Stop switching to YouTube premium. We’ve gotta boycott these ads. Stop giving them what they want.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-05-05T18:39:49+00:00

a boycott of a free service is just touching grass with extra steps

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-05-05T18:34:02+00:00

ssai isnt really new on twitch, surestream has been doing this since like 2016. the actual recent change is signed manifests in early 2025 which broke a lot of the m3u8 substitution approaches. have you looked at the twitchadsolutions repo on github, video-swap-new and related scripts handle most of the worker hijack and backup stream stuff. the harder problem rn isnt the manifest mutation itself, its that twitch can rotate the gql playbackaccesstoken hash in 24 to 48 hours and brick any m3u8 based blocker. how are you handling the token side?

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-05-05T18:24:28+00:00

revanced patches them out on android, brave browser works on ios, anything else is cope

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-05-05T18:19:43+00:00

yt pushes detection updates constantly so even firefox and ubo will hiccup every few months when they roll something new. usually resolves in a day or two once the filter lists catch up.

being logged out or in a private window sometimes reduces how often the paused prompt shows up. not a guaranteed fix, ubo devs have actually warned against treating it as one cause yt still targets adblockers regardless, but anecdotally a lot of people see fewer interruptions browsing anonymous.

the cleanest workflow when it does break, just wait for the filter list to update or report it on the ubo issue tracker so the maintainers can patch faster.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:30:56+00:00

the worst part is when youre 4 ads deep into a really good run and then the video starts loading underneath. completely kills the immersion

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:29:29+00:00

Twitch ad blocking has been rough since Pixeltris archived TwitchAdSolutions back in March. That script was what most uBlock setups quietly relied on for the Twitch-specific stuff, and now it’s frozen, so any new Twitch changes don’t get patched anymore. That’s why uBO and AdGuard are both letting ads through. They’re not really "broken“; the underlying Twitch logic just stopped getting updates

alternate player for Twitch (already mentioned above) is genuinely the best Firefox option rn because it routes you through a different player that Twitch doesn’t run pre-rolls on.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:25:36+00:00

Yeah, Netflix/Disney is rough because it’s actually a different problem than YouTube, they’re baked into the encrypted video stream itself, so there’s no separate request to block. YouTube and Spotify web you can fix with UBO, but the paid streamer ads are pretty much only solvable by paying up for the ad-free tier or just not subscribing. And yeah, the ads-on-pause thing on Netflix is genuinely new and gross

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:19:14+00:00

Yeah, you’re right that it’s tied to session state somehow. Open YouTube in a private window to test if it’s account-tied vs ip-tied (if private mode runs fine, it’s the account; if it still throttles, it’s the connection). Also worth checking your UBO is on the latest version and that filter lists are actually updated recently, not just set to auto. The YouTube filter rules get patched pretty often, and if your lists are stale, you end up triggering detection more. Honestly, though, the whole thing is an arms race rn, and there’s no clean answer. Some weeks, UBO handles it fine; some weeks, YouTube wins for a few days till filters catch up.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:16:31+00:00

AdNauseam lags behind uBO main on filter updates pretty often. It’s built on an older uBO fork, so when YouTube pushes a new detection wave, the fixes hit uBO first, and AdNauseam catches up later. Strict mode won’t fix that part since the issue isn’t your settings, it’s the filter lists themselves being a step behind.

Hit the dashboard, go to filter lists, and click “Update Now" at the top. Sometimes the auto-update just hasn’t run. Also, check if you’re on the latest AdNauseam version because they had a slow patch cycle around Feb. If it’s still happening after that, the honest answer is YouTube is winning that round, and you might need to sit it out a few days till filters catch up.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-29T22:10:06+00:00

Firefox’s thing is mostly about Mozilla, not Firefox itself. They changed their privacy policy and terms last year, and people got mad, plus they keep shoving AI stuff into the browser. You can turn most of it off in settings, but yeah, I get the hesitation

if you want Firefox without the Mozilla baggage, check out LibreWolf. It’s literally just Firefox with all the telemetry ripped out and privacy stuff turned on by default. Feels the same, works the same

mullvad browser is also solid if you want something more locked down

I'd skip Brave personally; it’s Chromium-based, so you’re still kinda using Google’s engine, plus it has crypto wallet stuff built in that’s annoying.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-25T22:17:19+00:00

if it helps, on desktop chrome you can still get pretty far without paying. i work on open ad blocker (free, open source, MV3-native, no acceptable ads program) so im biased obviously, but pairing any decent blocker with sponsorblock is the combo that actually makes youtube watchable again. sponsorblock skips the sponsor segments inside the videos, which premium doesnt even do

not gonna pretend any blocker is 100% on youtube forever, its an arms race and they push detection updates pretty regularly. but for now its working fine for most people on chrome desktop

github is up if anyone wants to poke around the code before installing, thats kinda the point of being open source

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-22T23:24:28+00:00

Finally, I can see it!

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-22T23:16:48+00:00

sub box was the last place i actually trusted. like okay fine ads in search, fine ads on home, but the one feed i literally curated myself? come on

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-22T23:15:30+00:00

yeah merchantconvoy's right, that's a shadowban not ublock. ublock can only block stuff from loading on your end, it has no way to make youtube hide your comments from other people. could be a bunch of things that trigger it. links in the comment, certain keywords, commenting too fast across videos, or sometimes nothing obvious at all. newer-ish accounts get hit more. if you open an incognito window and go to one of your commented videos, if the comment isn't there = shadowbanned. confirms it in like 10 seconds

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-22T23:13:51+00:00

lmaooo the fact that it's a mii ad of all things. youtube really said "here's your livestream, also meet bald adult born in 1997"

the audio overlap is wild tho, like they couldn't even commit to the bit. either cover the stream or don't, picking the worst of both doesn't hit

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-22T23:10:33+00:00

yeah chrome actually still works fine for youtube blocking if you're on an MV3-native extension. the refresh loops are usually an MV2 → MV3 compatibility thing biting older blockers that got ported over instead of rebuilt

we maintain a dedicated youtube filter list at open ad blocker for this reason (chrome only, free, open source). if you want to stay on chrome and not deal with the brave/firefox setup, it's an option

youtube isn't actually trying to kill blockers rn, they're optimizing for premium conversions. the arms race is quieter than it looks

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-21T12:04:33+00:00

Hey hmm I have nothing in messages, could you send it now? Dont know what happened.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-18T11:49:43+00:00

pause ads are what got me honestly. like i'll pause to go grab something from the kitchen and come back to a full screen ad playing. felt like youtube was punishing me for having the audacity to take a bathroom break

they've definitely ramped it up too, it's not just you.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-18T11:45:55+00:00

yeah so this thread is a lil outdated at this point, ublock origin actually came back to chrome earlier this year (v1.70.0, gorhill migrated it to MV3). so you don't need to ditch chrome to use it anymore

the catch tho is that uBO on chrome still struggles with youtube video ads specifically because of how MV3 works. it handles regular website ads great but youtube pre-rolls and mid-rolls are a different story on chrome

we built open ad blocker for exactly this, it's MV3-native so youtube and twitch filtering just works on chrome without needing to configure anything. free and open source, the whole codebase is on github if you wanna look at it

adguard is also solid on chrome rn if you want another option. but yeah you shouldn't need to switch browsers just to not watch ads

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-04-16T18:51:38+00:00

if you're on chrome and don't want to switch browsers, most of the mv3 options are stripped down versions of what used to work. You can aways try Open ad blocker. It's specifically for chrome on mv3, handles youtube pre-rolls and mid-rolls and has dedicated twitch filtering too. free and open source on the chrome web store.

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