[HN Gopher] YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you se...
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the
future?
Author : taxyovio
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-05-19 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adguard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adguard.com)
| tambeb wrote:
| It's because of things like this--not to mention the added
| overhead/middleman--that I think ad blocking at the DNS level is
| the best way to go. With both Android and iOS supporting
| encrypted DNS system-wide, blocking at the DNS level is more
| convenient than ever (mobile & wifi are covered, no need to set
| DNS for each wifi network, etc.).
|
| I realize of course, though, that DNS level blocking is mostly a
| non-starter with regards to YouTube since the ads are served up
| from the same domains as the videos (mostly? generally? not
| certain here).
| tyingq wrote:
| If, at some point, all we have is hostnames and url lists to
| block with, the ad folks will figure out how to unblock
| themselves.
| tambeb wrote:
| I run my own little ad blocking DNS service and the thing I'm
| probably most concerned about is websites/publishers/etc.
| deciding to serve their ad and user tracking assets from
| their own domains. Though most would probably need--or choose
| --to use subdomains and be easily blockable all over again.
| bozzcl wrote:
| Same here, I can think of a million ways to circumvent DNS
| blocking. The good thing is, most sites are not gonna adopt
| them very quickly. Besides, DNS blocking would have value
| even if all sites started doing that: there's plenty of
| malware/phishing domains to be blocked and I don't think
| those have better alternatives!
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I run a Pi-Hole on my local network, and I still see YouTube
| ads -- they're served from the same CDN as the videos. The way
| in which YT delivers ads (pre-, mid-, and post-roll videos on
| the same CDN/domain as the content) seems, on the surface, to
| thwart any type of static ad detection.
| Dah00n wrote:
| This is more of a rant on Pi-hole than related to Youtube ads
| but...
|
| Pi-hole can be fine but it isn't effective if you want it to
| block not only the lowest hanging fruits which a browser
| adblocker could easily block too but also stuff that doesn't
| follow the rules and might use hardcoded DNS IPs if they
| can't get the reply they want from the DNS server. With some
| Windows PC's, Apple devices, Chromecasts and Androids I
| quickly saw Pi-hole hang because of tens of thousands of
| requests if I tried to force all DNS through it. Because I'm
| a geek I turned to my homelab instead of the RPI4 and ended
| up with two nginx load balancers with two Pi-holes behind
| each (yes, 4 Pi-holes). Even though they were now running in
| virtual machines on a dual Xeon HP Proliant they still died
| when they got flooded. The hardware could easily take the
| hammering of requests but the software not so much (often the
| counter skyrocketed to 40000 requests before it died). Now I
| just block 100% of DNS requests at the gateway/firewall
| (OPNsense) instead and oh boy does it catch and log a lot of
| stuff the Pi-hole didn't. The amount of software that use
| hardcoded DNS, make example.com requests and try to reach RFC
| TEST-NET IPs is just staggering.
|
| Sorry about the rant but just in case you didn't know that
| Pi-hole is only effective against good network citizens like,
| well, now you know.
| jcastro wrote:
| Have you tried self hosted adguard? It's very performant
| and can use any of the lists you can use with pihole:
| https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
|
| Switched a few years ago and it's great!
| bozzcl wrote:
| Last year, I added firewall rules to my router to block:
|
| * Any outbound DNS and DNS-over-TLS requests coming from
| anything other than my Pi-Hole * Any outbound HTTPS
| requests to DNS-over-HTTPS providers that I know of
|
| It's surprising how many hits I got to those block rules.
| Makes me very worried about the adoption of DoH: all its
| privacy and anti-tampering advantages also apply to devices
| that violate privacy, like smartphones and smart TVs. I
| want to keep those under control.
|
| I'm curious about your setup: how many devices do you have
| in your network that you need a load-balanced Pi-Hole
| setup!? My RPi4 has been rock-solid, but it sounds it
| doesn't have to handle nearly as much load as yours. Makes
| me wonder if my next hardware purchase should be a small
| server to host a hypervisor instead of a single RPi.
| happybuy wrote:
| Part of the problem - as AdGuard concedes in the post - is that
| Easy List (which AdGuard and many other ad blockers use) is a
| woefully inefficient rule list with over 50,000 entries. Many of
| which are out of date, redundant and not optimised for
| performance.
|
| This leads to excessive memory use and performance slowdowns and
| is one of the reasons why there is a 50,000 rule limit in the
| Safari Content Blocking API.
