Suddenly, Adverts Everywhere! Why?

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I hate (detest) adverts online and on TV, and so I've made it my life's goal to never see any. This has worked for about 2 decades, even if it was just to mute the TV and go to the bathroom... raid the fridge... whatever.

I've installed every kind of adblocker addon available, and they have been working really well, until about 2 days ago anyway!

Now, I'm seeing ads in the e-newspapers I read, YouTube is suddenly playing ads - wtf? I've checked all my addons are up and running - even had Adblock for YouTube ask for a rating (!!) while I'm refreshing YouTube to eliminate the latest advert!

My default browser (with privacy optimised) is Firefox, and I've just started experimenting with Mozilla ZEN.

What has changed and how can I control it again? Will it just calm down in a few days and go back to my ad-free life? Anyone have any sane ideas?

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I don't know about e-newspapers, but YouTube are constantly fighting against adblockers. They've even started playing ads in embedded videos now, as well as sometimes refusing to play videos at all if you're not logged in when they detect you're using things like adblockers and VPNs for privacy - to "protect the community" they say, even though you can't like or comment via an embedded player, so that's a flat-out lie.

I've even heard rumours YT experimenting with cutting ads into the actual videos themselves, not just pausing and overlaying them, which will make them practically un-blockable. At best, adblockers will change to a model more like SponsorBlock, trying to identify timestamps and skip over the ads automatically for you.

That said, I still find uBlock Origin works wonders against all ads, including YouTube (for now). Honestly haven't tried any YT-specific adblockers, or any other adblocker extensions, as I've never had a single problem with uBO to lead me to try any others.

Note: uBO won't work in Chromium-based browsers in the near-future due to the killing off Manifest v2, which Google are pushing explicitly to destroy effective adblocking. There is a "lite" version of uBO already available in the Chrome store, and the full uBO extension will not automatically transition to "lite" because they're fundamentally different and the developer wants users to have to go through the setup process so they're aware of the differences.

In uBO, I have all the non-regional built-in lists enabled plus StevenBlack's hosts file as a custom list - he has many flavours to choose from, but I just use the standard one.

That said, I also use a couple of AdGuard products:

  • AdGuard for Android which works like a VPN app (but is separate from their actual VPN app) to route traffic on your phone through filter lists, which you can add like you can to an adblock browser extension, but for free only works for browser traffic. If you pay, it will filter traffic for all apps on your phone and enable firewall-like functionality so you can choose whether apps can use mobile data, wifi, both, or neither. This is mostly so I still get adblocking and can choose a good DNS provider even on mobile data. Plus, the lifetime license is pretty good value covering up to 3 devices, not limited to Android, and also includes a limited license for their managed DNS service.
  • AdGuard Home is free software you run on something like a Raspberry Pi or Docker container and use as your home network's default DNS provider, again adding filter lists like you can with adblockers. It's great if you have a computer (or Pi) you don't mind running 24/7 and your home router lets you change the default DNS address for your LAN. This means that every single device connecting to your home network gets adblocking by default! It also has a bunch of other features like blocking services, client device management, custom DNS upstreams, logging and statistics, etc.

As a last line of defence if the previous don't appeal to you, AdGuard also provide public DNS addresses - IPv4, IPv6, DoH, DoT, DoQ, and DNSCrpyt - which you can configure on your individual devices (or in your home router's default DNS settings) to get some basic adblocking.

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I think that muting is like watching it still, because you're still connected to the channel owners and so you're counted as an active spectator. You should be switching off the TV at every ads break to prevent them from gaining with ads if you really hate them (hate ads, not the people :smile:). Clearly this way, for how much you like watching that channel, without watching ads you'll probably be decreasing their income that they can invest for improving their programs and content for you and all its audience :slightly_frowning_face:.

I noticed that, and it's understandable since they gain with ads.

I noticed this, too, my extension AdBlocker for YouTube™ always worked as intended till one day when a video showed me ads anyway, and my first explanation was right that YouTube put ads directly in videos. Now works fine though.

Note: we should delete the whole topic at some point :shushing_face:.

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I use - like @Ultrabenosaurus suggested - uBlock Origin in Firefox, too. and I don't get Ad's on Youtube or any other Website.

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Also, consider cganging your search engine to mojeek.com. Once you are on their site, highlight the address bar, righthclick and add to your Browser. No ads, just private and un-censored search engine and if you can't find what you want they offer alternative search engines via their search engine page. My preferred one is Brave.

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@Ultrabenosaurus , thaks so much for all the input and links. I really appreciate the effort.

