YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
At least for me, and as far as I know, Pihole doesn’t block YouTube ads. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong because I’d love a network-level solution. Currently just have uBlock Origin for blocking YT ads.
uBlock Origin does a good job for me. On occasion, I will try watching YouTube on a platform where I don’t have it and I’m amazed how unwatchable it is. This reminds me to try to find alternate platforms for watching the creators I care about. Nebula is a good option for a lot of them, although it probably will never have the variety YouTube has. I haven’t tried PeerTube yet…I suspect I will run into the same issue.
The problem is that unlike a lot of other ads YouTube serves its ads from YouTube.com and because of SSL PiHole can only act on YouTube.com as a whole, so there’s no way to block just the ads without blocking all of the site.
Yup. Pi-hole does DNS-level blocking which would only work if YouTube put their ads on some separate (sub)domain.
I actually experimented the other day by turning off ublock origin and letting Pi-hole try to do the work, but I saw ads.
Theoretically, YouTube could set up their infrastructure in such a way as to put the ads in the video stream you receive, but that is complex and has other risks and trade offs.
I’m certainly not an expert in this, but surely there are ways to get around this right? Pihole? Could ad blockers fake ads being played?
Yes. I give it like a week before the FOSS community figures out how to bypass again. LOL.
At least for me, and as far as I know, Pihole doesn’t block YouTube ads. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong because I’d love a network-level solution. Currently just have uBlock Origin for blocking YT ads.
uBlock Origin does a good job for me. On occasion, I will try watching YouTube on a platform where I don’t have it and I’m amazed how unwatchable it is. This reminds me to try to find alternate platforms for watching the creators I care about. Nebula is a good option for a lot of them, although it probably will never have the variety YouTube has. I haven’t tried PeerTube yet…I suspect I will run into the same issue.
Pihole will not block YouTube ads. I think it’s incapable of doing so without blocking YouTube.
The problem is that unlike a lot of other ads YouTube serves its ads from YouTube.com and because of SSL PiHole can only act on YouTube.com as a whole, so there’s no way to block just the ads without blocking all of the site.
I can confirm this - the content comes from the same DNS name as the ads, this means pihole cannot distinguish between them
The solution then falls on something like ublock origin - sadly layers of ad blocking is needed in this day and age
Yup. Pi-hole does DNS-level blocking which would only work if YouTube put their ads on some separate (sub)domain.
I actually experimented the other day by turning off ublock origin and letting Pi-hole try to do the work, but I saw ads.
Theoretically, YouTube could set up their infrastructure in such a way as to put the ads in the video stream you receive, but that is complex and has other risks and trade offs.