|
| As a developer of an alternate ad blocker[1] for the iPhone, iPad
| and Mac you can deliver a full featured, quality ad blocker with
| less than 5,000 core rules. This provides a faster and more
| efficient ad blocking experience.
|
| As they note however, YouTube ad blocking is a more difficult
| problem to solve, but can be done cleanly on macOS. At least at
| the moment it can't be done 100% on iOS without Apple rolling out
| some additional features to Safari on that platform.
|
| [1] https://www.magiclasso.co/
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never
| ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the
| premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is
| to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make
| a living from YouTube videos.
|
| Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but
| you're not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not
| served for free (even if Google is not short on cash)
| wayneftw wrote:
| I would pay to get rid of ads. The only problem is that I would
| need to log into YouTube to take advantage of that.
|
| If I log into YouTube, that requires me to be logged into
| Google everywhere and I do not want that at all. The only
| solution is to use Firefox containerization or use separate
| browsers or separate browser profiles for things and I'm not
| going to do any of those because all of those options are
| annoying to me.
|
| If my ad blocker stops working on YouTube and/or if they
| require me to login, I'll simply stop visiting YouTube. There's
| plenty of other things to do!
| sharps1 wrote:
| I have a separate profile that is set-up for Google (In
| Brave). You could also use a container tab if using Firefox
| (Or even a profile, but FF profiles don't work as well as
| Brave ones).
|
| You can also see the YouTube creators who have BAT accounts
| set-up.
|
| I do pay for YT premium family as well as I don't want other
| family members to see ads.
|
| Regarding FF profiles - if using more than one at a time, you
| need to set the others to -no-remote, and then opening links
| only ever opens up in the main windows. In chromium browsers
| when opening outside links whatever browser profile that had
| focus last opens the links).
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google Contributor allowed exactly this, and after setting it
| up you did not need to be logged in to use it.
|
| It's closed down now due to internal politics.
| rchaud wrote:
| > If I log into YouTube, that requires me to be logged into
| Google everywhere and I do not want that at all.
|
| You can use Firefox Containers to sandbox Google logins.
|
| Alternatively, you can use a different browser when accessing
| Google-owned websites.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I think even with YouTube taking a large cut, people should
| really consider Premium if they use it a lot. It means that
| there will actually be something to back up the claim people
| make that they would pay to not have sites serve them ads.
|
| Also Premium views are worth more to content creators than ad
| supported views, so it does help the people you love to watch.
| Not as much as through something like Patreon obviously, but
| it's a bit unreasonable to support _every_ creator that way.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| One of the reasons I justify spending money on Premium is
| that it supports the creators. I get a bunch of people who
| think it's silly I pay for Premium, but I really hate
| watching ads so for me that alone makes it worthwhile.
|
| One channel I really like I have the youtube membership and
| pateron subscriptions. It's a UK true crime podcast that does
| every recording with professional camera and audio in a
| recording studio. Seems like it's expensive to do and I get a
| lot of entertainment out of them so seems fair to help them
| out a bit more, especially since most of their videos
| probably get demonetized.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| How do I find out what portion of a subscription goes to a
| creator?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the
| premium option which removes ads._
|
| Even if you pay for premium, you'll still get sponsored ads in
| the content.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| All of that started because people were ad blocking in the
| first place. More competition and less eyeballs meant CPMs
| have been crashing for decades now.
|
| Sure, you can do it (piracy is okay too) but let the creators
| support themselves somehow.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| There are some programs/videos that are only available on
| premium and do not include sponsored content.
| falcolas wrote:
| That's on the creator, and no ad blocker will stop sponsored
| content.
| Dah00n wrote:
| SponsorBlock will. It does require someone to flag the ads
| first though but so does most ads on adblocker lists.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google could certainly detect when sponsored ads start in
| YouTube content and skip them to honor their "no ads"
| agreement with YouTube Premium customers.
|
| That, or they could pay content creators fairly so that
| they don't have to shill for NordVPN in every video they
| release.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm not confident any automated system could properly
| detect a sponsored segment. Some creators are quite sly
| with how they're worked in.
|
| > pay content creators fairly so that they don't have to
| shill for NordVPN in every video they release.
|
| I'm with you on that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'm not confident any automated system could properly
| detect a sponsored segment. Some creators are quite sly
| with how they're worked in._
|
| SponsorBlock does it, and Google could make it part of
| their policy for content creators to mark sponsored ad
| segments in their videos so that they can be skipped.
