Adblock for YouTube™ — best adblocker
-
Hattyfatner last edited by Hattyfatner
I remembered why I needed to turn off this adblocker. It was for the Channel 4 online streaming service, free to UK residents. I recently logged in again and, although I have adblock turned off, although it's now under 'Privacy Protection' (a shield icon), with a number of options.
I leave Allow Acceptable Ads turned on. I don't feel ad's are obtrusive at this point in time. Sometimes a product interests me or the existence of the product itself, I find useful information in a broader interest in humananity.
Ads were becoming a problem around 2020 with excessive use of cpu time slowing down the system and a difficulty in accessing information from ads obscuring the content.
However, leaving Allow Acceptable Ads turned on still gives me smaller ads, that would otherwise just be a small blank space in the page when turned off. So why not let those ads show.
I don't feel capitalism is innately flawed as an economic system, but rather, it requires policing by the consumers themselves and this is done by not giving obtrusive vendors your attention and instead seek other sources that are more responsible.
The real problem at this point in time is excessive cookie collecting, which was never a requirement, by law or any other governing body, but purely a ruse to collect user's browsing history to be sold onto third parties for advertising and data analysis for marketers.
But the Privacy Protection tool worked in this case (a few days ago), where it didn't last year. Channel 4 wanted Ad Blocker turned off and Tracker Blocker enabled as well. Last year, Channel4,com did not accept that Tracker Blocker was turned off, but now it worked fine. The shield icon displays a cross, rather than a tick when ad or tracker blockers are turned off.
I was still annoyed at how difficult it was to actually turn off Privacy Protection using Operas still very broken setting menus, but it's no longer an issue.
I cleared out all my trackers, which had become an insane amount and had to log in again to YouTube and a couple of other websites, but was pleased to find after a while using the internet, the number of trackers had hardly increased.
For the record, I leave ads on these days and watch alot of them. They are not excessive on YT (much less than expensive paid streaming services). Yes sometimes the ads are like 10 minutes long but reaching over to click skip only means waiting for 5 seconds. Although very occasionally I am forced to watch longer ads without the ability to skip.
These forced ads are nearly always premium and for expensive new dramas being broadcast on streaming or BBC or ITV legacy broadcasters.
I don't hate capitalism and I said earlier in this thread that adverts serve a purpose beyond promoting products. They break up the programming, which on YT, can quickly become incredibly samey. Especially as ai spits out endless content in ever more specific and in-depth exploration of a particular topic you have watched and tends to only consider the last 1 or two videos you watched to compile your next set of video suggestions.
This can become very tiring as content is bookended up against the next video with such similar topics being covered.
So the ads give you a mental break from the stream of research, which YouTube is essentially a service for, really more than it is for traditional entertainment.
It can feel empowering to rage against money and capitalism and feel blocking all adverts is in some way negating this system.
But as you watch YT's mostly generated content at this point, showing no signs of indicating what is a real person and who isn't, with ever more programming in 'mistakes' to seem like real people, the adverts are now more honest than the content which pertains to be authentic, when it's really more or less a mirage or facsimile of reality, whereas ads are clearly marked "Ad" in the lower left corner.
So I watch the ads for a number of reasons. Products on sale indicate to me the state of the world in terms of what products are desirable, breaking the bubble that a very topic focused algorithm encourages.
I can see the progression of ai generated scripts and graphic technology as it generates strange ai jokes and personas, I assume, to further the agenda of whoever set the personas in motion. Yet to be ascertained.
As bots are unleashed for "influence campaigns" to pervert or encourage particular points of view or mindsets, the ads give me a break from stealth head shrinkage to a more overt and less insidious form or messaging.
So I consider the Privacy Protection filter fixed at this point.
Now if the settings menu indicated correctly which area you are in (on the left hand sidebar), by highlighting it, for instance, this would be a significant improvement to the settings pages.
-
Hattyfatner last edited by
Yeah, I write alot...
But 4999 characters is the limit, so I will go on a bit...
The cookie business may even be a response to excessive ad-blocking by money and capitalism-outraged internet dwellers.
These cookie trackers are so invasive that the law does require clicking consent to enable what would otherwise be a simple setting such as signing into an account, but they go much further than that.
That is why sites pretend they are being transparent, when in truth they would prefer to not be requiring consent to track your activity.
Cookies are in fact on the way out as new laws are creaking into position and reluctance and blocking comes from fear of disrupting what is now such a large industry in the tech economy.
But they literally block content behind large obstructing windows, demanding your choices are made before continuing.
These cookie trackers are incredibly invasive to your privacy, but if Channel 4 can demand it of you and refuse serving content until you have consented to your browsing history being tracked, there needs to be an amount of allowance.
No business has a right, especially Channel 4, which enjoys government funding, to track your every online move.
So the next step for the Privacy Protection tool is negating window overlays that block content before you have consented to cookie tracking.
The arms race continues as company's attempt to isolate the content based on digital signatures and preferred users or regions behind code that is obscured, even to the browser and generated at the point of delivery using gated rendering systems that offer no source code to be read and indexed into search engines.
I go on a bit.
But ad's aren't innately evil.
-
