The number of ads I had popping up while trying to read that article isn't discouraging me from using adblockers.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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This is actually one of my favorite websites to browse on desktop through my VPN and extreme DNS blocking solution. The console just fills with blocked content and JavaScript errors, it really warms my heart.
If you see an ad, close the tab.
Literally the only way they will learn. I really don't understand how we as a society have accepted ads as a necessary evil. We all hate them, but we all also make them work. It's horrible.
I've been wondering for a while where the point of diminishing returns is. Surely, at some point, ads become aggressive enough to have an adverse effect on advertisers?
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All these sites monitor engagement, they walk the line between maximum ads and users. If we decrease the users, they'll decrease the ads to try and keep us.
LOL, nah. If we decrease the users, they'll increase the ads to try to compensate for declining revenue. They believe they have all the power and don't give a fuck what we think.
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Lemme try and feel sorry for my cartoonishly rich tech overlords real quick.........
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If the Google war on ad blocking meant the ad blockers accidently blocked something everyone wants its still Google fault.
Everything was fine until Google decided to change how everything works over and over again to get people to watch the awful ads they let on their platform.
Googlees don't "let" ads on their platform. Ads are the entire reason for the existence of their platform.
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I’m sure that the number of times I’ve decided “nah I don’t need to see that” after being told an ad blocker violated YouTube’s terms of service has absolutely nothing to do with it either.
Even on a computer without ad blocker (work laptop, chrome browser)
the number of times i say "nah i don't need to see that" as soon as thes annoying ads comes up before the video...
The decline probably has very little to do with ad blockers.
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For those curious what “adblockers said really happened”:
[AdGuard] suggested that the issue may have been linked to popular community-maintained filter lists like EasyList and uBlock’s Quick Fixes.
A new filter rule added to EasyList on August 11, 2025 targeted telemetry requests thought to be tied to YouTube’s view attribution and analytics.
That rule remained in place until September 10, when it was temporarily disabled.
A similar change was added to uBlock’s Quick Fixes on September 10 and removed on September 17.
OK. I mean Fuck Alphabet anyhow, but this means a youtuber who relies on view counts for monetary income (I guess) would actually have reason to worry about adblockers?
Again, I'm not saying I'm against adblockers or even this particular feature. And I very well see what Google is doing here, trying to get their creators up in arms against adblocking. I just want to know if this is debunkable or if youtubers would have a genuine argument here.
I did not really understand above explanation. I guess I need it ELI5.
Basically Youtube instead of counting views via actual requests for the videos instead uses a separate call that essentially says "hey, someone watched this video". All the ad blockers rather than use a hard coded list of URLs to block which would quickly go stale instead use one of a couple different 3rd party lists the most popular of which is EasyList. EasyList decided to block the URL that youtube uses to register views on the principal that it was a privacy violation because it not only registers "hey someone watched this" but also captures exactly who watched it which allows Google to track your viewing habits.
It wouldn't matter whether it was intentional or not. Put simply, Google can continue indirectly punishing creators for tolerating adblockers then redirect blame, even though they could have easily separated the metrics from the advertising and telemetry endpoints that blockers filtered. This way they get their money either from unblocked ads or from creator's reduced view counts, win-win for Google.
As an added bonus for Google, by ensuring view metrics get fucked up, it double punishes creators featuring sponsored content that rely on those metrics to determine how much the sponsor should pay them. Meanwhile Google could, in theory, sell ad placements attached to their own internal metrics that differ from the affected ones publicly visible.
So you're saying Google packaged the viewcount that's relevant to monetization into a 3rd party js data request instead of just counting the actual video's views, and so manages to play content creators against privacy-conscious users?
Worthy of a Roman Emperor, that.
See that's the fun part. Google is the ad company so it's all 1st party data. Google can package the Trojan horse however they please, which why it's such a fine line for the blockers to walk.
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Tldr: youtube forced ai into video monitoring and it keeps killing videos it shouldn't, so instead of saying Ai is bad they're blaming af blockers because why not lie when there's no repercussions?