| patrickyeon wrote:
| No ad blocking is going to get rid of that though, until you
| run something analyzing the actual video/audio content and
| not just the source of streams or how they're loaded.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This exists and was posted on HN recently[1]. If an
| extension developer can detect when sponsored ads play on
| YouTube, so could Google.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26886275
| ziml77 wrote:
| SponsorBlock doesn't detect sponsored segments. Users
| mark the segments and submit them to a database.
|
| If Google did try to automate it, you can be sure that
| people would just move to integrating the sponsorship
| into the content. Those are the worst kind of videos and
| I don't want to encourage more of them.
| phantom784 wrote:
| There's an extension called SponsorBlock that does exactly
| that. It uses user-submitted timestamps.
| namdnay wrote:
| Yeah and when you pay for a cinema ticket you still have to
| see the actors drinking conveniently angled cans of coke
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's a difference between product placement and
| intrusive ads that interrupt content for minutes at a time.
| YouTube Premium customers paid to get rid of the latter.
| paxys wrote:
| YouTube Premium customers paid to get rid of ads placed
| by YouTube. A simple solution for channels that embed ads
| in their videos themselves (or have any other kind of
| content that you don't like for any reason) is to simply
| unsubscribe.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Yes but that is like not visiting a site after you found
| out it uses tracking or like peeing in your pants for
| warmth. It only work if you never see videos you haven't
| already subscribed to beforehand.
| cpeterso wrote:
| I watch YouTube on my TV and the ads are annoying enough that I
| actually looked into subscribing to YouTube Premium to make the
| ads go away (and better support the content creators I follow).
| But I'm not ready to pay YouTube $12/month just to make ads go
| away. I would probably pay $5/month. Netflix's basic plan only
| costs $9/month.
| decasteve wrote:
| Serving videos without ads was how YouTube's monopoly was
| built. It became an ad platform later. That created an
| expectation that YouTube was a library in the public interest.
| Pre-2010 Google marketing had that public interest and internet
| stewardship angle to it.
|
| Serving content over the web assumes that the content will be
| downloaded by a browser for rendering. Control over what and
| how that content gets rendered is controlled by the user. I
| think this aspect made, and still does make in the present
| tense, the web what it is. That's why the browser is called a
| user-agent--an agent that acts on behalf of the user.
|
| YouTube could also move to another protocol, or develop a
| proprietary one to protect its interests. Otherwise it feels
| like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
| topicseed wrote:
| You're mentioning the end user's learned expectation to get
| videos for free.
|
| But what about the creator's expectation to get paid for
| their hard-earned views, to then pay for the gear purchased
| and the production of the entire video, including team
| members?
|
| If you're really anti ads, don't take the content for free,
| find another piece of content that answers your ad-free
| philosophy.
| decasteve wrote:
| I'm saying platforms can't have it both ways. If they want
| to avoid ad-blockers and video downloaders then pick
| another medium, or invent one and create a new thing that
| achieves this objective. The web is not TV. Public content
| on the web is public and user-rendered. That's what made
| the web and YouTube what it is today.
|
| YouTube has every right to create a proprietary YouTube
| client (which they do on mobile devices) and prevent
| browsers from accessing it. Don't serve files to my browser
| if you don't want me to use them.
|
| Creators, for better or worse, are putting themselves at
| the mercy of YouTube, as serfs to feudal lords. I'm
| sympathetic, and happy to pay (and do) for your goods
| directly, but don't complain to me if your lord mismanages
| your affairs.
|
| Even TV users had VCRs to save content "offline".
| topicseed wrote:
| Sure, it is all on YouTube/Google's fault if you decide
| to install an adblocker and not participate in the
| compensation of the creator who made the very video you
| are enjoying.
|
| Definitely not illegal to do so, so do as you please, but
| don't turn yourself into a white knight by some mental
| gymnastics with the sementics behind what a user agent
| is. You want to enjoy the video without ads, regardless
| of the consequences on the creator who made that video --
| and accessorily, the service hosting it and streaming it
| to you!
| mullingitover wrote:
| > If you're really anti ads, don't take the content for
| free, find another piece of content that answers your ad-
| free philosophy.
|
| Google is in the process of breaking this deal themselves -
| they're now adding ads to videos which users did not opt to
| monetize, and they're keeping 100% of the revenue. Taking
| the content for free, if you will.
