Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Dodging Youtube Ads

Although hopefully temporary, some bugs have developed in my adblocker, and thus some cleverness is required to avoid youtube ads.

One: hit the next button on youtube, then the back button on your browser. The commies will forget to play the ad again. Very much like skipping the ad before the six seconds are up. Naturally google's ads are unskippable...except using this method.

Two: hit mute on youtube, then open the video. Hotkey: m. The ad will 'play' but have no effect, especially if you tab away until it's done. Fun fact: this arrogates resources away from youtube and their advertisers. You can restart the video without restarting the ad. Make sure autoplay is off; in other words, having my adblocker fail has revealed why autoplay won't stay toggled off. Though even if you forget, technique one still works. (Guess how I found it.)

If all else fails hit mute on your computer, ideally without having to be reminded you need to. Avoid unnecessarily profaning your ears. 


Also note I have 90% of youtube's web design adblocked. There's a bunch of trim: blocked. Related videos: blocked. Copyright, comments: blocked. If I really want to read comments I load up invidious and read them there. Youtube wants to load javascript from google and doubleclick, which I also have blocked. 


Bonus round: the ads are causing desync issues, just in case anyone thought they might not be profane. They represent a compromise even against youtube's already heavily compromised nature.


P.S. I just worked out how to defeat every adblocker. However, there's a [good at coding] requirement, so there's no need to worry that the commies at youtube will mange to pull it off, even should it miraculously occur to them. 

P.P.S. Youtube is non-free trade. Someone is "subsidizing" a good in an attempt to undercut your market in that good. Result: you get to steal that good from them until they smarten up. I use youtube bandwidth all the time and at best they can scam a bare cent from worthless ads using my views. My gratitude goes to all the morons who pay for my video consumption. Nice work dumbasses. No, I really mean it this time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
You wont be able to comment/like etc but no ads and other bullshit.