly thing in the top RH corner of the screen when the ads were due to be served.

        2. Jusme

          Re: I've always been curious...

          > This, or real-time (or faster) video encoding for every targeted advert they insert into the playback stream, which is computationally expensive, and thus expensive in terms of hardware and power usage in a data centre.

          Too many years ago, a "friend" signed up with a usenet provider that specialised in binary newsgroups, possibly easynews. I was quite impressed that they generated zipfiles of the selected, er, "articles", on the fly as you downloaded them. Back then I thought that was computationally expensive. I don't have a problem believing that real-time splicing of a pre-encoded, but dynamically selected, ad bitstream into an outgoing video stream would be too big an ask, and that allows tailoring right down to the individual.

          > I suspect the ads would exactly have to match a "gap" in source video to avoid having to re-encode the next chunk of that (until the next video 3 minutes later).

          The odd time I've been unfortunate enough to witness ads on Twitch (which makes it doubly unfortunate), they didn't seem to mind splatting them over the stream regardless of the content.

        3. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: I've always been curious...

          It really wouldn't be that difficult. If they had to merge the videos together, that would be computationally expensive, but all they have to do with the existing video is to have their ad encoded at the same resolution to avoid buffering problems and merge the files. That merging is one step above concatenating files in difficulty. It's true that some compression systems would be marginally less efficient if they did it, but they can prepare for that by chopping the source video into pieces so that they don't have to reencode any of them in real time. They could make it work, but they're kind of lazy, so they haven't appeared to bother.

          1. Tomato42

            Re: I've always been curious...

            I'm pretty sure Twitch is serving the same ad to everybody...

    3. CountCadaver Silver badge

      Re: I've always been curious...

      Same video can be seen in any number of markets worldwide, so a video for the Usain market might advertise Glock handguns quite legitimately for example but that would cause a firestorm elsewhere......ditto alcohol in the middle east, tobacco in bhutan

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: I've always been curious...

        Or indeed tobacco in the UK. Legal to sell, not legal to advertise. Same with baby milk and prescription drugs.

        1. blackcat Silver badge

          Re: I've always been curious...

          "baby milk"

          I was about to say 'you sure?' but then remembered that all the adverts I've seen are for 'follow on milk' which isn't baby milk.

          https://www.babymilkaction.org/ukrules-pt2a

          I have the little card that the nurse filled in when I was born and it is branded by SMA.

        2. Andy the ex-Brit
          Coat

          Re: I've always been curious...

          I honestly didn't know you could milk a baby, let alone legally sell the milk!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I've always been curious...

            you can do A LOT MORE with babies and milk, but this innocent comment has already trigged several red flags, so I'd better run to get my co

            1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: I've always been curious...

              Don't worry about baby milk.

              Worry about baby oil, and baby powder...

              1. blackcat Silver badge

                Re: I've always been curious...

                Is that like torgo's executive powder?

                1. David 132 Silver badge
                  Thumb Up

                  Re: I've always been curious...

                  Ah, that soothes the fire!

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: I've always been curious...

            if you think that's bad, think of what baby oil is made from (Peanut oil, saffron oil, soya oil, baby oil)

      2. dinsdale54

        Re: I've always been curious...

        Sounds like a Bolt action rifle would be more appropriate.

        1. David 132 Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: I've always been curious...

          Beat me to the obvious joke. Have one of these.

    4. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: I've always been curious...

      Because then they would have to target the ads to the content of the video rather than the viewer. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Traditional TV ads are targeted that way, and they seem to make a lot more money.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: I've always been curious...

        "Traditional TV ads are targeted that way, and they seem to make a lot more money."

        Only partially, mainly at peak viewing hours. Other times of the day, the ads are targetted by expected demographics. Just look at all the ads aimed at retired people on daytime telly, ads for kids at teatime and ads for porn and gambling late at night.

  11. theOtherJT Silver badge

    I wouldn't mind the adverts...

    ...if they weren't 1: So stupid and 2: So invasive.

    As for 1: A quick look through my subscribed channels shows half a dozen for automotive, a couple for firearms, a handfull of retro-technology related things, a bunch of eSports, a ton of science and technology type channels, two or three film/television reviewers, and a stack of music.