| topicseed wrote:
| They, at least, offer a free hosting service. Not ideal
| to monetize on the back of the creator's work, but it's
| not comparable with friendly piracy rationalised through
| semantics behind what User Agent means (as per parent
| comment).
| afavour wrote:
| [deleted]
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| They didn't say they don't have a premium option. They said
| that for users buying Premium is the right thing to do if you
| don't want ads.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| $15.99
| csunbird wrote:
| But Google is going to use my data for advertising, with or
| without premium. An adblocker gives me the luxury of not seeing
| ads while keeping my data private.
| sofixa wrote:
| Maybe it's only for the EU, but on adsettings.google.com you
| cab tell it _not_ to use personalised data for ads.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Google still has the data though.
| [deleted]
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| No. Fuck your corporation worshipping lunacy. Youtube should be
| forcibly nationalized and transformed into an ad-free taxpayer-
| funded instrument of the first amendment with zero censorship.
| All youtube data centers should be raided and seized by the US
| military. Hand a golden parachute to anyone at google who might
| be upset about this. If they're still upset after the privilege
| of retiring wealthy and early then it proves they had
| treasonous intent all along and they should be hanged.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| YouTube has the right to send or not send the file to my
| computer. My browser has the right to process the video on my
| behalf, including not showing it to me if it is an ad.
|
| My right to decide what my purchased computer does trumps
| YouTube's right to make a few cents by showing me ads.
| anticristi wrote:
| I would, but:
|
| 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to
| Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for
| their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given
| point 2 below.
|
| 2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so
| it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators.
|
| So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll
| be happy to disable my ad blocker and start paying membership.
| graftak wrote:
| 3. It includes a music subscription that makes it more
| expensive than Netflix, I find this quite insane considering
| they're in the business of hosting user generated content.
| paxys wrote:
| Patreon has different plans which take anywhere from 5-12%.
| On top of that they charge payment processing fees and bank
| transfer fees. In terms of service you are getting nothing
| but a profile page. A flat 30% fee is considered standard for
| most online marketplaces.
|
| Considering how much more complex and expensive video hosting
| is, and everything else YouTube offers, I don't think a 45%
| cut is unreasonable. In fact YouTube does have direct paid
| channel memberships (which is a much closer business model to
| Patreon), and for that they take 30%.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| > I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big
|
| YouTube is offering up the tech behind streaming the videos,
| the storage, the bandwidth, the development work on both the
| client and server ends, and the ongoing payment processing.
| As well as the audience install-base. And this isn't a
| situation where the end users are paying for the software via
| buying hardware from Google (Pixels being the exception) like
| it would be with just an app store. YouTube provides far more
| than anyone else. And they make the money to do so via
| advertising. You're paying the money in place of YouTube's
| revenue stream in addition to the money going to the
| creators.
|
| Patreon is mostly a payment processor and gatekeeper. They
| don't host videos or provide any of the other services
| mentioned above. To host videos, the creator pays another
| provider like Vimeo $84 a year for 5GB/week in uploads to
| $600 for unlimited video uploads. Live streaming is $900 a
| year.
| ska wrote:
| While this is all true, it doesn't obviously counter the
| GP's contention. It's a good argument as to why YouTube's
| cut isn't the same as Patreon's, but that doesn't mean that
| 45% isn't to high.
| sofixa wrote:
| Considering Youtube _probably_ doesn 't break even (
| Alphabet don't list YouTube expenses separately, only
| revenues, which is suspicious), and the _vast_ majority
| of content on YouTube is thoroughly unmarketable and
| unprofitable ( think vacation videos, school lessons,
| etc.), maybe, maybe not?
| ska wrote:
| I agree it's not clear.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to
| Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more
| for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially
| given point 2 below._
|
| Agreed. If we look at the Bandcamp model, they only take 10%
| to 15%, and that's still high compared to Patreon.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Bandcamp starts at 15% and goes down to 10% after you cross
| $5,000 per year in digital sales. Payment processing fees
| are separate and an additional 4-6% according to Bandcamp.
| So fees start at 19%-21% and go down to 14%-16% once you
| exceed $5,000 in sales per 12 month period.
| falcolas wrote:
| YouTube subscription views are worth far more to the creator
| (some 10x (I've even heard 100x from some creators) more)
| than full ad views within the same video.
