UPDATE So as new info comes out, I’ll be posting it here. It seems as if this Rollout Has Several Parts.
Part 1
You get a popup message over top of your video, blocking the screen:
- This is the first sign. If you see this popup AND are logged into a YouTube account, your account has been selected.
- At this stage you can likely close or block these messages with an adblocker.
Part 2
This message will change, indicating that you have 3 remaining videos to watch without ads.
Will insert photo once one has been found
- At this stage your adblocker will imminently stop working in 3 videos time.
- Personally using Firefox + uBlock Origin and tweaking filters and updates does not even fix it.
Part 3
None of the video loads now, everything looks blank.
- At this stage you must tred new ground to avoid ads. I have posted methods in the comments. If you want to bypass this end page, read down there.
End of Update
YouTube has started rolling out anti-adblock to users inside the United States, which means that they are preparing to roll this out to the entire country. Personally, I have been blocked already. I want to gauge how common this occurrence is.
Remember when some people said we’re nuts thinking Google will try to ban ad blockers with manifest v3? Yeah.
Google will try everything in their power to stop us from blocking their ads. It’s their main source of revenue, you don’t have to be a genius to see why they don’t like ad blockers
Wouldn’t this show that they failed, if they have to recur to site-based adblocker blocking? Clearly v3 hasn’t stopped people from using Firefox, yt-dl, or whatever.
The Gecko Engine (Firefox), holds a user share of 4%. When compared to Chromium’s (Google Chrome and its clones) whooping 72% (roughly) user share, it’s clear that Firefox has limited relevance to their business strategy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-202011-202011-bar.png
(according to latest statistics, Firefox would have an even lower share)
My point is: if v3 were effective at neutralizing ad blockers in 75% of the user base, or even 95% since Safari is supposed to get on board too, why are they developing additional countermeasures?
Or has Safari decided to do like Firefox, and still allow full ad blockers?
I reckon that blocking ad blockers isn’t some extra countermeasure here. It’s actually right in line with what Manifest V3 and that new environment attestation system are all about. They’re basically making sure that if you tinker with crucial bits of the JavaScript – stuff they see as essential (like anti-adblock) – you won’t make it through the attestation and you’ll get blocked.
They don’t want to block all modifications because that would be a hindrance to many users, for example the visually impaired. However, anything affecting their bottom line will probably be blocked.
How that will affect Firefox? I don’t know, maybe nothing will change for us, or perhaps Google will block Firefox altogether. We certainly know they’re capable.
@LoafyLemon @jarfil @Honse but they could just as well mark the ads as essential then