"About 11% of YouTube users openly say they use ad blockers.
Some communities report 40-60% of viewers use ad blockers.
Overall global ad blocker usage is around 42.7% for all internet users."
So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site.
First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.
If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple.
A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy.
Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.
sanswork · 1h ago
Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.
dontlaugh · 23m ago
That many using ad blockers would suggest there is something like a democratic mandate for disallowing ads as a business model.
sanswork · 3m ago
[delayed]
bjourne · 30m ago
Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video.
It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.
sanswork · 5m ago
[delayed]
scotty79 · 11m ago
Same reason they shouldn't be able to pay with gambling, scamming, prostitution or their organs. Advertisement industry is all a scam. It's a privately levied tax that lets sellers win competition with themselves and ultimately the customer pays, both in price of products and in their attention as well.
sanswork · 8m ago
[delayed]
bitpush · 53m ago
> First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.
Spoken like someone who has never built anything of value in the world. Even Apple, who famously "hates advertising and adtech companies" makes ads to promote their products. Ads exist for a reason.
Your statement is no better than "if your company emits carbon, you need to close". Sounds nice. Doesn't work
prinny_ · 31m ago
“Depends on ads to survive” is wildly different from “uses ads to promote the product it depends on to survive”. Apple doesn’t generate revenue from running ads. Google does because you can pay google to promote your ads and google makes money even when your product doesn’t sell.
bitpush · 9m ago
> Apple doesn’t generate revenue from running ads.
Oh, how mistaken you are. Apple runs a profitable ads business. Not as cute as meta or Google, but still meaningful.
Apple doesn't report Ad business numbers in quarterly earnings report, so we have to rely on third party analyst reports.
> Last year, Apple’s U.S. ad business totaled $6.47 billion, but only accounted for 2.1% of total digital ad spending, according to eMarketer’s March 2025 forecast
I wonder what the end goal is for Youtube. I doubt they have one, and they're just doing this on instinct/reflex. Not to mention they probably wouldn't have seen a need to to this as much if they didn't go down the path of shoving more and more ads down people's throats.
If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
Long term, a pipeline is needed to rip from YouTube and then torrent seed with magnet links per video ID (which your browser could then lookup and expose with an extension when surfing YouTube).
ycombinatrix · 2h ago
perfect use case for webtorrents
tene80i · 1h ago
The goal is to increase revenue, and one way to do that is to make the experience worse for people blocking ads. Some, like you, will keep finding new ways to bypass them. Others will give up and allow the ads, or pay for ad-free. They don’t need to stop all the ad-blocking users, just more and more each time. And if you’re a die-hard who will never allow ads, they probably don’t care what you do at all. Why should they? It’s not personal - they just want to keep increasing revenue, and it’s not coming from you no matter what, so they don’t care what your experience is like.
Telaneo · 52m ago
I have a hard time imagining a world which Youtube ceases to work in a browser with uBlock Origin. Instead we're in a world where Youtube screws us around for a bit, and then uBlock does an update and everything goes back to 'normal'. This isn't productive for either side. It's just busywork.
Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.
mu53 · 2h ago
increasing friction for ad blockers will increase ad views will increase revenue.
It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult.
Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
Telaneo · 56m ago
This is the reflex/instinct approach though. Sure, they increase friction for people with adblock, and then 5 minutes later, uBlock Origin does an update to undo Youtube's friction, and we're back to square one. No gain for anyone, no thought of what happens long term, just busywork.
I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.
zahlman · 51m ago
> Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
How many ads does YouTube have to serve in order to net $15 from the advertisers?
How much would they gross in this circumstance (vs. what they pay out to content creators)?
1over137 · 1h ago
But thats even less private. If you log in, they know exactly who you are.
