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Did ad blockers survive YouTube's offensive? Letting numbers talk (adguard.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

150 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TL;DR version:

From June to August, the number of active users of the AdGuard Ad Blocker extension for Chrome dropped by about 8%. But in late August, the trend reversed. The temporary slump in user growth was offset by the increased demand in the second half of the year.

After a brief period of turbulence that lasted about a month, we saw the trend stabilize. And while the daily number of uninstalls was still higher than before YouTube's crackdown, it remained consistently lower than the number of daily installs.

After media reports and YouTube’s own statements implied that ad blockers were doomed, and especially after more and more users started noticing that their ad blocking extensions were not working properly on YouTube, we did indeed see a spike in uninstalls. However, at the same time, the number of installs also increased significantly! It may well be that the way ad blockers’ woes were amplified in the media inadvertently boosted their popularity and helped them woo new users.

The takeaway from all of this is that ad blockers — first and foremost, ad-blocking extensions — were rocked by YouTube’s onslaught, but survived. And, moreover, the interest has rebounded, as is evidenced by the growth in the number of active users.

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[–] [email protected] 247 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I haven't observed any problems with uBlock Origin on Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

For those curious how efficient these things are, recently I did some tests using this tool (clear your cache between tests).

I had decided to install an additional DNS blocker on my OpenWRT router so I was curious how these methods stack up against each other.

I tested uBlock Origin (default lists, reports 116k network filters), the Firefox (122) built-in ETP (Enhanced Tracking Protection) and the router adblock (only a modest 65k IPs in the default set, you can add more lists).

Everything off gives me a score of only 3% blocked. Those 3% must be stuff so outrageous that they probably get blocked by upstream DNS servers.
Firefox ETP only, set to strict: 41%
Router adblock only: 69%
Firefox + router both on: 83%
uBlock Origin (alone or in combination): 97%

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I got a 100% on iOS using Wipr. Not sure that’s accurate if ublock origin didn’t even get a 100%…

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Must be a different statistic, I believe OPs stats are "percent of total traffic blocked" so 100% means your entire network would be blocked..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

What list are you using on your router? I'm using Steven Black's list (which is just an amalgamation of a bunch of other lists) for my PiHole/uBlock filter list, and Firefox+uBlock Origin scored 99% (only failing the cosmetic static ad test).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

While easy to do, issue with doing this is you don't give active views to the lists that get combine so the owners of those lists are less inclined to update/maintain them. I would recommend if the list is useful to get each of the combine lists he uses and add them all separately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It's the Adblock package for OpenWRT. The default selection is adaway, adguard, disconnect, yoyo, which is 3 x 10k lists and one 30k list.

I see that it has support for compiling Steve Black lists but SB can vary 50 - 500k and I only have a router with 128 MB RAM. I'll have to experiment with the "standard" SB list, see if it fits and if it makes any difference.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Same. Didn't even get any youtube pop-ups regarding adblocker detection. Also no slowing down observed (as was reported in some articles a while back).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

I got a pop up once, I cleared the ublock cache and never had any issues after.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

I saw a popup once, refreshed and it was gone. 🤣

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

Same. Not one interruption during the crackdown.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I moved from Vivaldi to Firefox during the crackdown, signed out all of my Google accounts, and immediately noticed the problems went away. Sorry Vivaldi...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I've just stumbled over Floorp, which to my understanding has many of Vivaldis features Firefox doesn't, like a sidebar, and is based on Firefox

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

I've noticed the occasional jump cut forwards in video where there should've been ads, just two or three seconds.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I've gotten the pop-up once or twice, but updating uBlock fixed that.

I have instead noticed a large decrease in quality, things like frozen images/pages and endless buffering. I don't know if all that is related, but it did start around the time YouTube started cracking down on ad blockers.