I am at war with YouTube
I am at war with YouTube. I’m determined that I will win and YouTube will lose.
For many years I have had Adblock and Ghostery extensions loaded on my Chrome browser. Adblock blocks ads from loading on many websites. Key to my Internet browsing enjoyment is blocking ads on Twitter and YouTube.
Ads on Twitter (formerly known as "X") are annoying because of their over-appearance. The worst ads on Twitter disguise themselves as links to people I follow, causing me to click them.*
YouTube ads are especially annoying. They pop up before, after, and in the middle of a YouTube video. When YouTube ads pop into the middle of a music video my blood boils. I want to murder any YouTube employee. If only I could catch one.
If I send a YouTube link to a friend as a text message they reply back with "what the fuck is this?" The link they receive begins with an ad. YouTube ads are ugly intrusive shit that intrude into my mental wellbeing. So years ago I added Adblock and Adblock keeps me sane and serene.
In October 2023 YouTube started posting a model pop-up demanding that I remove Adblock from my system. The modal popup message said that YouTube needs to show me ads to pay for content distribution.
I call bullshit. Google bought YouTube for a billion dollars and so far has garnered some 39 billion in profits.
YouTube displays content that it does not create. YouTube uses the same user-content aggregation model as other web 2.0 behemoths. YouTube also makes money by tracking users and selling user's data to advertisers and other nefarious parties.
YouTube posted modal popups with threatening messages for a couple of weeks. The modals were annoying but they were simple to click through. Next YouTube's message was that after three more videos, YouTube would block my access.
True to YouTube's threats the modals disappeared. The YouTube video window went black. Messages about YouTube's terms of service replaced videos.
This dastardly act demands a response! How dare YouTube demand that I remove an app from my computer. It's my computer! YouTube is a rude guest on my computer. So the battle begins.
Adblock and Ghostery are in battle actively working to overcome YouTube's block. One night Adblock updated itself. YouTube videos temporarily became available ad-free again, until YouTube again reasserted its block.
YouTube is a leaky ship. There are many ways to access YouTube videos. One obvious starting point is to watch videos on Twitter. Twitter displays YouTube videos within the Twitter platform. So YouTube videos within Twitter are accessible.
When users share a YouTube video on Twitter, YouTube writes a proposed tweet. YouTube includes "via YouTube" at the end of the tweet message. Thus it is easy to search in Twitter for "via YouTube" and get a list of random links to new YouTube video postings. Random results are a good way to find YouTube videos missed by YouTube's algorithm.
YouTube has a mechanism to embed videos into web pages. That's where YouTube's blocking fails. By copying the embed script into a HTML page it is easy to bypass YouTube's website altogether. The short snippet of code to each YouTube video is easily copied into the webpage.
Next, YouTube also displays a selection of similar videos at the end of each video clip. Links to these other videos can be copied and pasted into the HTML page and viewed.
Of course the easiest thing to do is to search for what I want to see on Google and copy the link.
Some videos, particularly some music videos, will not display in an HTML embed, but many can be.
Besides Ghostery and Adblock I use DuckDuckGo to avoid tracking by Google. Recently DuckDuckGo has begun to advertise its own browser. The DuckDuckGo browser blocks advertiser tracking. It has a special window to display YouTube videos, ad free. I downloaded it to watch videos on YouTube, ad-free. It works.
So in order to block YouTube ads I will be leaving the Google Chrome browser altogether. I will continue to use Chrome for website testing. But I also notice that the DuckDuckGo browser has website inspection tools of its own.
By blocking ad-free viewing on YouTube, Alphabet will lose me from the Chrome browser too.
That is not all. The European Union is now suing YouTube for blocking viewers. The European Union says it is illegal for YouTube to block viewers. The United States should do the same.
The web 2.0 model of profiting from user content aggregation is broken and dying. YouTube, Google and others are guests on my computer and should behave as proper guests. No. I will not watch rude ads. My cognitive bandwidth is precious and mine to keep. YouTube's bean-pushers can just go fuck themselves.
- I have often blocked advertisers on Twitter that I click on when using my phone browser. The evil owner of X has recently disabled user's ability to block advertisers. I now post "fuck you and your company" to advertisers who I cannot block on Twitter – but that's for another post.