|
| So, regardless of YouTube's cut, it's much more valuable to
| the creator, and valuable to you (no embedded ads). Win win,
| at least until an alternative arises.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect in the big picture this is not true.
|
| The kind of people with disposable income to give for paid
| subscriptions are far better targets for nearly all
| adverts, since they are far more likely to buy the premium
| products that have a far larger and budget, and therefore
| give the creator more per impression.
|
| I don't think YouTube reveals to creators enough
| information about which audience members generated which
| revenue for them to make that connection.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I understand I pirate software. You shouldn't have to justify
| why you are not paying them anything. You clearly want it for
| free.
|
| I would rather pay them nothing and complain how much someone
| else is takin as well.
| namdnay wrote:
| Now give me a bit of slack here, because I'm arguing a
| position I don't necessarily 100% believe in, and I don't pay
| for youtube red myself. But your argument sounds a bit to me
| like someone saying "I think this supermarket takes a too big
| cut on these apples, maybe if they split the price 50-50 with
| the growers I'd be happy to pay, but as it is I think I'll
| just take them for free"
| [deleted]
| thrwawy12345 wrote:
| Eh, it's more like the grocery store is firing apples off
| into public airspace, wrapped in invoices. Many people pay
| the invoiced amount but some don't.
| anticristi wrote:
| While I do agree that I deprive Google of some revenue, not
| watching ads is not stealing. Otherwise, whole US would be
| in jail for going to the toilet during Friends commercials.
| :) Ad blockers simply automate that process for me.
|
| I love supporting creators via Patreon. I hate feeding a
| giant that will any day turn against both creaters and
| viewers.
|
| Not sure if I'm rationalising or defending creators.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Your pretending to care about creators but giving them
| nothing. If you stopped visiting youtube but used other
| platforms and gave sure.. but it doesn't sound like that
| is happening.
| anticristi wrote:
| I'm not pretending. I support my favourite creators via
| Patreon. Feels more than "nothing". :)
| Silhouette wrote:
| The arguments that blocking ads are somehow unethical or
| depriving a business providing a hosting service of its
| cut of ad revenue hold very little weight for me.
|
| If a service wants to ensure viewers pay, it would be
| easy enough for any organisation with the resources to
| offer large-scale video hosting in the first place to put
| the content behind a paywall and earn revenue actively
| from giving access to that content. That way, access
| without paying would be more difficult and, in most
| places, probably illegal.
|
| But these services typically don't do that. Why?
| Presumably they have made a decision that offering the
| content openly is in their interests, even if they then
| have to rely on passive revenue channels such as ads,
| affiliate/referral payments, or promoting associated
| brands.
|
| In that case, I don't think they have much right to
| complain when a lot of people access the content they
| make freely available in legal ways but without
| contributing to indirect revenue streams when they have
| no obligation to do so.
| creato wrote:
| > 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to
| Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more
| for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially
| given point 2 below.
|
| You can't be serious with this comparison. Patreon's
| bandwidth, storage, and processing needs are a rounding error
| compared to youtube, even after adjusting for the number of
| users.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Removing whatever Ublock Origin needed to exist in Safari is one
| of the dumbest moves Apple has made.
|
| To get most of the battery advantages of Macs you're forced to
| use Safari. But when it comes down to having to see YouTube ads
| I'm willing to make the tradeoff and switch to Chrome.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Frankly I just hate the idea of YouTube creators getting paid
| for their work.
|
| /s
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Would migrating to the modern Safari extension API, which permits
| JavaScript injection into pages, be a better path forward here
| for this website modification tool?
| ameshkov wrote:
| Safari on macOS supports executing custom JS on web pages since
| forever, regardless of what version of API is used.
|
| It's not supported on iOS, though.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Ah. Thanks!
| teekert wrote:
| I just switched from Android and I love iOS (iPhone 12 mini). But
| man do I miss Firefox (the real one, not the Safari skin) and man
| do I miss f-droid (specifically gems like GadgetBridge). If only
| I could have those 2 things.
| wffurr wrote:
| There's Cydia: https://cydia-app.com/
|
| And if you have a Mac, you can build and install apps on your
| own device with Xcode. No Apple developer paid account
| required.
|
| AltStore does something similar by signing IPA files with your
| personal key: https://altstore.io/.
| cgb223 wrote:
| Has anyone used iOS browsers with adblocking built in?
|
| How do Firefox and Brave compare to Adguard or 1BlockerX?
