YouTube expanded a “test” that threatens to cut off users who don't turn off their ad blocker. Developers of the tools are scrambling to respond.
  • tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.ukEnglish
    274·
    1 year ago

    Hmm…

    “last month saw a record number of ad blockers uninstalled—and also a record for new ad blocker installs”

    So… they simply switched to UBlock Origin?

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      55·
      1 year ago

      Not really. It seems to imply that people started to hop around trying to find one that worked. Not everyone is savvy enough or in tech groups to understand or even be aware of UBlock. Most people just install whatever based on how much they like the icon. UBlock themselves don’t feature in this article and they don’t publish their install numbers, I don’t think they even track them, so we don’t know.

      • dhtseany@lemmy.mlEnglish
        36·
        1 year ago

        I dunno, I’m the IT guy in the group and I had a couple of non-techy friends as well as 2 different family members hitting me up for instructions on how to fix it. This bugged a lot of regular people and I had a hand in correcting it for all of them, I don’t think they were just uninstalling the adblockers, they were either reinstalling them or replacing them with other adblockers.

        • lol@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          They track it anonymously through people who have enabled telemetry. As an addon’s developer you also have access to a statistics dahboard with some historical information on installs, device types etc. The number on the main page updates about daily; it’s the number of daily active users after all.

      • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        And I’d prefer it staying that way. If uBlock becomes too big, Google will go after them directly and that would most likely end uBlock working on Google websites.

        • ripcord@kbin.social
          13·
          1 year ago

          As far as I’m aware, ublock is the biggest. And there’s zero chance Google isn’t aware of them. They’ve been fighting ublock techniques directly for years, including recently for the YouTube detection.

          It’s also what virtually every engineer there that has AdBlock uses when they’re not using pihole or something.

      • Hammerheart@programming.devEnglish
        19·
        1 year ago

        The owners of Ublock, eyeo, are extensively quoted in the article, although ublock itself is only mentioned once as one of their holdings.

        • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
          26·
          1 year ago

          Uhh, no. Eyeo does not own uBlock Origin. Eyeo is AdBlock Plus and they own uBlock by uBlock, LLC. uBlock Origin is a Free Open Source Project developed by Raymond Hill. From their manifesto: “The uBO project does not support Adblock Plus’ “Acceptable Ads Manifesto” because the “Acceptable Ads” marketing campaign is the business plan of a for-profit entity.” That’s a massive accidental misinformation blunder from the journalist.

          EDIT: added some details that might get confusing because Eyeo are a bunch of ass hats.

      • ElleChaise@kbin.social
        728·
        1 year ago

        I swear the way IT people speak about non-IT people is so funny. You guys act like everyone is borderline retarded because they don’t know intricate details of your hobby/career. Acting like you’re a part of some other group that doesn’t understand human beings and their attraction to shiny things. It’s like watching an alien try to sneak into society.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.worldEnglish
      241·
      1 year ago

      Well, if they put all of the info in the title who would be able to make up their own assumptions?

    • Moneo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      Probably also people with multiple adblockers removing one of them. I uninstalled privacy badger since this whole ordeal has informed me it’s redundant.

  • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
    149·
    1 year ago

    Massive misinformation warning for the article:

    “Cologne-based Eyeo, which operates Adblock Plus, AdBlock, and uBlock […]”

    They mean uBlock, by uBlock, LLC. Which is based on, but is distinct from uBlock Origin. uBO is the original FOSS project still developed by Raymond Hill. uBlock just steals uBO code and makes it use the acceptable ads frame to show some ads payed directly to Eyeo. uBlock Origins does not agree with the acceptable ads manifesto and will never show any ad.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    30·
    1 year ago

    Maybe we should buy pre-roll ads to tell people about The ad blocker options that still work

  • packetloss@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    1 year ago

    I highly doubt people are uninstalling their ad blockers. If anything they’ll just disable it on YouTube if it’s that big of an issue to them.

    Firefox + uBlock still works for me on desktop. For my SmartTV and my phone I’m using other frontend applications to get around the ads.