Did YouTube finally kill adblocking apps like SmartTube? - Tons of unusual 403 / forbidden errors

[Inco G. Nito]

They are becoming desperate caged animals as the economy continues to erode. The economic culture, policies, and systems that facilitated these enormous tech monopolies to begin with is waning. Nothing lasts forever.

 

[Ed Special]

Yup! Plop one of these suckers ($66 + $4 for a case) behind your TV, pop a 16GB microSD card with CoreELEC on it, plug it in, and you're GTG. Plays everything I've ever thrown at it, including 4K/60FPS high-bitrate stuff. Built-in wired ethernet, and great support for wifi dongles.
View attachment 6175631
(they're great little general-purpose Linux bitty boxes too)

What do you think of Libre Computers? $35 a pop, should be enough to do more basic media PC stuff.

 

[Fapcop]

I don't care about that, I care about user privacy. If you don't like their policy on right to repair, don't buy the product.

These “right to repair” faggots are like evangelical Christians with how fanatic and preachy they are.

And the worst part is: They act like Apple/Samsung/whatever somehow owe them anything.

You want to be able to repair something?

Go for it! Buy that massive chunk of a laptop that you can replace everything in.

Instead these faggots go out and purchase a laptop that’s literally the opposite, and then whine and complain endlessly that the engineers designing it prioritized a thin design over being able to take out the battery yourself.

 

[moocow]

What do you think of Libre Computers? $35 a pop, should be enough to do more basic media PC stuff.

Killer price for those specs. I should think that'd be fine for media playback. With only 2GB of RAM don't expect much more from it than good performance playing videos though. That's not going to be a web browser, gaming machine or even an adequate system for running "plug-ins" for weather, RSS feeds, or other plug-ins for Kodi.

 

[trash cat]

Can confirm with Tartube (and, consequently, yt-dlp). I was dumping all of Nick Crackieta's channel and at the end there were 403 Forbidden errors for some of the videos. Updating yt-dlp fixed the problem and the dump was completed.

That's good information thanks for sharing it

I think the yt-dlp 403s might have a different technical origin (ip and account blocking, or possibly a region specific rollout ) compared to the third-party app 403s (which appear to originate in the YouTube API)

I base this idea on comparing the recent fix commits for yt-dlp vs. Smarttube

I could be wrong about this, because thankfully I've yet to experience any 403 errors on yt-dlp.

 

[Quandale Octavius Dingle]

Why watch Nickelodeon when Nicktoons had zero ads and seemed permanently suck in the year 2001, back when Nickelodeon was in full swing, and didn’t have any of the sitcoms?

Man that's why I became a pirate. So many great shows that got axed because Spongebob became so popular and filled all the time slots. Then so many great new shows in that 2004-2010 range who got the axe after a single season or two because they didn't instantly become more popular than Spongebob, or got crowded out by all the new garbage sitcoms. Then were shelved with the creators not being able to take the IPs elsewhere to another network like Cartoon Network.
Now if I wanted to re-watch them all it'd be at least $100 a month between Netflix, Amazon Video, Paramount Plus, Hulu, plus that's not even all since some shows are outright unavailable anywhere else. And the kicker is that all those services shove ads into everything so it'd become a de-facto cable bundle all over again.

 

[DickMain]

marketers have determined that annoying, intrusive, unwanted advertising is profitable

Maybe I'm just naive, but I just find this baffling. I get that this is the case, but I will never understand why. Maybe back when I was growing up and had a cable plan you'd have toys and shit that kids would ask about, or maybe some home goods product the parents thought would be handy (or some chinesium garbage grandma would spring for), but I just fail to see who on earth is making the 'modern' internet advertising strategy profitable when you can pluck any Joe off the street and have him tell you it's all garbage. Who the fuck is buying all this shit

 

[GotMail_2000]

I would happily stop using an adblocker on YouTube if there were fewer and shorter ads to endure. Two ads before and after a video is ridiculous. Getting an ad that unskipped is longer than the video I'm about to watch is ridiculous. Tone down the ads and the problem is solved.