    From this they have deduced, apparently, that I'm a middle aged woman who travels a lot, because I constantly get adverts about menopause related products and holidays to places I have no interest in going. I'm struggling to see the correlation.

    Advertise me cars. Advertise me video games and movies. Advertise me the touring schedule and new releases from any of the dozens of musical artists I'm subscribed to. Isn't that what all this "targeted" advertising was supposed to do? Show me things I actually care about? Clearly not.

    Now I could live with it if the adverts were pointless but easy to ignore, but that brings us to 2:

    If they put a silent static ad on the web page that I can completely ignore? Fine. No problem. Cycle every minute or so. Why not. Or put an unskippable 30 second ad slot at the beginning of every video? I can live with that. But no, It's 30 seconds or so of ads every five minutes that's totally unacceptable - doubly so because being injected automatically as opposed to on TV where the show will be edited by the broadcaster to ensure that the advert doesn't play right in the middle of a sentence they regularly completely destroy the flow of whatever I'm trying to watch.

    1. blackcat Silver badge

      Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

      "because I constantly get adverts about menopause related products and holidays to places I have no interest in going"

      Not just me, phew! Boots menopause ads, Jet2, booking.com, fly to Turkey (or however they spell it now) and pink hair dye.

      1. ChoHag Silver badge

        Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

        It's almost as if they just push whatever ads they've got campaigns for at the time regardless.

      2. theOtherJT Silver badge

        Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

        And the pink hair dye! Yep. I get that one too. If only I had enough hair left to dye...

        1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

          Pink nostril hair? As camouflage?

          1. David 132 Silver badge
            Coffee/keyboard

            Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

            "Excuse me sir, you have earthworms coming out of your nose... ah no my mistake, it's pink-dyed nostril hair..."

            Thank you for the mental image!

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

              Might have been an Ood!

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

      "on TV where the show will be edited by the broadcaster to ensure that the advert doesn't play right in the middle of a sentence they regularly completely destroy the flow of whatever I'm trying to watch."

      Some of the non-terrestrial channels do that. It's all automated and they've not even used a filter/detector to "look" for non-speech sections or other methods of finding a suitable insertion point. It's just set to play an ad break at a specified time and no one is controlling it. Or if there is, it's one person looking after multiple broadcast channels. It may be more noticeable on a UK channel broadcasting a US show because we have different, more restrictive rules on when and for how long ads can be shown. Those US TV shows clearly have spots where an ad break was intended, but we don't get one there. It does depend on both the channel and the show.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

        On some of the terrestrial channels in the UK, it is notable the number of channels that have ad breaks at precisely the same time. If I was mildly interested in a show, but lost interest, I will often switch at an ad break, and it seems to me that almost every channel I then switch to is also on an ad break!

  12. navarac Silver badge

    Pity the YT Content Makers....

    ....because as soon as this crap started, I unsubscribed to most channels on YT. I only have 3 or 4 now, and IGNORE everything else.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. xyz Silver badge

    I find the ads useful...

    For choosing products I'm never ever ever going to buy because they've just pissed me off when I'm trying to watch something.

  14. Andy the ex-Brit

    I spend maybe an hour a day watching YouTube, mostly channels I subscribe to. I've been getting these pop-ups recently (using Adblock) and just closing them with no consequences.

    However, most of the channels I watch, mostly science, cycling, or urbanism related, are also available ad-free on other services with a small fee, such as Nebula. If I get too frustrated with Youtube, it won't hurt too much to jump ship.

  15. Plest Silver badge

    Ublock Origin has no problem with YouTube, I watch coding and gaming vids on YT, no problem at all. If they want to block me then go ahead, I can live without YouTube as they'll have to pry my ad-blocker from cold, dead hands before I'll give it up!

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Stop

      UBlock Origin is affected by this and (as the link to Reddit demonstrates) it's only because UBO developers keep updating their filters that most of us are not aware of the battle. I got a few popups last week and had to refresh the filter cache before hey went away.

