About YouTube and ad-blockers:
YouTube is owned by Alphabet, aka Google's umbrella corporation. Google in turn was devoured by DoubleClick, the largest advertising company to come out of the 1990s web.
When you use Google, you are feeding the attention monster that is the advertising industry.
We should aim to criminalize behavioural advertising and break up the Google monopoly, not tolerate their shit and work around it by using adblockers.
@whvholst @cstross
I'm glad this hasn't happened for you yet.
Adblockers are still recommended to protect your system security.
In the US, YouTube started blocking users who use an adblocker that hasn't been set to permit ads on YouTube . This began as a beta test July 2023, and has become a very widespread annoyance.
To get around it, I blacklisted "youtube.com" in my browser, so I don't accidently go there anymore.
We get this message.
"Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube"
@EugestShirley @whvholst @cstross Piped and invidious are frontends that don't seem to be affected by the adblocker-blocker shite. I, er, think.
Right now I'm using Firefox's Redirector extension to point youtube matches at the https://farside.link/_/invidious/ redirect. And a uBlock Origin on top, which I am not turning off, like masking in public places. I don't know if uBlock0 is actually *doing* very much in this scenario, but all understanding is now lost behind a pile of proxies and frontends.
@achadwick @whvholst @cstross
Thank you.
You are correct about Piped, it works.
I haven't tried invidious yet.
I'll have to figure out navigation.
I do miss using YouTube.
📅 They say it takes a month to break a habit.
Charlie Stross
Walter van Holst
Shirley Eugest
AndrewC (migrating to ohai)