Getting around Youtube's new anti-adblocking

[Diogenes]

Hi all,

I use AdBlockPlus whenever I'm showing Youtube videos in class because without it, the amount of commercials embedded is a maddening 15-30 seconds before, and sometimes again right in the middle. Sometimes for only a 2 minute video!


Youtube is now aggressively going after the major adblockers and requires you to pay for Premium subscription to avoid these intrusive ads.

Being a classroom, I'm not interested in having advertising blast out to my students during class time. I also consider it fair use for the purpose of education. I also know how to "pirate" and download youtube videos but would prefer not to do that because it takes up a lot of data storage and that's technically illegal.

So do people have another workaround they can recommend?

[artalot]

I use short YouTube videos or clips in several classes and usually the ads are only at the beginning. I just get to class a few minutes early and cue up the video.

[onehappyunicorn]

uBlock Origin still works as long as it is updated. I manually update every couple of days and it seems to keep up with adblocking.
I honestly wouldn't mind if the ads were short but they have gotten completely ridiculous.

[filologos]

If you're using your own computer in class (or can install applications on the classroom computer), check out https://freetubeapp.io/. It's not quite as user-friendly as the website, but there are no ads and it doesn't require constant updating.

[mythbuster]

If you load the Youtube link into Canvas and run it from there- no ads!

[kaysixteen]

On exactly which legal argument would Youtube think itself able to 'go after' such web tools?

[jerseyjay]

On exactly which legal argument would Youtube think itself able to 'go after' such web tools?

I am not sure they need one since the "go after" these web tools in a functional, not legal, manner. That is, YouTube (i.g., Google) has a business model based on selling advertisements. Ad blockers disable ads, which circumvents YouTube's model. So YouTube figures out a way to render ad blockers useless. Since they are not suing anybody, or taking legal actions, I am not sure they need a legal argument.

However, and to the original question, this seems to be part of a cold war. I was able to download extensions in Chrome (another Google product) that circumvent YouTube's blocking of ad blockers. No doubt there will be an update to YouTube that will render these blockers unusable, and so it goes. If Chrome were to block distribution of these new adblockers, that might be a legal question since it could be argued it would be a violation of antitrust laws, but I am not sure if they are going to do that.

Also to the original question, there are ways to display YouTube videos without ads in the classroom. I believe it is by adding a hyphen between the t and the u in the web address.

[Diogenes]

On exactly which legal argument would Youtube think itself able to 'go after' such web tools?

They block them. That's what they are doing. You can't use the site with them on.

[bio-nonymous]

If you load the Youtube link into Canvas and run it from there- no ads!

^this! I suffer through the ads while I am looking for the "perfect" video, but once I embed it to my PowerPoint the students don't have to see them...