YouTube Reportedly Bypassing Ad Blockers On Google Chrome

An anonymous reader writes: YouTube users have lit up twitter today, angry about an apparent change of policy by Google, which now seems to be showing ads in front of videos on YouTube even when using Adblock. Neowin reports: "Google's workaround seems to be applicable to all similar extensions and isn't exclusive to just AdBlock Plus. The company has not stopped at just skirting the extension, however. Users with AdBlock enabled will now have to see full-length video ads with no option to skip them half-way through, a feature YouTube has offered for a very long time. The only way to get the option back is to disable AdBlock, or to whitelist YouTube."

Comments

Back to Firefox

[Calydor]

Yeah, that's how you kill your own browser off, Google.

Re:Back to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

It was obvious to me, from the beginning, that the purpose of Chrome is to bypass adblocker technology. It was not a coincidence that Chrome was announced not long after adblocking on Firefox really began to block out nearly everything.

Re:Back to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome was the herpes of browsers anyways. Good riddance.

Firefox is getting shady also, and loves injecting ads into my tabs until I unchecked "show suggested sites" under new tab controls.

Re:Back to Firefox

[E-Rock]

We see Google in so many places that most people don't know that (financially) they're an ad company. All of the other businesses feed back into their money making line of business.

Re:Back to Firefox

[jargonburn]

Doubtful. Pretty sure Google updating their product and changing functionality (the ability to block ads isn't an advertised feature :P) doesn't violate any laws. Not only that, but:

A) You aren't forced to use their browser, at least, not by Google
B) You presumably agreed to Google's terms and conditions / EULA when you installed/used Chrome
C) The product is provided free of charge and you didn't pay Google a single cent for it.

Re:Back to Firefox

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Yeah, I'm not going to let a giant multinational company dictate how I use my browser.

I'm going back to Safari.

Re:Back to Firefox

[CaptainDork]

No.

Part of the install process for Chrome is you agree that Google gets everything and you get nothing.

Re:Back to Firefox

[fnj]

Fix the fucked up legal interpretation that allows that kind of a so-called "agreement" to be considered enforceable. It is blatantly unbalanced and as such should be null and void under contract law. It is also not reasonable to expect the unempowered party to laboriously read and digest all the terms.

Everyone who was ever given an employee agreement to sign which contained a provision that you give up your clear rights to work in competition, even when fired or laid off involuntarily: you did mark it with an initialed note taking exception to that particular part, right? And you informed the employer that you were doing so, and were hired anyway.

Re: Back to Firefox

[reve_etrange]

This is false. The developer of NoScript says that they are working with him to make sure extensions may still alter native behavior.

Re:Back to Firefox

[reve_etrange]

Indeed. Giorgio Maone, the developer of NoScript, says everything is OK.

Re: Back to Firefox

[JMJimmy]

Not according to the developer of NoScript. In fact, he says they are involving him to make sure extensions which alter native behavior remain possible.

Yes, they are working with some of the bigger developers but they are removing the core functionality that made FF powerful. New addons won't be able to "work with mozilla" only those who already have influence get that treatment.

Re:Back to Firefox

[Cederic]

What, 'about:config' and set 'javascript.enabled' to 'false' is too difficult?

Re:Back to Firefox

[trawg]

What, 'about:config' and set 'javascript.enabled' to 'false' is too difficult?

Possibly the bit where most of the websites in the world stop working

Re:Back to Firefox

[AmiMoJo]

You forget that early versions of Chrome didn't support ad-blocking. There was a bug report asking for necessary features to be added to the extension API (the ability to filter URLs and the DOM before network requests were made) and Google obliged. They actually did extra work to support ad-blocking.

If you read some comments below you can see that this was just an unintentional thing, only affecting the YouTube app.

Chrome is an advertising platform, nothing more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is an advertising platform, nothing more. Expect similar (and more invasive) behavior if you buy Google's new wifi router. People seem to conveniently forget that Google is the world's biggest advertising company. Their sole reason to exist is to fuck you coming and going, by showing you ads on the front end, then compiling every bit of data they can about you on the back end and selling it around. Google is the pimp and you are the whore.

I for one will not use a browser made by an advertising company.

begun

[circletimessquare]

the ad wars have

Re:begun

[vandelais]

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will!