  16. Cruachan Bronze badge

    Google/YT are really testing my patience, not only with this but I've always had my watch history turned off and up until recently my home page has largely been relevent to me (by largely I mean maybe 60-70% with the rest generic influencer nonsense where every video title begins with "I" or "We")

    All of a sudden it changed to a blank page and demanded I turn on watch history. Gee, I wonder what they want my watch history for, cos it certainly isn't for the purposes of showing me more videos I might want to watch.

    I switched from AdBlock Plus to uBlock Origin, which is, for the moment anyway, allowing me to filter out the ads. In the brief time I allowed ads I was seeing 3-4 per 15 minute video, and most of them were for the new Google Pixel so they aren't even making money off the ads, just spamming.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Meh

      I'm also getting fed up with random delays between photos being taken and them actually being available on the cloud. Even if I select a photo and then 'Backup' it sometimes takes over a minute or multiple attempts before I can access it on my PC. I'm a paying Google Drive customer so I'd expect better than that.

      Unfortunately decoupling myself from Google would be a pain in the arse and I doubt the alternatives are any better.

  17. rowan.keller

    Consent for AdBlocker Detection

    I agree with the main point here, however, Hanff seems to be mainly referring to the point that consent must be obtained for any non-necessary terminal access. I would argue that even if this legally holds up now, Youtube/Google may be able to change the way their ToS is presented to users who log in/view the site. If a dialog to accept the ToS were to appear every time a Youtube page opened (when an account wasn't signed in) then effectively the user would be consenting to the terms of the non-necessary terminal access each and every time they viewed the site; that would then open the door to Youtube/Google being able to say that every time Youtube was visited the user HAD to have consented to the terminal access by accepting the ToS. By gathering consent from the user, the terminal access would no longer be considered as a legal infringement of a person's rights. I could be misinterpreting this, however, it seems like big companies could easily step around any ruling about non-consented Adblock detection.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Consent for AdBlocker Detection

      I think GDPR prohibits such arm-twisting tactics unless they are technically necessary to deliver the service. However, Google presumably aren't obliged to provide the service (for free) to the whole world, so there might be wiggle room.

    2. AlexanderHanff
      FAIL

      Maybe read the article?

      I made it clear in my interview that terms which interfere with EU fundamental rights (and other legal rights) are void under EU consumer protection and contract law. Furthermore, consent must be considered as freely given (not a condition of access to a service) and bundling of consents are not lawful under EU law (GDPR). Consent must be specific, informed, freely given and a result of an affirmative action - so hiding it in the ToS would meet none of those requirements.

      So perhaps read the article before responding next time.

  18. DS999 Silver badge

    I still haven't seen these warnings

    Using Firefox + uBlock Origin on Linux and Safari + Firefox Focus on iPhone.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hardly seen more than 1 ad per year.

      Brave does not show any ad. Ever. Logged in or not.

      If you don't use Brave, still some good tamperMonkey scripts out there with your favorite adblocker.

      I cringe when I see folks on iPads having to watch all that trash.

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Hardly seen more than 1 ad per year.

        If they install Firefox Focus and enable Safari to use it as an ad blocker they would never see a single Youtube ad, and few anywhere else.

        There will always be clueless people, like the ones who run Chrome without any extensions and remain blissfully ignorant that they bear the full weight of all the ads plus all of Google's tracking.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Hardly seen more than 1 ad per year.

          "There will always be clueless people, like the ones who run Chrome without any extensions and remain blissfully ignorant that they bear the full weight of all the ads plus all of Google's tracking."

          Sadly, that seems to be the vast majority of people. Although of Google are going so far as to test blocking ad blockers, maybe the message is getting through to enough people that they've noticed? Or maybe someone wants a new paint job on their super yacht and every penny counts! Or share price. Gotta keep demonstrating growth to "the market" or the share price might drop.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not paying that monthly data bundle...

    ... to watch unwanted content imposed by Google and others.

    So, there is probably a legal case to try here.

  20. FF22

    Not this guy again

    He's been at this thing (ie. "challenging" adblock detection scripts via EU privacy laws) for 10+ years now, and he got nowhere with it. He obviously has no case there, not only from the moral, but also from the legal standpoint.

