YouTube's war against its users

[flarmo]

Brave+Youtube+VPN been working just fine. Never seen an ad.

[BurpBlog]

• Built-in translator
• Functional dark mode
• Excellent ad blocker
• Fully configurable DoH support
• Tracking and tracing prevention
• Background playback
• Ability to create YT playlists
• Support for ALL Chrome Store extensions

[SkewedZeppelin]

@BurpBlog
Quetta 1.2.5 (latest available) is based on Chromium 124.0.6367.179 from May 13th 2024 and is highly insecure, also proprietary as mentioned above.
Use a real browser please.

Chromium version can be determined by downloading and extracting the APK and running:

strings lib/arm*/lib*chrome*.so | grep "Chrome/1"

@anonbird
Kiwi is on 124.0.6327.3, so this very well may be true.

[IksNorTen]

Guys there’s something very interesting about all this.

As @Lukas and I mentionned, when you use a VPN connected in Lithuania or Albania you don’t have any ads (same thing for people in Russia afaik).

I think THIS could be a way to circumvent new ad-injection method from YouTube, just use YouTube with a VPN connected in these countries.

Edit : this method might work even when uBlock Origin won’t be effective anymore because of ad injection on server side

[ikelatomig]

Possibly because of US sanctions. It is not working ?

[Privacy_Goblin]

I have not had time to test it on my PC yet, but I have tested it briefly on my Android phone, using Proton VPN and the YouTube app.

Cannot personally connect to Russia with Proton.
Lithuania still gives me loads of ads.
Belarus has not given me any ads, yet.

[IksNorTen]

No ads when connecting to Lithuania on youtube.com with no adblocker. Did you also try Albania?

[Astatine]

@Lukas

NewPipe, Tubular, FreeTube, or any other frontend that connects directly to YouTube will not work if your IP is blacklisted, you will be asked to log in.

If your IP is blacklisted, then your only option is signing in on youtube.com , official apps, or Grayjay.

I personally switch IVPN servers, and that solves the issue. It may sound inconvenient, but whenever my IP address is blocked, I “visit” many locations until the website blocking my IP address functions normally.

@Lukas

Grayjay is currently the best application to watch content. It works without logging in if your IP isn’t blacklisted, and even if it is, you can just choose to log in.

I’m currently using NewPipe, Invidious, and Freetube and I haven’t had any issues due to what I said earlier.

@IksNorTen

As @Lukas and I mentionned, when you use a VPN connected in Lithuania or Albania you don’t have any ads (same thing for people in Russia afaik).

I think THIS could be a way to circumvent new ad-injection method from YouTube, just use YouTube with a VPN connected in these countries.

Sadly IVPN doesn’t support any of those servers. I may try with other servers, however, and give an update later.

[Privacy_Goblin]

Just got home from work, and Lithuania almost seemed to have no ads when on my PC with just Proton VPN on, directly from YouTube, but then I was served an ad on one of the last videos I opened. Maybe it is just less of them in total, but I know the YouTube app on the phone also showed static ads between the video thumbnails.

Albania also seems like a good one on my PC, so far. But, I get ads on my phone. Not sure what the difference is there.

Belarus is the only one of these that seem to work for me on both my PC and phone, with no video ads and static ads.

[LeZ]

I just wanted to let you know that I think that Windscribe IPs are not blacklisted at all because I use the new local extraction feature in LibreTube (no Piped instance) and it works 100% of the time with all servers.