LOL

[SuperDre]

Well, I don't like the ads myself, but I don't blame youtube for trying to circumvent the adblockers, it's their right to do so..

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does visiting a site give the site-owner any rights at all? Jesus Christ, the sense of entitlement of some people!

Re:LOL

[rudy_wayne]

Well, I don't like the ads myself, but I don't blame youtube for trying to circumvent the adblockers, it's their right to do so..

You are absolutely right. Youtube can do what they want. And so can I. One of the great things about Youtube is that I can live without it and Google can go fuck themselves.

Re:LOL

[ewibble]

That may be true and as a site they can do what they want. What is wrong is using there position as the producer of Chrome to do it. That is why no company should get to much control.

Re:LOL

[Reaperducer]

Their site, their rules. Don't like it? Go start your own Tube.

Since when does opening a browser window give a site-visitor any rights to content for free? Jesus Christ, the sense of entitlement of some people!

Re:LOL

[Oligonicella]

As long as they're not damaging the browser (app or person), they have as much right to deploy anti-ad blocking (or utterly shitty design) as you do to employ ad blocking. And no, their being successful at it is not damaging to the user. Perhaps you are under the mistaken belief that the site is there to benefit you instead of them.

Re:LOL

[AmiMoJo]

That's not how the web works. The site owner can offer to send you some HTML, CSS and other data. Beyond that they have no control over what you do with it. Don't want to display part of what they send you? That's fine, they don't have any right to control your browser.

If they don't want you to have their content, take it off the public web.

That's only on chrome I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

what they've done here what Internet Explorer and mozilla always wanted. Now everyone will move away from Chrome. You cant fight the users cause you will lose. You have to win somehow by giving them what they want and this is not it. I've always used Internet Explorer so that's not a problem for me. I still don't see ads at all.

Another stupid idea they might go with is blocking the others from seeing the video all together if we don't disable the adblock. That's what dailymotion and vimeo are hoping for. Then users will eventually move away and youtube will be a thing of the past. watch it go.

Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[watermark]

FTFA, this change only affects the YouTube "app" installed in Chrome. Uninstall the app and you're golden.

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[IamTheRealMike]

Which means it's probably not even intentional.

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[MightyMartian]

But I want to be angry. I want to see blood! Fuck you and your rationality.

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[wimconradie]

Yes, I also just read that. Very misleading article and subject. The last paragraph says it only affects YouTube "app", so I feel it is a purposefully abuse of a catchy subject. At the uploader: Please change the subject!

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[rudy_wayne]

FTFA, this change only affects the YouTube "app" installed in Chrome. Uninstall the app and you're golden.

WTF?

Why do you need a Youtube app?

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[fnj]

WTF?

Why do you need a Youtube app?

Somebody answer this. I want to know what the fuck is the point of this shitty "app". Are we talking about android crap, or a proper computer?

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[reve_etrange]

Chrome "apps" are essentially just bookmarks, which sometimes interact with a specialized extension. I guess the idea is continuity with ChromeOS or something.

As to why you'd need it, I have no answer.

Re:Only affects "Youtube app" in chrome

[AmiMoJo]

It makes YouTube load faster by caching much of the HTML, CSS and images locally, and by having some of the Javascript pre-compiled. That's all Chrome apps are, just local caches for web sites that make them open faster.

The extension API that is used by AdBlock doesn't allow extensions to screw with stuff cached in apps, for security reasons. Recently Google moved some of the advertising code from the YouTube site into the app, where it can't be blocked. So now AdBlock just removes the "skip advert" button, but not the ad delivery Javascript code itself because that bit is in the app.

My YouTube ad revenue went up

[lhaeh]

From the twitter posts in the linked article, it seems this started on the 5th. My most recent ad revenue data from YouTube is for that day, I made $11.68, normally I make $5-$8 per day. I've been seeing some spikes recently, but I assumed that was from heavy back to school advertising, maybe it could have been from this.

Any other tubers out there notice something like this?

Hosts file

[plasm4]

I've been copying and pasting this into my hosts file every couple months on top of using ad block. I haven't seen adverts in a long time. http://someonewhocares.org/hos...

Re:Firefox haters repent

[reve_etrange]

And if they want to put the tabs on top

I have them on the left (Tree Style Tabs). They also load and unload themselves from memory (BarTab), block ads (uBlock origin), and run only desired scripts (NoScript).