← Back to context

Comment by antfarm

1 day ago

My way to circumvent most of this: I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero ads when browsing the web.

I spend more time on YouTube than I care to admit, so I got a Premium subscription, bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube to hide most recommendations and turned off all YouTube history etc.

I regularly visit BlueSky, Hacker News and YouTube, but not X, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook.

The hardest thing is to not use Amazon, but I am working on it.

86 comments

antfarm

Reply
asmor  1 day ago

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2.

https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

  • skygazer  1 day ago

    I'm like the parent, on Safari – apparently also using an "inferior" way to block ads that, somehow, inexplicably, works 100% of the time and has never let an ad slip through. Is it supposed to be inferior because it's brittle and requires constant work on the side of the developer? Is it blocking too much and I'm just not aware of it? Is there some new ad tech that it's not prepared for, and can't adapt to, and will fail in the near future?

    • Nursie  1 day ago

      It’s inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and it looks an awful lot like the world’s biggest ad company (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less effective for ad and tracker blocking.

      It’s a good reason to use Firefox.

      3 replies →

    • kjkjadksj  1 day ago

      Ublock origin is more than an adblocker. You can target entire site elements you don’t like loading. Screw it, delete the entire youtube recommendations sidebar and live in bliss. Is it possible to learn this power? Not from a Jedi.

      1 reply →

  • knome  1 day ago

    Only for chrome.

    I finally went back to firefox, recently. I needed to update some of the flag defaults to turn on tab changing with mouse scroll and similar, but they are unlikely to break things like ublock any time soon.

    I was a frequent profiles user under chrome, and still don't like firefoxes UI there, but just made a bookmark to the profile launching screen.

    It's good enough.

  • Scrounger  12 hours ago

    How does Ublock origin compare to using Brave Browser + NextDNS (Pi-Hole in the cloud basically) tho?

    Because I haven't seen a YouTube ad in a looong time and I don't pay for premium.

    I just use this combo.

  • antfarm  1 day ago

    Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-Hole?

    • PaulKeeble  1 day ago

      Pi holes don't swallow everything, in stream ads like on Youtube and Twitch and served by the domain all make it through the Pi hole approach. It also doesn't allow you to turn it off for a particular page or site either, if you want to allow ads on Phronix you can't do it without enabling that advertiser everywhere since it lacks the context of the DNS calls.

      The advantage is it works with every browser on every device, its network wide and it blocks a tonne of other calls that aren't made by the browser such as telemetry.

    • int_19h  16 hours ago

      Use a third-party browser with integrated ad blocker - then all this Manifest v3 stuff doesn't matter even if the browser is Blink-based. One example is Vivaldi.

      Pi-Hole (or better yet AdGuard) is still desirable because it will block ads for other apps and devices. Defense in depth.

    • AStonesThrow  1 day ago

      I have found a really amazing way to block ads on websites. It's by not visiting them in the first place. Imagine how well this could work. It's sort of like abstinence and chastity rather than contraception. "Oh you know I love you, let me just have a little for free, and not worry so much about consequences, baby!"

      Also I found this amazing hack for YouTube and YT Music. I am nearly hesitant to write it down here, lest everyone try it out. I figured out that if I pay them like $20/mo, all the ads disappear from both apps! Can you believe what suckers they are! I fear that this loophole may be closed soon, but for now I'm living high on the hog!

      9 replies →

  • end1snight  1 day ago

    You all still use the web? I've been transpiling video game frame data into shader, geometry, lighting, color gradient data, and an agent system that mix-n-matches styles.

    I got into software modding game engines, though. Never cared much for web apps, SaaS. Never much saw the use in paid software since it's just geometry. We made a lot of dumb busy work out of SWE with web apps.

    DRY? Yes, let's not repeat ourselves still bothering with lame day jobs that obfuscate it's just physical statistics in a machine of known constraints.

    Am really excited about the rest of the world flipping the US off, nVidia full-steam ahead on autonomously organizing distributed systems. Propping up SWEs props up a dangerous delusion.

leoh  1 day ago

You are not circumventing the most troubling aspect of all this, which is that the content itself is perverted by its monetization model.

  • Animats  1 day ago

    Yes. This is visible on news sites. The title and lede are rewritten as clickbait. The actual story may not be so bad. On some sites, the title on the home page may not match the article. Yesterday there was "(something happened) in Red State" on Fox News on the home page, but the actual article begins "(something happened) in Florida".

ornornor  1 day ago

For some reason Albania gets no ads on YT. Route your YT packets over to Albania and done.

NextDNS works very well on iOS for everything else.

breatheoften  1 day ago

Is there anyway to fully disable youtube shorts/reels/whatever that mess is called ...? I quite like youtube long form content but have found myself occasionally in short form rabbit holes (which are both very addicting and extremely unsatisfying and which motivated me to delete instagram to escape when i realized how much a time and emotion suck they are)

  • hikewkwek  20 hours ago

    Turning off youtube watch history stops the shorts tab from working. And you can use a userscript to swap the "shorts" word to "watch" in the url to convert all shorts to normal videos.