    It's also an utterly sleazy thing he's trying to pull off. Because if he thinks he has the right to block ads on a website, then the website also definitely has the right to know that and block him from using its services or ask him to pay up. Nobody can be forced to allow freeloaders to steal from them with no means to recoup their costs, especially not by the freeloaders arguing that nto allowing to freeload them will somehow invade their privacy.

    1. AlexanderHanff
      FAIL

      Re: Not this guy again

      Let me correct you...

      I have not been "challenging adblock detection scripts via EU Privacy laws for 10+ years" - in 2016 I wrote to the Commission for a legal clarification which was provided and agreed with my position. Beyond that I did nothing further as I achieved what I wanted to achieve (legal clarification). In 2019 the Court of Justice re-iterated that clarification.

      But despite your assertions, I actually have a lot more work that I do around privacy other than holding companies to account for their unlawful activities. I am a registered lobbyist in Brussels and have spent the last 3-4 years actively campaigning against the EU Commission's attempts to introduce a mass surveillance law (ChatControl aka the CSAM proposal) and I also have a day job of running my own company and working with my clients to assist them in their compliance work.

      And yes - we DO have a legal right to block ads (there is even German case law specifically on this issue) and we also have a legal right to block access to our devices. Whether you think that is sleazy or not, whether you like that or not is moot - it is the law. If you don't like it lobby to change it (as is your democratic right) but good luck with the that because much bigger players (Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and many more) have been trying to change that since 2009 and have failed consistently - but if you think you can present better legal arguments than their incredibly expensive lawyers - have at it.

      And no, under current EU law a web site does not have a right to know you have blocked ads - this is explicit in the ePrivacy Directive not just under Article 5 (in relation to detection scripts stored on the device) but also under Article 6 (in relation to serverside processing of traffic data - for example to detect if your IP requested a specific ad or not) - again - whether or not you like that, is utterly irrelevant - it is the law.

      Have a lovely weekend - perhaps use some of it to educate yourself on EU law...

      1. FF22

        Re: Not this guy again

        "(Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and many more) have been trying to change that since 2009 and have failed consistently -"

        They have not, because there's no need to change the laws for ad blocker detection to be legal. That's why Google is using it on YouTube, you know, simply because it's legal and does not violate any EU laws. Actually, it's used by many other companies and publishers in the EU, especially in Germany where it is now quite common for all websites to greet you with a popup on which you either have give consent to showing ads or subscribe to a website. And that practice has been actually confirmed to be completely legal - meaning also in agreement with EU law - by German authorities and courts.

        "And no, under current EU law a web site does not have a right to know you have blocked ads "

        Wrong. EU laws say nothing about that.

        " this is explicit in the ePrivacy Directive "

        Wrong. It does not mention blocking ads anywhere, and detection of ad blocking does not depend on anything you claim would violate EU laws.

        "in relation to serverside processing of traffic data - for example to detect if your IP requested a specific ad or not"

        Wrong. For one, because you don't need an IP address to detect ad blocking. And also because knowing your IP address is necessary to service you anyway, so, you can't even make the argument that it's not. Also, your IP address can and will be stored by virtually all servers anyway because of security purposes, which they have all right to under EU law.

        " perhaps use some of it to educate yourself on EU law..."

        Yeah, perhaps educate yourself about not only EU law, but about technicalities of ad blocking detection, because you still seem to knwo nothing about it, and didn't learn anything in all these years. You still invoke the completely wrong paragraphs, because you assume for ex. that ad blocking detection needs client side storing of data, or collection of data for which consent is needed for - none of which is actually true.

        That's why ad blocking detectors are still legal and always will be. And you know, the worst about your argument and crusade is, that even if it would not be legal to detect ad blocking, and even if you would somehow succeed with it (which you didn't in the last decade and doesn't look like you could in the following decade), all you could ever achieve is, I mean if you could somehow outlaw ad blocker detection, is that since they couldn't make money through ads anymore, Google and all the websites on the web would put all their content and services behind paywalls, and you could only access them after you paid for them.