|
| Any other browsers out there that do a better job?
| ameshkov wrote:
| All those browsers have to use Safari (WKWebView) internally so
| they are close.
|
| There's an important difference, these browsers can also run
| additional JS on web pages and partly compensate for missing
| content blocking capabilities. This could help to an extent,
| but I am not sure if the said browsers do that.
| viktorcode wrote:
| There's some misconceptions being put forth in the article which
| I, as a developer of a Safari ad blocker, would like to address.
|
| Content blockers are limited by design to ensure privacy and
| speed, but they may work together with other kinds of Safari
| extension. So, when AdGuard guys say that the only debugging tool
| you can use is Console, know that this isn't true. There's
| SFSafariExtensionHandler API which you can use with blockers as
| another extension with higher privileges to track who blocked
| what. Very handy in debugging (and informative for the user).
|
| Should I say that converting something like EasyList to Safari
| content blocker json is trivial? It is. Granted, ABP has more
| capabilities in its extended syntax, so you won't be able to
| convert everything. There's also some rules that don't match 1 to
| 1, but it isn't something that can't be solved.
|
| Compiling speed, for the process that happens once the blocker
| rules json is changed, is irrelevant for the users, unlike
| battery life. Thanks to the compilation, content blockers have
| less overhead.
|
| The number of rules limit is a non-issue. As explained in the
| original, EasyList has lot of mergeable rules. I may add that it
| has some overlapping rules too. And if for whatever reason you
| hit 50k limit, you can add another content blocker extension to
| your app.
|
| And the most important thing. It seems that AdGuard guys don't
| get why content blockers in Safari don't run scripts. It's
| privacy. But Safari itself doesn't prevent you from doing that,
| only not as a part of content blocker extension that is privacy-
| safe.
|
| Speaking of YouTube ads, yeah, it's a pain point. By blocking
| resources you can get to the point where an ad will be a white
| screen or a video loading delay. To get around those you have to
| get beyond what content blockers are offering. I'm thinking about
| adding that capability into my blocker, but it isn't a priority.
| om2 wrote:
| Note that the rules limit has now been increased from 50k to
| 150k. Sorry if we failed to publicize this sufficiently.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >The number of rules limit is a non-issue
|
| The big controversy some time back when Chrome wanted to
| implement a limit just like this with Manifest v3 says
| otherwise. This was both from users and adblock developers and
| it is exactly as bad as people said it would be. Saying it is a
| good idea because of privacy risks is completely off the rails.
| Sure you _might_ run a tiny risk but without a proper adblocker
| like uBlock you _do_ run a risk on every single webpage you
| open and unlike a good adblokcer you have no idea if you can
| trust a webpage until after they have already harvested
| everything they can about you. You cannot uninstall yourself
| from the thousands of databases you get added to to so it is in
| a totally other ballpark.
| ameshkov wrote:
| As someone who contributed to the post we're discussing, let me
| please respond.
|
| > There's SFSafariExtensionHandler API which you can use with
| blockers as another extension with higher privileges to track
| who blocked what.
|
| I am not sure what you mean here. This API (available only on
| macOS) does allow injecting scripts and stylesheets, it does
| not provide any feasible debugging tools. Granted, you may
| inject a script that will get _some_ information about what 's
| blocked, but it's far from what's required.
|
| Just compare what Safari provides with AdGuard's filtering log
| on any other platform or with uBlock Origin's log. The lack of
| such tool is the main reason filters maintainers avoid dealing
| with Safari.
|
| > Compiling speed, for the process that happens once the
| blocker rules json is changed, is irrelevant for the users
|
| Compiling speed is the reason for the rules limitation.
|
| > There's also some rules that don't match 1 to 1, but it isn't
| something that can't be solved.
|
| Unfortunately, there is something that cannot be solved, and YT
| is a great example of that something.
|
| > The number of rules limit is a non-issue
|
| I have to disagree here.
|
| We're not dealing with EasyList alone, there're many other
| lists (regional lists for instance). You may say - okay, let's
| split them all to different content blockers. There's a serious
| problem with that, though. Different content blockers are
| completely independent. However, that's not how those lists are
| being developed - there're lists that are supposed to influence
| each other.
|
| Let's take the simple example - unblocking something. For
| instance, here is the most obvious example that happens all the
| time. There may be a regional list that unblocks something
| blocked by EasyList (or EasyPrivacy) because this "something"
| breaks an important website in that region. Putting EasyList
| into one content blocker and the regional list into another
| breaks the regional list.
