YouTube's War on Ad Blockers

Youtube is becoming unbearable to use, even for the few channels I watch. 75% of the time the video will not load at all, even after several refreshes.

Hekotat said:

Youtube is becoming unbearable to use, even for the few channels I watch. 75% of the time the video will not load at all, even after several refreshes.

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Vivaldi with UBlock Origins and NoScript is working roughly the same for me (a bit longer load time, when it happens). One video every so often is slow to load, maybe 20 seconds at most, then the videos played directly after that usually have no delay.

You could always try the Bing trick of copying the video URL into search and playing it directly through Bing.

Not sure where to put this. Can anyone suggest a Raspberry Pi kit for adblocking?

Brahma said:

Not sure where to put this. Can anyone suggest a Raspberry Pi kit for adblocking?

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Don't get hung up on buying specifically a Pi. That entire space of cheap microcomputers has been entirely overrun with a flood of untraceable garbage from china and elsewhere.

All you actually need is this: Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking

It can run on any hardware/OS basically. So take your pick of the cheapest small form factor computer you can get your hands on. I used an old PC rig I had sitting around for a long time until I got sick of the size of it and bought some garbage mini-PC from Microcenter for 150$.

ronne said:

Don't get hung up on buying specifically a Pi. That entire space of cheap microcomputers has been entirely overrun with a flood of untraceable garbage from china and elsewhere.

All you actually need is this: Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking

It can run on any hardware/OS basically. So take your pick of the cheapest small form factor computer you can get your hands on. I used an old PC rig I had sitting around for a long time until I got sick of the size of it and bought some garbage mini-PC from Microcenter for 150$.

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You rock man!! Thank you!

Brahma said:

Not sure where to put this. Can anyone suggest a Raspberry Pi kit for adblocking?

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I've used this guys videos for some networking and security set up. He has a full Pi-Hole writeup along with a video:

The World’s Greatest Pi-hole (and Unbound) Tutorial 2023 | Crosstalk Solutions

www.crosstalksolutions.com

He links to the following Canakit Pi case. I have an older CanaKit and they are good, but they know that and price themselves accordingly: Amazon.com


I haven't bought a Pi in over 5 years and I think they were around $50 whenever I bought it, so everything I know in that regard is out of date.

I have run a Pi-Hole off and on for around 10 years on the same Raspberry Pi w/o any issues I couldn't fix. There is no one solution, that I know of, that gives you good network level ad blocking and a Pi-Hole not going to block all ads, nor will it block in-app ads on Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu or YouTube at all. It will block some ads in Facebook and free app store games (as long as they aren't hosted on Facebook or a whitelisted site). It's more about blocking shady domains when surfing the web, especially if someone in the household actually clicks that in-app ad. You can also use it to block/blacklist any website altogether, if you wish.

If you want to block the remaining ads on Apple devices, there are a few device level apps that supposedly do that, but I don't know them off the top of my head.

For Firesticks and Google box streaming devices, I don't know of any way to block ads on Prime Video, Netflix, or Hulu. For Youtube you can sideload apps like SmartTubeNext or one of the apps listed here: Android YouTube Apps.

IMO the easiest way to block ads while streaming is to hook a desktop up to your TV and use a bluetooth controller or KB/mouse to navigate a browser with UBlock Origin loaded in it or Brave/LibreWolf (where ad blocking is built into the browser).

It won't fucking happen, but I really wish there was a Verify Human feature for shit like X, Youtube, etc.
The number of Indian/Chinese/BOT accounts that are complete shit is overwhelming. Whether it's fake trailers, copy/paste "reviews" with A.I. voices that are uploaded 1,000 times under different account names, or any number of bullshit accounts... beating the dead horse of "YOU are the product" really drives home how fucking horrible these corporation are.