If it was like 1 before 1 after, or 2 before or something, no one would have even started blocking them. I think this problem has 2 parts. 1 - More people than ads can really support wanting YouTube to be their job(thus people spamming ads) and 2 - Google incentivising their own ad spam. The first is self-explanatory, but the second is that, YouTube was funded using that "take over now, figure out monetization later" type business model. While trying to figure out monetization, companies figured out that ads weren't worth so much, so then Google had to sell more ads, increasing the ad spam. A symptom of this was that, after a while they started to try and "sell" ad-free YouTube plans, but by that point, the system was short circuited and everyone was ad blocking.

They all deserve it, it's just unsustainable.

 

[EggImpregnator]

This isn't feature worthy.

Suck my fat fucking cock retard nigger

 

[Day of the Cope]

Do you think we will reach a point where they realize that this level of aggression from advertising has a negative impact on the likelihood of a sale?

Oh, they absolutely know. Every single major company has an entire team of bean counters that see if the increased profits from higher prices outweighs the lost revenue from people leaving the service.

 

[Gyptian Sphinx]

I would happily stop using an adblocker on YouTube if there were fewer and shorter ads to endure. Two ads before and after a video is ridiculous. Getting an ad that unskipped is longer than the video I'm about to watch is ridiculous. Tone down the ads and the problem is solved.

Youtube will probably force us to watch 3 ads like twitch or more. Knock on wood

 

[GotMail_2000]

Maybe I'm just naive, but I just find this baffling. I get that this is the case, but I will never understand why. Maybe back when I was growing up and had a cable plan you'd have toys and shit that kids would ask about, or maybe some home goods product the parents thought would be handy (or some chinesium garbage grandma would spring for), but I just fail to see who on earth is making the 'modern' internet advertising strategy profitable when you can pluck any Joe off the street and have him tell you it's all garbage. Who the fuck is buying all this shit

They aren't. Ads started to crash in value, that's why you started to see more of them. Spamming more ads, at least to corporate idiots, seems like a good way to pressure your users into paying for some ad free program, which would be where the real money is, but the problem is they waited so long, and made the prices so high, and the splintering of services is already so great, that they never managed to hook that many whales.

So, in a way, yes, marketers have determined that they are profitable, but they aren't, or aren't to the expected degree or you wouldn't see all these countermeasures to shore up their failings.

Man that's why I became a pirate. So many great shows that got axed because Spongebob became so popular and filled all the time slots. Then so many great new shows in that 2004-2010 range who got the axe after a single season or two because they didn't instantly become more popular than Spongebob, or got crowded out by all the new garbage sitcoms. Then were shelved with the creators not being able to take the IPs elsewhere to another network like Cartoon Network.
Now if I wanted to re-watch them all it'd be at least $100 a month between Netflix, Amazon Video, Paramount Plus, Hulu, plus that's not even all since some shows are outright unavailable anywhere else. And the kicker is that all those services shove ads into everything so it'd become a de-facto cable bundle all over again.

It's not even hard to pirate this stuff, and a bunch of it isn't even available/is in legal limbo. These kinds of services would be valuable if they actually provided valuable back catalogues, but they don't, and stuff on their services can run out or expire, which is the EXACT REASON why you'd subscribe to a back catalogue service, to see things that aren't available elsewhere.

If they don't offer any convenience, the torrent store offers basically everything ever, for free. You need to at least have everything you've aired on one channel, availalbe with that level of immediacy, if you want to charge for it.

