if they outright forced us to stop day one thered be outrage, so they instead ease us in. first a popup, then a timed popup, slowly leading to their actual goal but without the outrage

  • Kindness@lemmy.ml
    95·
    1 year ago

    My blind guess is they are doing split testing with various ad-blocking measures.

    Whenever someone interacts with the message, they know the popup worked. Best reaction is currently to use uBlock Origin’s element picker or zapper to hide the popup.

    The company is likely gathering data in various blocking methods to see which is the most foolproof.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
      352·
      1 year ago

      This is similar to what viruses do to determine if they’re on a real computer instead or just a sandbox. Most antiviruses will run an unfamiliar program in a sandbox (virtual machine) and if it starts doing malware things, flags it and sends it to quarantine. One known weakness of these sandboxes is that they cannot interact with the program, so a lot of viruses will put their payload behind a window. Any interaction with the window will signal to the virus that it’s on a real computer and it will deliver the payload, otherwise it will keep quiet to stay under the radar.

        • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
          41·
          1 year ago

          As with all “why don’t you just” statements I’m sure the engineers thought of that. Personally I think it is kind of nice that someone with technical know-how can completely neuter a virus that’s literally active and running on their computer by doing absolutely nothing.

  • JSens1998@lemmy.ml
    51·
    1 year ago

    I started getting the popups recently. Tried blocking the elements with uBlock, but in turn it would pause the video 2 seconds in. Pretty annoying. So I said screw it and installed an extension that would redirect the youtube watch page to an Invidious instance. Might as well make the transition now before they completely block adblockers for good. Screw Google!

  • probablyaCat@kbin.social
    354·
    1 year ago

    Umm I don’t think they care. They have a monopoly on amateur video hosting and only make money off of it with ads. If you are watching without ads or premium then you are costing them money. They do not care about your outrage. This isn’t reddit where it might have caused a long term permanent degradation to their content, the people posting stuff want you to pay or have ads as well. Users do not act as moderators or content providers (I mean I’m sure most content providers are users as well but they want ad revenue). They have just ignored ad blocking for long enough to get monopolies in their areas (browser, YouTube) and are now getting rid of that problem. I’m honestly amazed at how they took over the browser market. Almost everything is chromium based now. Even email. They may not have a monopoly, but they certainly made themselves the standard.

    Tldr: they aren’t doing it slow for fear of outrage. They did it slow to get a monopoly.

  • Miku Luna \ she/it@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    18·
    1 year ago

    I would call it pretty fast, I got the popup for the first time less than a month ago and I already rely on the magic uBlock does to even be able to watch YouTube.

  • RotatingParts@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    I got the pop ups for a while, then they went away. They are back again. Fortunately I am still able to ignore it and not see any adds. If there is a time where I am forced to watch adds, it will hurt, but I will give up YouTube. I hope others give it up and don’t cave if it comes to that.

    • Retiring@lemmy.ml
      261·
      1 year ago

      I gave up reddit the day apollo stopped working and I will quit youtube the day I have to see any ads whatsoever. It just frees up time to do other, more fulfilling, things.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        91·
        1 year ago

        What, you mean that clicking “not interested” in the fourteenth WW2 documentary in a row about “What if the nazis won” isn’t fulfilling??

  • hottari@lemmy.ml
    91·
    1 year ago

    You are goddamn right about that one. Though I think Youtube is being petty with this war against adblockers, none of the major browsers block Youtube ads by default afaik.

      • hottari@lemmy.ml
        3·
        1 year ago

        Sure. A huge untapped market of people who don’t want anything to do with VPN ads.

    • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
      463·
      1 year ago

      Client side web DRM is coming, which is why Google makes browsers and OSs now.

      Adblock will be prohibited for “security”.

        • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
          0·
          1 year ago

          And how much power does Google have to force that on websites that reject it and users who use Lbrewolf or IceCat?

          • ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ@sopuli.xyz
            1·
            1 year ago

            All the power that an advertisement network can buy. Especially youtube since it’s owned by google. And advertisers will be happy to have a way of forcing site visitors to run ads/malware or else they will not get served the content.
            It’s similar to certain bank apps refusing to function on Android devices with an unlocked bootloader: you want the convenience of an e-banking application (/ad-driven corporate website)? – Your device (/web browser) “security” must be verified by the “authority” who actually owns your operating system, else you won’t. Everyone* will “be loving” their secure devices, because they “just work”.

            *who is a potential customer buyer and therefore relevant

            Google is trying to use their dominance to actually own the www. The comment/issue section of the github site of the proposal is quite enlightening, if you have the time … especially their reactions on the general dismissal and condemnation of the proposal as unethical.

      • Sha'ul@lemmy.ca
        03·
        1 year ago

        You sound like you are parroting and self-aggrandizing or contrived.