    For example:

      // ==UserScript==
  // @name         Redirect YouTube Shorts to Regular Videos (Mobile-Friendly)
  // @namespace    https://example.com/
  // @version      1.4
  // @description  Redirects YouTube Shorts URLs to regular video URLs on mobile
  // @author       YourName
  // @match        *://*.youtube.com/*
  // @run-at       document-end
  // @grant        none
  // ==/UserScript==
  
  //Written by GPT-4o Mini
  (function () {
      'use strict';
  
      // Function to redirect Shorts to regular video URLs
      function redirect() {
          if (location.pathname.startsWith("/shorts")) {
              const videoId = location.pathname.split("/")[2];
              const newUrl = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" + videoId;
              window.location.replace(newUrl);
          }
      }
  
      // Observe changes to the DOM and check for navigation
      const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {
          redirect();
      });
  
      // Start observing the body for changes
      observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });
  
      // Initial check in case a Shorts URL is loaded directly
      redirect();
  })();

jackjeff  21 hours ago

I did not realize that worked so well. I gave up on Safari a while ago. Will give it another shot with AdBlock Pro then. Is it with the free tier?

I just use ublock Origin with Firefox on Mac/Pc and Orion on iOS.

The annoyance list takes care of the cookie banners.

musicale  19 hours ago

> I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero ads when browsing the web.

Safari's vestigial "never auto-play" setting has never worked, and still doesn't.

toomuchtodo  1 day ago

I’m hopeful browsers with LLM support are the future of ad blocking for users. This enables robust and sophisticated control by users of their experience.

bigyabai  1 day ago

> bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube

I will never understand this. My ex bought tons of extensions to do stuff with Safari that other browsers do for free. He paid for a PiP extention for some websites, password managers, Tomagachi pets... dozens of trinket apps that would be depreciated in 2 or 3 major updates. I'm continually wowed by Mac users that insist on paying for a native solution to a problem that doesn't exist in any other ecosystem.

  • antfarm  1 day ago

    There is nothing wrong with paying for software. I say this as a professional software developer ;)

  • tough  1 day ago

    iOS/MacOS users are more predisposed to shell some bucks because of their walled garden upbringing.

    Devs would usually prioritize iOS releases (early on, when no React Native nor Expo was as common place) only due to this fact that iOS users where much more likely to spend money than Android ones.

    This might have equalized since the early days but i bet some of it still stands

    • philistine  21 hours ago

      Try to make a robust ecosystem of discerning customers willing to pay money for good software look bad.

      iOS/Android hasn’t equalized. Depending on the segment, something like 80% of revenue is iOS.

  • pavel_lishin  1 day ago

    Isn't that like being wowed by people who pay to have their car oil changed, instead of doing it themselves?

    • queenkjuul  1 day ago

      Bad analogy imo given doing it yourself isn't that much cheaper and clicking "install extension" isn't exactly a complex maintenance operation

    • HenryBemis  1 day ago

      Yes, plus I wonder how "responsibly" do people who replace their car oil, dispose the old oil. One of the reasons I don't do it myself, is.. 'what the hell do I do with the old oil?' I know someone that parks/aims right over a grill that is there for the rain water, and all the bad/old oil goes straight there. I ain't no angel, but that person is an absolute cunt.

      So.. I really hope that the garages that throughout my car-ownership years do this, don't just flush them down the toilet, but do something proper about them.

      3 replies →

  • wizzwizz4  1 day ago

    In a capitalist society, paying for software is good, actually.

    • gorjusborg  1 day ago

      I don't know if it is that simple. Paying by people who develop software will tend to keep the software in good shape, but there's no guarantee.

      Also, the developer doesn't necesarily need to own the code to improve it, or build you a copy.

      1 reply →

    • kyboren  17 hours ago

      I am not entirely convinced that capitalism is the best system for producing software, especially established "infrastructure" software like OSes, web browsers, office suites, etc.

      I'm open to the idea, and recognize there are problems with non-commercial software, too. But the critical difference between software and physical commodities is that replication of software, once written, has a marginal cost approaching zero.

      I suspect that this difference significantly changes the calculus.

      My personal feeling is we should really think outside the box here. I like some sort of hybrid system with government-funded software bureaus producing FOSS code to replicate successful and important "infrastructure" commercial products after five to ten years or so. People get cutting-edge software created by the market, and exploitative rent seeking on critical software is minimized.

chneu  1 day ago

Checkout:

Enhancer For YouTube.

Sponsorblock.

Dearrow.

I can't use YouTube without them anymore. It's so horrible.

financypants  1 day ago

Untrap is amazing. On top of that, things like removing all apps from my home screen and turning of almost all notifications has improved my focus and my life a lot.