|
| > And the most important thing. It seems that AdGuard guys
| don't get why content blockers in Safari don't run scripts.
| It's privacy. But Safari itself doesn't prevent you from doing
| that, only not as a part of content blocker extension that is
| privacy-safe.
|
| We accept that argument despite me being literally sick of
| hearing it (so there's privacy on iOS, but no privacy on macOS
| since scripts are allowed to extensions there, okaay).
|
| What's important is that we _do not_ propose allowing running
| arbitrary scripts. We propose extending the declarative API in
| a controlled manner and it does not conflict with Safari
| vision.
|
| Also, that's just one of the feature requests (and bug reports)
| reported over the years.
|
| edit: typos
| viktorcode wrote:
| > I am not sure what you mean here. This API (available only
| on macOS) does allow injecting scripts and stylesheets, it
| does not provide any feasible debugging tools. Granted, you
| may inject a script that will get some information about
| what's blocked, but it's far from what's required.
|
| SFSafariExtensionHandler implements SFSafariExtensionHandling
| protocol, which has this function:
|
| optional func contentBlocker(withIdentifier
| contentBlockerIdentifier: String, blockedResourcesWith urls:
| [URL], on page: SFSafariPage)
|
| So, this is used in statistics extension that prevents me
| ever looking into the console. Helps to shorten the time it
| takes to add a new rule and see if it works.
|
| > Let's take the simple example - unblocking something. For
| instance, here is the most obvious example that happens all
| the time. There may be a regional list that unblocks
| something blocked by EasyList (or EasyPrivacy) because this
| "something" breaks an important website in that region.
| Putting EasyList into one content blocker and the regional
| list into another breaks the regional list.
|
| I totally agree! This is one of the reasons I don't use those
| lists as is. Thankfully, many unblock rules can be merged
| into the corresponding block rules in the form of "unless-
| domain" specifier.
|
| > We accept that argument despite me being literally sick of
| hearing it (so there's privacy on iOS, but no privacy on
| macOS since scripts are allowed to extensions there, okaay).
|
| The statement that there's no privacy on macOS is incorrect.
| The user can see what privileges different extensions
| require, and can enable only those they are okay with, like
| content blockers. Due to their design, content blocker
| extensions can guarantee privacy, unlike the ones that can
| run JS code.
| ameshkov wrote:
| > SFSafariExtensionHandler implements
| SFSafariExtensionHandling protocol, which has this function
|
| First of all, shame on me for missing this, and thank you
| for pointing this out.
|
| Unfortunately, this still does not solve the issue in
| question - we cannot figure out which rule was triggered.
| But it is definitely better than nothing, at least knowing
| what's blocked we can try creating something resembling a
| debugging tool.
|
| > Thankfully, many unblock rules can be merged into the
| corresponding block rules in the form of "unless-domain"
| specifier.
|
| Some of them can be handled this way, some of them cannot.
| Trying to handle all possible issues automatically right on
| the device is not at all as trivial as simply converting
| EasyList. And we need to do it that way (real-time, on
| device) because our goal is not to just convert a few
| lists, but also to provide maintainers with a tool they can
| use to develop their lists and test&fix them for Safari.
|
| > Due to their design, content blocker extensions can
| guarantee privacy, unlike the ones that can run JS code.
|
| Content blockers that can run JS code can guarantee privacy
| better by doing their work better than the others.
|
| Anyways, let's not go further on this, we won't change each
| others view on this and we've already stated our positions.
|
| My point was that we want to extend the declarative API, it
| has nothing to do with running JS.
| saagarjha wrote:
| You may be amused to know that I debug my content blockers by
| keeping around a debug build if WebKit with a handful of
| breakpoints at the right spots to trace them. The experience
| really does suck...
| ameshkov wrote:
| Well, I have the same exact experience and frankly, it is
| not what I intend to repeat again.
|
| At least developers can do that. But most of the people who
| maintain filter lists are not developers and cannot afford
| enjoying compiling WebKit for the sake of finding what
| exact rule has blocked this or hidden that.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Honest question: Why not just drop support for Safari? If
| Apple wants to make it hard to write content blockers,
| they can do without content blockers, and the users can
| see ads and eventually switch to a browser that doesn't
| show them ads.
