this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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I'm confused, if ublock origin and sponsor block and all those are bypassing this, then who is it actually targeting?
have you ever searched "ad blocker" on your browser of choice's extension store and scrolled down? or had a cheap/free VPN that advertised ad blocking functionality?
those. for some reason people install those. and they never get updates.
(some of them are actual malware too)
Not sure what you're on about, Google is absolutely capable of detecting if you're using Ublock Origin, Piped, ReVanced, whatever. The question isn't if they CAN break those things, it's just if they WILL.
And if they're beta testing this system right now, I'd say it's just a matter of time.
Lately, I've been getting 403 errors in Newpipe after a video has been playing for about a minute. I think they're starting.
Yep, they are ramping up to disable all of the scripts and extensions.
They are capable of detecting it because they aren't putting much effort into being undetectable. If there was a need, uBlock Origin itself could be made entirely undetectable.
Of course the YouTube script running in your browser will be able to detect changes made to the page and request blocking. However, the said script can be modified by a different extension to either receive incorrect data about blocked requests and page information, or to send a fabricated result back to the server. Google can react to it by modifying the script, and the extension would need to adapt accordingly. It's a game of cat and mouse.
If there was a need, we could have YouTube running in an entirely clean headless browser with no adblockers, while the real browser we use pulls data from it and strips out the ads.
Ultimately, currently we have the last word on what happens on our end. Unfortunately, Google's webDRM, pushed by traitors to humanity Ben Wiser, Borbala Benko, Philipp Pfeiffenberge and Sergey Kataev, is trying to change that.
Oh, they absolutely are capable of telling if you have uBlock Origin installed. However, uBlock is also capable of blocking scripts, so you can make a filter to block whatever part of the scripts on the page it is that detect your adblocker. I've never seen an anti-adblocker that didn't use Javascript, and the great thing about Javascript is that your browser can just... Ignore it.
It would be pretty trivial for them to just block playback completely for any agent that's blocking their ad scripts. Or make their ad videos indistinguishable from the actually video you want.
The question isn't CAN they enforce this, it's WILL they enforce this? Thus far we've been succeeding at this cat-and-mouse game simply because the cat is too fat and lazy to chase us. But this cat is looking more hungry and motivated every day....we'll see.
Ad publishers have been in a war with adblockers for a decade now, were it trivial to detect adblockers, they would have already won. This is the sole reason Google has introduced the idea of DRM for websites.
In fact, the only trivial thing is bypassing anti-adblock. There is no anti-adblock that relies upon Javascript that cannot be bypassed without issue. The way Javascript is executed on the user's computer, unobfuscated, means it can be altered in whatever way you want before it is ran.
It drives me mad when I use PCs of friends and relatives and I see AdBlock Plus installed, but they still get ads and they never seem to stop and wonder why this "ad blocker" is not working! I do however enjoy their facial expressions when I install uBlock Origin for them and start refreshing pages.
They want to frame it so that internet ID is the solution. That way you as a person can be banned, not just the account or ip. Good luck buying and selling when everything becomes digital and you get banned.