YouTube upping the ante against ad blockers

[Guest]

I am a long time viewer, first time poster.

 

Following on the growing battle between YouTube and ad blockers, which even made it to the WAN show, it appears they may have made their next move.

 

Starting today, the entire YT site became completely broken when the Brave Shield (ad blocker). The home page does not load at all until I open the menu and click home. Meanwhile, opening a video in a new tab (or reopening/refreshing) causes the video to load off center and no comments or other artifacts to load. The video still plays, but full screen is completely broken.

 

Furthermore, going to the home page, or back to a functional page from this broken page will result in the video overlay permanently pinned on the page until the page is refreshed or another site visited.

 

I have not updated Brave for probably a couple of months at least, meaning it is clearly time to update and hope that resolves it, but having me change nothing on my end and this to suddenly happen means YT must have changed something on their end, and it is clearly targeting ad blockers.

 

I will attach the screenshots of how it has broken with the brave ad blocker running (and one with it turned off). It could just be an unfortunate coincidence between my current version of Brave and some change on their back end that wasn't intended to have this effect, but that is just hopeful supposition.

 

Has anyone else experienced this, and what are your thoughts on this movement?

[Guest]

I can confirm, for anybody still on an older version of brave, updating to the latest and greatest does fix it. The sudden change does still demonstrate YT's ongoing war against ad blockers, even if you are a premium subscriber.

[PDifolco]

Have still 0 issue with UBlock Origin, and won't ever go "premium"  

[Spotty]

> Moved to Programs, Apps, and Websites

 

Youtube is working fine for me in the latest version of Brave browser with Brave's ad blocking set to aggressive.

 

1 minute ago, Wolfick said:

I can confirm, for anybody still on an older version of brave, updating to the latest and greatest does fix it. The sudden change does still demonstrate YT's ongoing war against ad blockers, even if you are a premium subscriber.

...? Seems pretty reckless to blame this on Youtube. Just like how everybody blamed Youtube for slowing down adblock users when it turned out to be a bug in Adblock and had nothing to do with Youtube.

[Guest]

No problem at all, I found a bunch of YT related post in general while this sub forum seemed to have less YT related content, so I though it was a better fit over there.

 

As I stated:

Quote

It could just be an unfortunate coincidence between my current version of Brave and some change on their back end that wasn't intended to have this effect

 

I completely agree in regards with jumping to conclusions and blaming youtube, such as how the adblock interfering with video buffering drama unfolded. However, if nothing has changed on my end, something must have changed on their end, and that something was directly conflicting with my ad blocker.

 

Edit: I could very obviously be entirely wrong about it and what was changed wasn't even related to combating ad blockers. Given that they have tested slowing down other browsers in the past though (I didn't hear any news of that being disproved), I am not in the mindset to automatically assign it as coincidence and instead feel highly skeptical.

[Spotty]

Youtube definitely has burnt a lot of trust with people over the years so I do understand why people jump to these conclusions. I just don't think we should pick up the pitchforks every time something breaks before it has been verified to actually be caused by Youtube and to be intentional.

 

It doesn't really make much sense for Youtube to intentionally break the website on an outdated version of Brave browser to combat ad blocking. It's more likely that either Youtube changed something and it just didn't work on older browsers, or it was just an error that occurred when you loaded the page and stayed cached and updating the browser fixed it.

Before updating the browser did you try closing the browser and opening it again, clearing cache, etc?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Before updating the browser did you try closing the browser and opening it again, clearing cache, etc?

Of course, I even tried a full reboot in case it was something related to how my system was executing Brave; some failed or partially failed module/plugin etc.

 

This was happening with 100% consistency through and through, no matter how many different videos, tabs, or even windows I tried. Perhaps whatever change could indeed just be dysfunctional with older browsers, but turning off the ad blocker immediately fixed every issue (before updating the browser).

 

I have not stated nor claimed they caused this result of breaking the web page intentionally, but that they have made some form of change, and that change was in conflict with my ad blocker and has resulted in the web page being broken. Given their history of targeting ad blockers, and this apparent change has caused a conflict with my outdated ad blocker, it is not a blind assessment to state this is clear evidence of an active ongoing progress of targeting ad blockers.

 

The purpose of the post is not to raise pitchforks. It is to a) ask if others have started experiencing similar (or even just somewhat related) issues as of recent, and b) open a discussion on the thoughts towards youtube's ongoing efforts to have people disable ad blockers. It is indeed not verified, but the question towards others needs to be raised for it to be. If everyone had to be silent on the matter until some larger media company/outlet happen to notice something and hopefully verified it with their own investigation, how is that any different from censorship?

 

Perhaps I could have worded it differently, but I have intended for the assessment to be a reasonable and question to others to be fair.

 

Instead it just feels I have attracted ire and am being considered the stupid person who should have just kept their mouth shut.

[Mark Kaine]

look its possible youtube changed something,  but actually they do this all the time, that's why ublock updates daily,  sometimes even more than once afaik...  so if you forever didn't update its no surprise something broke... basically yes, you're drawing the wrong conclusions, or use inadequate software,  ublock + chrome still works, 99% of the time at least. 

 

like sure i understand how you came to your conclusions but they don't seem to be entirely correct.