        Which is not only stupid because it's obviously nothing most of us (and probably not even you) would want to, ie. if we'd have to pay $5-10 for every single website we use and visit, every month, so we can access them, but also because in order to pay with a credit card or other means you'd have to give up even more personal (and more personally identifying info) than what any adblock detector technology would possibly collect.

        So, your crusade is essentially a self-defeating one, which does not serve not only the interest of publishers, but not that of the users/visitors either. If you don't see that, it's bad, and if you see that and still do what you that, well, that's even worse.

        1. NiceCuppaTea

          Re: Not this guy again

          "Which is not only stupid because it's obviously nothing most of us (and probably not even you) would want to, ie. if we'd have to pay $5-10 for every single website we use and visit, every month, so we can access them, but also because in order to pay with a credit card or other means you'd have to give up even more personal (and more personally identifying info) than what any adblock detector technology would possibly collect."

          Maybe this isnt such a bad thing for society as a whole?? If we spent less time on the internet reading pointless bulshit and lies then the world might be a better place? Half the tripe on the internet wouldnt exist as nobody actually wants it. If what I viewed online had to be paid for then maybe three or four sites would get some money. Stack Overflow, elReg, Code Project maybe one or two others. If I didnt waste so much of my life on other online shit then maybe I would go outside, lose some weight, spend more time with friends and family. The benefit of all of that seems to outwiegh the £30 a month for content I acutally want that will benefit my life. Obviously never going to happen but meh whatever, musings of an old fart that remembers days before the internet.

          In the begining the internet was a great idea, the whole free exchange of ideas and knowledge thing, but unfortunately capitalism got hold of it.

    2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Not this guy again

      Nobody can be forced to allow freeloaders to steal from them with no means to recoup their costs, especially not by the freeloaders arguing that nto allowing to freeload them will somehow invade their privacy.

      And yet Big Tech seem to think they have this right, not to mention all the data harvesters and brokers that freeload and profit from our personal and private data. Just look at AlphaGoo's latest extortion attempt. Pay for YT 'Premium', or get ads. That starts to place a value on adverts, which isn't shared with the viewer. Sure, we get 'free' content, but in exchange for AlphaGoo harvesting and profiting from every shred of personal info they can get their bits on.

    3. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

      Re: Not this guy again

      "Not this guy again" would appear to be the correct response to things posted by yourself, judging from the (admittedly very crude) measure of counting the up-votes vs down-votes on your previous comments. Your K/D ratio would make a pro-gamer weep.

      1. FF22

        Re: Not this guy again

        You realize argument from popularity is not an actual argument, but a logical fallacy, right? No, you don't, because if you would, you wouldn't have posted your comment.

        The up/down ratio means nothing, and actually, when something gets downvoted by so many people, you can know you touched on something those people don't want to face, just because it's the ugly truth. I mean like freeloaders don't want to be called out on their freeloading habits, and a clueless "privacy advocate" who's trying to essentially legalize content theft merely for personal gains won't admit that he's doing just that.

        Then again who cares about these people's opinion, right? Any downvote from them is more of an acknowledgement and a confirmation that you were right, if anything.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Long John Silver
          Pirate

          Re: Not this guy again

          Given that material is posted voluntarily on YouTube, I don't know how someone accessing and using it according to their own wishes can be said to have stolen anything. The same goes for everything else left lying around on the Internet regardless of the wishes of its titular 'owner'. If one wants to keep one's digital sequences secure, place them under physical lock and key.

          I agree with your remarks about up/down voting. It's the foolish notion underlying 'democracy' which leads people to believe the worth of an idea is determined by the number supporting it. Down-votes are badges of honour.

  21. Snowy Silver badge
    Coat

    Block it

    Use Scriptsafe (other script blocker are available) to block the detection script?

  22. Omnipresent Bronze badge

    The duality of evil

    You cannot be a central source of public information, and block the public from said information.

    Time for someone else to make a new option (should have done already).

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

      Re: The duality of evil

      I thnk you miss the point.

