So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.
And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
Diversion, the ad blocker built into the Merlin fork of the Asus router firmware, is able to do this. It functions in the same way as a pihole. It’s not always perfect, but serviceable on devices that can’t use an adblocker like chromecasts.
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Serious question. Can a pihole stop this? I’ve been thinking about building one for my house.
It won’t stop ads delivered by the same servers as the content.
Diversion, the ad blocker built into the Merlin fork of the Asus router firmware, is able to do this. It functions in the same way as a pihole. It’s not always perfect, but serviceable on devices that can’t use an adblocker like chromecasts.
Pinhole works at the network level. You need browser extensions like ublock-origin to filter this on the client side.
Edit: You also have apps like adguard, which work like Pihole, and do cosmetic filtering like ublock-origin.