I already use AdGuard and as you said, it's very good. uBlock Origin (I will check out Steven Black's lists as you suggest) didn't work as well for me as my regular set up, and trying it was when the adverts actually started to appear in the newspaper and on YouTube, so I disabled it, but unfortunately something changed from that moment, BUT I also noticed that Firefox has been doing a lot of updates this week too. I wondered if they too were pushing "the killing off Manifest v2" like Google?? No idea!

The ads are not embedded, just the usual ones. I don't have YouTube, or any social media on my phone (except WhatsApp, which I need for family and work). I plugged it into my computer and deleted all of the route files, so they no longer exist on my phone.

I have a Surfshark subscription, so I set up their DNS servers on my home router. When I'm at work I use Quad 9.

@Luca_Pavan . As for watching TV... I wasn't very clear: I've not actually "watched TV" for about 14 years, and then it was only to watch the Rugby World Cup - it was the only way I could watch it back then. :wink:

@Ponce-De-Leon , this was also my experience until a couple of days ago... I'm going to re-set everything and see if that helps - I have gone through my settings and couldn't see anything that had changed, so I guess it's all I can do.

@swarfendor437 , I tried Brave last year and hated it. Like Edge is was always running in the background and it was Hell's own job to route it out, even after using Geek Uninstaller I had to go into the Registry and literally "seek and destroy" every last vestige that was hidden here, there and everywhere! ZEN, by Mozilla looks very promising. It also has inbuilt adblockers and lots of other features I need to get to grips with... finding the bookmarks is my first goal! :rofl: Will check out Mojeek.

This would have to happen now, right at the moment when my free time has run out - I'm back at work tomorrow and back in the classroom next week. I really need to crack YouTube especially because we use it in the classroom, and I don't want time wasted, or the distraction of adverts running in the middle of lessons. I guess my whole day is going to be taken up trying to fix it.

Thank you to everyone for your ideas, suggestions and contributions. The ones I haven't already tried I will certainly look into. Much appreciated!

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For clarity, what mojeek does is it offers the Brave search engine.

Screenshot_20240901-134440_Browser
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Screenshot_20240901-134532_Browser1080×2160 232 KB

Screenshot_20240901-134610_Browser
Screenshot_20240901-134610_Browser1080×2160 274 KB

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Ah, ok! Thanks for the clarity!

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@0Picass0

You may want to take a look at freetube.
It's an ad-free youtube client.

https://freetubeapp.io/

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As far as I know, there don't plan to kick it out.

Did You have unchecked the new Advertisement Option that Mozilla packed in? It is not normal Ad Stuff. It is a new Technology what should it make more anonymous. It is by default activated and must be unchecked.

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@Ponce-De-Leon , yeah, if it was from about 2 weeks ago, I spotted it and turned it off. However, if it's something new... I'll check again.

I've been playing around turning Adblockers on and off to check the results. Up to this point, I'm only getting adverts at the end of videos. I'm still clueless as to why this should suddenly happen!

@Freeway - i'll take a look. Thank you.

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In the Settings of Firefox on the Privacy Tab. Directly the first Setting with this Tracking Stuff. Do you have there the 2nd Option what is more restrictive or the normal 1st Standard Option active?

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The standard one - always have.

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Similar to that is Invidious, it is also a different front end for Youtube without ads and trackers but can be accessed from a browser: https://invidious.io/

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You could try it with the 2nd more restrictive Option in Combination with the Usage of uBlock.

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Thanks @BrewCoffeeAddict , I'll have to find a YouTube tutorial to figure out how to use it...

It's weird, yesterday wasn't too bad, just the odd advert after some videos. today videos are being interrupted and adverts before watching too. I really don't know why this changed from running completely ad-free :sweat:

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My idea is that YouTube set that when the video is uploaded or right before it's published an automatic editor adds ads to the video so you can't skip them in any way, because if the ads blocker has to block an ad that's part of the video itself it would end up removing the video from the page. Or, much more probably, it won't detect anything as the ad is inside the video, and videos aren't detected as ads.

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@0Picass0, there is actually nothing to setup. You just got to one of the invidious instance from your browser, e.g: https://yewtu.be/. Then you can watch any videos from Youtube without ads.
Well, Youtube are actively trying to disrupt ad blockers. These website also get affected by it from time to time.

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@Ultrabenosaurus got it right with this statement.

I can no longer view a YouTube vid unless I sign in or disconnect my VPN while on their site. It's all about data collection to sell on.

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On the topic of frontends, the LibRedirect extension is super-useful, allowing you to pick and chose a bunch of different services to redirect automatically and letting you customise which frontends it sends you to.

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