SilverElfin · 3h ago
The end goal is probably some low level employee who is trying to justify their job or push for a promotion. The gain for them is a lot smaller than the negative for everyone else - but it is their own gain.
rolph · 3h ago
ive said this before, when your [x] depends on people watching videos, you have to let people actually watch videos. its a corner youtube painted itsself into long ago, and means only so many ads can be shown, and videos must be of a minimum quality otherwise or the platform will implode.
general1726 · 1h ago
I mean just try to sumarize ads running on YouTube: Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam. Wooden cutting board as source of microplastics - scam. Muscular old geezer selling Tai-chi - grift and scam. Mobile games advertising a "playthrough" but real game is completely something else - scam. Palestinians having difficult life - propaganda. Israel delivering help to Palestine - counter propaganda.
I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.
zahlman · 45m ago
To be fair, the "wooden cutting board" ad is actually trying to tell you (if you listen to the whole thing) that plastic cutting boards are a source of microplastics but wooden cutting boards will instead result in bacterial contamination; thus they're selling you (supposedly) a titanium cutting board. Which of course will command some ungodly price tag both because of the material (supposing for the moment that this is legit) and because you'll supposedly only ever need one.
And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised.
(I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.)
It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
general1726 · 12m ago
> It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games...
xeonmc · 16m ago
> Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam.
Aren't they really just confined plasma torches though, lore-wise?
encrypted_bird · 40s ago
No, a torch has a far shorter "beam", while a lightsaber is a very large "beam" compressed into a cylindrical shape by magnetic fields.
Either that or they meant "torch" as in "flashlight", which I've seen shitty lightsabers be.
general1726 · 7m ago
That would be candle in a flowerpot ad to save on energy bills.
dlcarrier · 4h ago
I'm glad there's enough bureaucracy inside Google to make these measures roll out slowly with long breaks between changes. It gives the add blockers enough time to update their blocks, before the anti-blocking measures even make it out to all users.
jokoon · 2h ago
I wonder what is the proportion of users using an adblocker
I saw around me that many people are fine with ads, so I don't think it's much of a problem for YouTube
I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads.
roscas · 2h ago
"I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads." where you read that?
commiepatrol · 1h ago
Wut?
zb3 · 2h ago
The article was written more than two months ago..
roscas · 1h ago
Talking about ads, just went in the living room and tv was turned on and there were ads. I never see any ads but let me take 30 seconds to see what is on tv.
Absolutly disgusting. Wasted 30 seconds of my life and now I need medication to sleep tonight after seeing the *it goes on tv.
sanswork · 1h ago
How many seconds of your life were wasted reading an article about YouTube ads then commenting here multiple times?
If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.
carlosjobim · 6m ago
I was gift hospitalized for three months after reading your comment. We are very sensitive here.
So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site.
First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.
If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple.
A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy.
Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.
It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.
Spoken like someone who has never built anything of value in the world. Even Apple, who famously "hates advertising and adtech companies" makes ads to promote their products. Ads exist for a reason.
Your statement is no better than "if your company emits carbon, you need to close". Sounds nice. Doesn't work
Oh, how mistaken you are. Apple runs a profitable ads business. Not as cute as meta or Google, but still meaningful.
Earn revenue with advertising on Apple News - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/guide/news-publisher/earn-revenue-...
Apple doesn't report Ad business numbers in quarterly earnings report, so we have to rely on third party analyst reports.
> Last year, Apple’s U.S. ad business totaled $6.47 billion, but only accounted for 2.1% of total digital ad spending, according to eMarketer’s March 2025 forecast
https://digiday.com/marketing/when-it-comes-to-ads-apple-isn...
If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.
Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.
It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult.
Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.
How many ads does YouTube have to serve in order to net $15 from the advertisers?
How much would they gross in this circumstance (vs. what they pay out to content creators)?
I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.
And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised.
(I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.)
It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games...
Aren't they really just confined plasma torches though, lore-wise?
Either that or they meant "torch" as in "flashlight", which I've seen shitty lightsabers be.
I saw around me that many people are fine with ads, so I don't think it's much of a problem for YouTube
I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads.
If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.