| ameshkov wrote:
| I do honestly believe they want to make content blockers
| good. Maybe the problem is that we don't communicate our
| pains good enough, maybe it's that they don't hear us
| sometimes, but I think that we have the common goal and
| this post will help them understand us better.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I see, thank you. Hopefully it's just about not enough
| extension writer feedback, fingers crossed it'll get
| addressed!
| ec109685 wrote:
| At some point, YouTube is just going to stich these into the main
| video.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Server-side dynamic ad inclusion is relatively not new tech.
| I'm surprised they don't do it already tbh
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Either they allow skipping through the ads or they somehow
| signal that it's a different segment.
| [deleted]
| yliu wrote:
| Despite the title being about YouTube, this is fundamentally
| about Safari's declarative Content Blocker API being totally
| inadequate in the face of modern ad delivery technologies. Yes,
| it's fast and relatively more secure compared to old ad blocking
| techniques (which requires granting full access to effectively
| arbitrary JS), but ad tech has evolved since 2015 and Safari's
| Content Blocking API has not evolved with it.
|
| With other browsers showing varying degrees of interest in
| declarative content blocking, it's worth looking at Safari as a
| warning of what declarative content blocking, if unmaintained,
| will do to cripple ad blocking for users.
| shawnz wrote:
| This is basically the exact fear which was being expressed by
| users when Google announced that they would require Chrome
| extensions to only use declarative content blocking starting
| with Manifest v3 (which anecdotally convinced me to switch to
| Firefox).
| defaultname wrote:
| If we go down that road, however, sites can make ads
| completely indistinguishable from desired content. Same
| domain, same stream, no easily marked container. All of the
| imperative adblocking tech in the world, short of queuing
| everything through a neural engine post render, can block
| what is possible.
|
| So there has always been a detente between adblockers and
| publishers, presuming the former hit a small enough set of
| users that it was just ignored. It seems that is no longer
| the case.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| I think by law, ads have to be declared as such for users.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| That would require delivering ads from first-party servers,
| right? So third-party ad and tracking networks would die a
| painful death.
| sangnoir wrote:
| More likely, they'd get upgraded to "first-party"
| tracking by acting as a CDN-layer where the _ad networks_
| do the proxying /caching to get the actual content
| upstream before merging it with the ads and serving whole
| thing in a single request.
| qlm wrote:
| Couldn't they just be proxied through a first party
| server?
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| That would be more effort than including a single html-
| script tag to import google analytics. I have hope that
| most parties would decide that the extra server load and
| difficulties would make it not worth it.
| nimish wrote:
| You underestimate the desire for precision tracking,
| unfortunately. Hiding behind custom subdomains is common.
| Stepping up to cloaking it to be delivered from the
| application is more effort but it'll happen.
| [deleted]
| Flow wrote:
| I use Wipr as a content blocker on both macOS and iOS. I never
| see ads on YouTube. But I've always felt that it might not be
| enough some day. Perhaps that day is nearly here.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I use Wipr and I just saw an ad today for the first time on
| YouTube in Safari. Usually, it throws up an error and you
| refresh and the video plays, but today's it was error, then a
| skippable ad.
| js2 wrote:
| This is a recent change by YouTube. Wipr uses the same
| content blocking API as Adguard and has the same limitations:
|
| https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr-faq.html#youtube
| ameshkov wrote:
| Note that YT changes aren't yet rolled out everywhere. Also,
| if you're not authorized there'll be no issues, but it won't
| stay like that forever.
| guacaswole wrote:
| I use Wipr, I'm in Australia and on Catalina. Now see Ads on
| YouTube, even when I update. Now I understand why.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| I've been using Wipr. I've been getting the white placeholder
| screen for just about a year now. Every one in a while I get
| actual ads getting thru, before a new update fixes it.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| In response to this article, I've disabled it in place of
| using the standalone Adguard app. So far I haven't gotten
| either symptom.
| google234123 wrote:
| If you don't want ads get Youtube Premium.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Install uBlock Origin instead.
| Labo333 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the web gets everyday closer to some kind of
| "interactive TV". Computations are moving to the server side and
| clients are merely there to get input and display information. An
| illustration is the very controversial Mighty browser. As a
| result, programs will shortly become dependent on having an
| internet connection. Today, people use more Google Docs than
| Notepad. This removes a lot of freedom because computing now
| comes at the price of a subscription (for internet but also for
| other services be it SaaS, data monetization or server costs for
| self hosting).
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