      They want to be a central point of information but also get paid for it (whether its their information or something scraped off BBC/Fox or uploaded by a flat earther)

      But the ad-blocker issue has come up more than likely because the ad slingers have suddenly asked "Are people looking at our ads?" and google has noticed how many people are using ad blockers because we're sick of paying for bandwidth ad slingers use to fire ads at us.(plus most of the ads are bollocks)

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Don't be evil"

    I'm a bit older. Google used to be a couple of good people.. seems wielding power definitely corrupts.

    On the ad topic and back to first principles: if I need to buy something, I'll investigate and choose.

    Any ad delivered is considered a bad claim on my time of life. That's the most precious resource I have. They should pay me instead when they deliver me ads.

    Just saying.

    Don't look at commercial TV anymore either, wasting at least 30% of my time. I'll download what I like. Most commercial TV is very low quality signal anyways, don't miss much.

  24. Felonmarmer

    This is a message to any company who is using YouTube to show adverts. YouTube doesn't care that it's showing adverts to people who don't want to buy the product, but you should as they are charging you. If I'm forced to sit through an advert for your product I will not buy it. If I want a product of that type and yours is on the shelf with a bunch of alternatives, I will buy one of the alternatives.

    People who use an ad-blocker all think the same way, it's why we use them. So get together and tell YouTube/Google/Alphabet that forcing people who actively block adverts to look at them is going to hurt your business. Because it will.

    If you like the idea of targeted adverts, this is the opposite effect. We might of bought your product anyway, but you are ensuring we don't. So save your money and tell YouTube to see sense.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      It's possible that some of them may well be thinking along those line now. They have a huge field tests currently running of what happens when you pull your ads from a massive internet service serving many millions of people. All those advertisers who pulled out of X/Twitter can now look at their previous ad spending on that platform and compare with any perceptible drop in sales since they stopped. They have real, hard data to work with. It'd be interesting to be on the inside of those discussion :-)

      1. stiine Silver badge

        Did some Costco stores stop carrying Bud Light?

  25. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Interesting

    It will be interesting to see if users will ditch YouTube and head for some competitor if they disallow ad-blockers and showing several minutes worth of extremely intrusive ads during video's.

    Google is clearly opening up a window of opportunity for a potential competitor to jump through.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Click Here or we'll punish you with more ads.

    I think they showed that they were aiming to be obnoxious as possible when they invented the skippable ad.

    Don't you DARE let your attention wander from this scammy drivel or you'll have to listen to it for another 5, 10 in one case 30 minutes. And of course despite all the major tech companies bragging about their AI prowess this ad was inserted mid-word and you'll have to rewind a few seconds to catch the beginning of the sentence.

    It's like one of them recently discovered Black Mirror and found it inspirational.

  27. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

    wonder why people use ad blockers

    Ads pre roll, mid roll,post roll,product placement, sponsored videos, begging for patron, kofi, membership etc etc it's amazing there's actually any time for content on YouTube these days and then there's Google themselves, harvesting as much personal data as possible to allow them to target me with deep fake ads featuring a very badly done fake Elon Musk promoting dodgy investment scams or Nigel "honestly not a Nazi" farage selling some shonky investment advice.

  28. Nick Gisburne

    No videos until you consent?

    If you are required to consent to the ad blocker detection, could YouTube simply say 'if you don't consent to us running the code to detect ad blockers, we won't let you watch any videos'?

    1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

      Re: No videos until you consent?

      Supposedly under EU law you cannot neuter the functionality of a website if users withhold consent.

      I find this questionable to say the least because it may make some services unprofitable, resulting in their demise.

      1. DryBones

        Re: No videos until you consent?

        I do not.

        If they can't work out how to do things without pissing people off they deserve to fail.

        1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

          Re: No videos until you consent?

          There's no such thing as a free lunch.

          I believe website owners should be allowed to reject users that don't pay in one way or another. If you allow people to refuse to pay without penalties, everyone will become a free rider.

          1. iron

            Re: No videos until you consent?

            I beleive computer owners should be allowed to reject tracking, profiling, fingerprinting and all other privacy violations committed daily by Google, Facebook and every Tom, Dick and Elon who runs a shitty website.

            1. Long John Silver
              Pirate

              Re: No videos until you consent?