 

[moocow]

Maybe I'm just naive, but I just find this baffling. I get that this is the case, but I will never understand why. Maybe back when I was growing up and had a cable plan you'd have toys and shit that kids would ask about, or maybe some home goods product the parents thought would be handy (or some chinesium garbage grandma would spring for), but I just fail to see who on earth is making the 'modern' internet advertising strategy profitable when you can pluck any Joe off the street and have him tell you it's all garbage. Who the fuck is buying all this shit

It's unfortunate, but there's a lot of evidence and research suggesting that bombarding people with endless ads really does work. It's not "subliminal," but pretty close to "unconscious awareness" of what's being blasted at you non-stop even if you don't really think about the content. Even if you go out of your way to consciously avoid buying products you see ads for, you're still thinking about those products and thus awareness is increased. Remember "HeadOn! Apply directly to the forehead!"? I hated those ads, I never once bought the product, but I certainly remember the brand name and the ads. It works. And if you hate it, it works even better.

In fact, smearing ads over every available surface (look at how much shit is plastered on the sides of buses, inside public transit vehicles, shopping malls, etc.) makes you more susceptible to absorbing their content just because you become desensitized to it and it no longer "angers" you the same way seeing just a handful of ads might.

So far, in terms of the marketing world, "saturation bombing" has been the most effective means of advertising. The people who genuinely do get put off by it and driven away from making purchases are such a minority that they're barely a blip on the radar compared to the teeming masses for whom it works perfectly.

 

[crunchy bits are the best]

I won't pay for Jewtube at all. Even my godson is annoyed with the Jewtube ads every time he wants to watch Godzilla or Ninja Turtles. Adblocking will always exist in whatever form despite Google's interference.

 

[Fapcop]

Can anyone recommend a YouTube add blocker for Mac?

Might just try it out.

YouTube is trash these days anyways. It used to be a whole ocean of interesting and cool stuff that you could dive into.

Todays it’s more like a shitty, dirty local lake. Ads everywhere, and it’s all surface level deep.

 

[Marsh Rabbit]

The industrial revolution and it's consequences. It's hard to believe that a mere 200 years ago, advertising was nearly unheard of and, where it was heard of, deeply shameful.

 

[Taser Confetti]

I'm still successfully blocking ads with Google Chrome and uBlock Origin. Was uBlock patched immediately or are they rolling things out this regionally?

 

[Greasy Goblin]

These “right to repair” faggots are like evangelical Christians with how fanatic and preachy they are.

And the worst part is: They act like Apple/Samsung/whatever somehow owe them anything.

You want to be able to repair something?

Go for it! Buy that massive chunk of a laptop that you can replace everything in.

Instead these faggots go out and purchase a laptop that’s literally the opposite, and then whine and complain endlessly that the engineers designing it prioritized a thin design over being able to take out the battery yourself.

Gee, sorry for wanting you to have hardware that's both quality and affordable. If you want to piss away your money renting hardware from Apple for the rest of your life, by all means, but don't try to drag the rest of us down with you.

Can anyone recommend a YouTube add blocker for Mac?

It's usually at the browser level, grandpa, but Brave browser https://laptop-updates.brave.com/latest/osx has an abblock built-in, and ublock origin https://ublockorigin.com/ is regarded as the best extension at the moment

 

[LarpBait]

I cannot wait to download Mr.Beast-I.Built.100.Houses.And.Gave.Them.Away!.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H264-AOC off the pirate bay to get my ad free content.
So long as content is sent to my machine, I will be able to download and watch it on my own terms. YouTube's failed business model is not my problem.

 

[trash cat]

marketers have determined that annoying, intrusive, unwanted advertising is profitable

Agreed. The advertising doesn't have to be sophisticated (necessarily). They just need repetition.

Plus if you're a Fortune 500 and you parrot the orthodoxy through your advertising, you get rewarded with access to the money spigot.

Modern advertising is about controlling what people think, as much as it is about selling a product.

By the way, you called it a couple of months ago, when you said YouTube would crack down on adblockers. I'm glad I got a head start on my content downloading.

This should definitely be a wake up call for everyone to download whatever YouTube content they consider valuable.