Google, Firefox and Adblock - Again

[rtcosic]

I have had 'issues' with Gmail and YouTube failing to co-operate with Firefox and Adblock.
I have employed a workaround by opening a private window but since the latest automatic update of Firefox I'm now stumped.
If I try to access YouTube I just get greyed out 'images' of the YouTube thumbnails and nothing else.

A Google search on my phone yielded this Redditt thread (I trust the Forum Filter will address the various profanities):

The reason its happening is b/c [google's trying to **Language** you over for using firefox to watch yt instead of chrome](

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down

). more of their anticompetitive ********. to fix it we'll need to trick yt into thinking youre on chrome by using a user agent spoofer. you can do this by getting [this extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/) & following [this tutorial i made](

) which walks you through configuring the extension to only change your user agent to chrome for sites on the [youtube.com](http://youtube.com) domain. note that if youre on windows youre going to want to skip the step where i open [this menu](

https://imgur.com/a/IEr9hYo

) & change the "populars" value to macOS. also note that you'll want to select the highest version number of chrome possible, at the time of the video that was 118.0.0.0. please let me know if this fixes the slow loading times of yt on firefox for you! have a great one!

Before I disappear down this rabbit hole, confuse myself and irredeemably lock up my PC can anyone tell me if this is pukka advice and/or if they have followed it? The post is 7 months old and has lots of positive responses up to one month ago.

 

[Wildefalcon]

Use brave browser

 

[Shedendman]

^^^^
+1

 

[Seadog]

Duckduckgo

 

[Ubique]

Firefox is 'supported' by Google, I suggest Waterfox, which is a fork of Firefox but without the bleeding of telemetry to Google, as an alternative. I'd also recommend ublock Origin as an improvement on Adblock (Privacy Badger is also a benign but worthwhile add-in).
IMO - 'Brave' well, you'd have to be if you value your data, it's selectively leaky and employs various workarounds to blocking that only a modified HOSTS file or PiHole will stop.

Or just use about:config to change the user agent....

 

[DaveB]

drop adblock and try "uBlock Origin"

 

[Danez]

uBlock origin and firefox all the way. And brave runs on chromium so it's just a jumped up chrome browser.

Google is worryingly close to having a monopoly on web browsers

 

[Onthespotwelding]

Use DuckDuckGo as a search engine you can also watch YouTube videos on it without any ads.

If you want to specifically watch you tube videos try this. No ads

Invidious

An alternative front-end to YouTube

inv.nadeko.net

 

[rtcosic]

uBlock Origin

uBlock origin and firefox all the way. And brave runs on chromium so it's just a jumped up chrome browser.

Google is worryingly close to having a monopoly on web browsers

Removed Adblock and added uBlock.

No change.

Windows issue?

 

[Dr.Al]

Removed Adblock and added uBlock.

Just to check, did you install uBlock or uBlock Origin. Last I checked (which I'll admit was a while ago), they were different things. Make sure you get the latter.

I don't use Firefox with youtube, but I've used Brave (only on mobile) and Vivaldi with uBlock Origin and no youtube ads are ever seen.

 

[rtcosic]

I'll check!

It seems I have as the only option I have is to remove it.

 

[jmp49]

This is just youtube experimenting with anti adblock technologies all over again in that endless quest for more profit at any expense that US companies continually do. They are a advertising company after all, did everyone expect the leopard to have changed its spots over the years of pretending to be friendly or something. They removed the "dont be evil" motto out their corporate code of conduct a few years back and now they dont give a toss.
You are the product, they cant sell it (you) if they cant positively fingerprinter and identify things to justify what they charge to 3rd parties for telling about you.

Switching your UA might just be getting you out the target of the test but it will get you sooner or later. Also I've done a LOT of switching of User Agents (ie telling firefox to lie its mac osx and chrome etc) and quite often sites dont actually work properly because they use the proprietory extensions for the browser your pc says it is. I'm usually trying to break a site, but you might not be intending this...
I currently have a UA set thats firefox on linux, and running ublock origin, and all I get is youtube direct skips the first 4 seconds of a video automatically, which doesnt bother me at all.
Also duckduckgo as above is good. As is opening vid links in a private window because you get a few views as a trial and it doesnt know who you are because the private session has no login cookie set.

 

[rtcosic]

Infamy, Infamy they've all got it in for me.

Tried to run Chrome but it doesn't load.
Trying to install DuckDuckGo and got this illuminating message:

App installation failed with error message: error -2018574325: Windows cannot process a deployment operation because the package repository database encountered an unrecoverable error. Use the Reset Your PC feature to recover your PC. (0x80004005)

I'll try to find the Reset Your PC feature, click appropriately, step back and watch my PC burst into flames.

I'm going for it.

Wish me luck.

 

[rtcosic]

Quick sanity check please.

I have Windows 10 and my PC doesn't have the ergs to run Windows 11 according to the last useful message from Microsoft.

The Reset My PC description states:


Resetting your PC lets you perform a clean reinstallation and update of Windows while keeping your personal data and most Windows settings intact

Is it 'safe' for me to embarque on this exercise or am I likely to cause irrecoverable mayhem?

 

[Wozzaaah]

Ublock Origin has now been blocked by Google.
"This extension is no longer available because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions."

 

[skotl]

Ublock Origin has now been blocked by Google.
"This extension is no longer available because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions."

Still working for me, and the warning on the chrome store is still the same

Although, that "uBlock Origin Lite", bottom left, looks interesting - it's an attempt to get round Google deliberately forcing these tools of the browser by limiting the the number of config lines in manifest V3.

 

[skotl]

Brief discussion of ublock origin lite here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1067als/eli5_ublock_lite_vs_ublock_origin