              One doesn't need to be "allowed". Just do it.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What javascript? i run blockers that block that and flash..... lolz

  30. Bubba Von Braun
    FAIL

    And the content creators loose out.

    Got hit with this.. seems like a progressive ratcheting up..

    Whine screen (annoying but I understand), Try to run blank ads, Now 3 strikes your out..

    Well used my last session to un-join the paid for channels (that AlphaGoo get their cut from) where I get in video promo's anyway.. Sorry content guys go blame YouTube for going Nuclear in their desperation to drive subs to YouTube Premium.

  31. steviebuk Silver badge

    Try these

    U-block origin has bypassed it already and Louis Rossmann's amazing new GrayJay app for Android.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The implications of this are absurd. Would online services no longer be allowed to charge subscription fees (or fees of any kind) since the collection of those fees isn't strictly necessary to provide the service and is only in the interests of the publisher?

    1. AlexanderHanff

      Your conclusion makes no sense

      If a user has subscribed to a service then the code required to take payment for the service would be considered as "strictly necessary" for the provision of the requested service and would therefore be exempt from the consent requirements.

      Try and actually read the law - or at least read the relevant guidance issues by multiple Regulators on the applicability of the law - perhaps then you will stop talking rubbish.

  33. Blacke

    Youtube blocks removed!

    HAHAHAHAAAAA! Google didn't have a choice and released the blocks now. They can't mess with further lawsuits. Applauds to Hanff and the legal team for their strong continuous efforts!

  34. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. stiine Silver badge

      Re: Don't just don't get me....

      Not the idiot that the FAA is sending to prison, is it?

  35. iron

    Google's efforts are easy to defeat

    On TV:

    Use SmartTube Next instead of the YouTube app.

    On PC:

    1. Use Firefox.

    2. Browse YouTube as normal and select a video.

    3. When the ad blocker blocker kicks in, right click the tab and open it in a container where you have not signed in to Google.

    Yup. Google are only penalising logged in users, non users can ad block to their heart's content.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey YouTube

    Chewy on ya boot!

  37. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    Law, supposed 'rights', and reality occupy differing domains

    YouTube's owners may huff and puff about their 'terms of use' until the cows come home. Likewise, the EU, or any other legislature, can muse over means of regulating the Internet, and the nature of permissible 'content', until some other topic takes their fancy.

    Meanwhile, savvy people will devise workarounds to attempts at preventing them doing whatever they like to streams of data received on their devices. Other people of self-directed nature will seek out the workarounds.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I for one

    Celebrate those brainy boffins and their super crafty ad blocking software!

  39. NiceCuppaTea

    In my mind this just means PooTube will just add a consent screen and re-add the script. Maybe get a slap on the wrist with a fine of 2 seconds worth of revenue.

    How will this consent be presented in a fashion that a layperson would understand? If they dont understand it does it become void?

    This does lead to further thought on consent and dialogues, EULA's etc. Are these things even enforcable? In the UK at least, a child (a person under the age of 18) cannot enter into any legally binding agreement neither can adults who are not of "sound mind".

    YouTube allow children as young as 13 to have accounts and channels etc. without proof that its authorised by a parent / guardian beyond clicking a link in an email which isnt verified to be owned by an adult.

    No software company I have ever heard of confirms that their "Accept EULA" button was clicked by an adult of "sound mind" does that make every EULA unenforcable? Would an adequate legal defence for breach of an agreement be "I never agreed to it, my kid has admin rights on my pc because im tech illiterate"?

  40. captain veg Silver badge

    terminological inexactitude

    While I get that it's useful shorthand, so-called ad-blockers don't actually block anything.

    If I'm walking down the street and encounter someone handing out advertising flyers, I am perfectly at liberty to not take one. Third party ads in web pages are the same: just an invitation to your browser to download and render come external content. Your browser is wholly free to ignore the invitation. This is not blocking.

    It's a shame that most browsers don't easily allow users to configure that, but this might be not unrelated to the fact that the suppliers of the ones with biggest market share also happen to make oodles of dosh out of third-party ads.

    -A.

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