YouTube views are dropping because they are using AI to vet and cull age innappropriate content from minors. the problem is the ai is very bad at its job and marks way too many videos as not advertiser friendly, which effectively kills YouTube promoting that video in feeds. this is the default view for new accounts, so you have to specifically turn off parental controls to see a normal feed. this started happening about 4 months ago. a number of channels I watch have made comments about this, including Redlettermedia
I don't understand:
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What is 'AI in video monitoring?'
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The article mentions literally nothing about this, so where did that come from?
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Not saying I don't believe that's what's happening, but the article mentions nothing about any sort of YouTube AI interference.
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frustrated by ads that feel irrelevant
What?
Do they think we have a friend-or-foe system that only shoots down advertisements from adversaries?
An ad is an ad, and should be terminated on sight.
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Google know who they're streaming videos to. They know this from the back-end. They absolutely do not require a script running in the browser to phone home about it in order to count "views". All the telemetry they need they can get from existing traffic; the additional telemetry supplied by scripts is mostly just for Bad Reasons and it's morally fine to block it.
Blocking ads for decades everywhere, life is sooo goood without that cancer.
P.S. The only place were ads should appear are "yellow pages" thing, for example messenger channels just for that, where you intentionally join to look for local deals, discounts, contractors etc, especially to support local economy and not some megacorp. And ofc current google spying is not helping, block the ads, block trackers, it ruins the "steal the data" model.
Didn't age verification - also recently implemented - cause youtube views to drop?
Here's a case of it very well explained.
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It's gotten to the point where I have to re-load each YT tab three times before the video ever starts playing - only because I use uBlock.
Still better than watching ads, but it is getting annoying.
I have a theory that YT deliberately makes you wait the length an ad would have been if you have uBlock Origin installed. Ive just let it "buffer" for 30 seconds or so and it will eventually load the video.
I'd rather watch nothing than an ad trying to sell me something.
Still better tbh
I am fine if it means I don't have to watch some scam ass ad.
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I have the same problem, and after you start clicking play, often you can wait it out and the video will eventually play on its own after 10-15 seconds
This mostly happens when you use youtube while being logged into a google account.
I fixed this by using firefox containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/switch-container/
- logout from google / clear cookies.
- switch to a new "google" container and login to see your subscrpitions
- if a video doesn't load switch to decontained
also has the nice benefit of not messing up your reccomendations when clicking on random yt-links from other sites
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(shrug) don't care if it affects views, never should have had them in videos regardless.
The only real alternatives to ads are either paying for the content, or having someone else pay for you. The latter is the case with something like PeerTube - someone else is covering the cost of the server and bandwidth without asking you for payment, and the creator doesn't get money from you just watching the video.
Paying to access content makes a lot more sense that hoping someone willingly watches an advert on their own hardware.
An indirect, alternate could be universal basic income - which makes it easier for people to choose less profitable options.
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i really don’t care
rather do without than with ads
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*Goolag shooting itself on foot be like.
The dev community is just adapting to shit thrown.
YouTube is completely broken on my Apple TV — the last platform I have which actually does display ads. When the app loads, I get a black screen. When I tap on a video (click on it? on the remote?) it goes black, stutters through an ad, stutters through the next one, then stutters through the video for a couple seconds. Sometimes I have to start the video over. If I were running an ad blocker, I would expect static like this... but I'm not. I don't have a PiHole. The Apple TV has direct, unfiltered access to my WiFi. The ads are showing, but the app is just... broken. On my computers (Macs) I get a perfect experience, because I use Firefox with uBlock Origin like a sane person who knows what they're doing.
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At least we know one thing that didn't cause it.
Thanks for that hint on decoding your shitty blackbox google.
I don't use ad blockers, just normal YouTube. One thing I noticed about a month ago is that when I'm watching some silly video a 55 second ad will come on with about three minutes left to view on the video. It's at that point I usually just back out and look for other videos to watch. My grandson told me it seems odd because YouTube monetization requires the whole video to be viewed before they'll pay. Does this make sense? I don't know much about "monetization" I just watch silly videos.
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