Recently I've notice that some of the youtube videos I've been watching are absolutely jam packed with ads. Popups, pre-video ads, etc.

I looked into installing ad blockers, but found a useful hack.

Once you select the video you are going to watch, hit pause. Go to the web address bar, and put a period immediately after .com.

So instead of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zWQsRmANiA&t=228s

you get this with no ads:
https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=9zWQsRmANiA&t=228s

Once you click back to youtube in the top left corner, you will stay in ad-free mode.

Wow. Never knew that. I tried and it works. Moreover, you don't seem to need to do that for each video. It carries over for each video you watch.

Very useful. Thanks.

Also, I have a link for YouTube in my Favorites Bar. I changed the URL for the YouTube link from .com to .com. and now any video I start is ad-free.

Nice find!

Of course....doesn’t work while using the app

I didn't get any ads on your first link. One of my ad blockers must have been working?

And just like that. it stopped carrying over from video to video. Oh well. Still nice for ending the in-video ad pop ups.

Not sure if you guys have experienced this, but conservative channels seem to have significantly more ads than non-political channels for me recently, and it was really pissing me off. I had one 13 minute video I watched on Monday that had five ads, and two popups.

And yes, if you already have an adblocker it may have eliminated the ads previously, but with this, there is no need for the adblocker.

quote:

Originally posted by 280nosler:
Not sure if you guys have experienced this, but conservative channels seem to have significantly more ads than non-political channels for me recently, and it was really pissing me off. I had one 13 minute video I watched on Monday that had five ads, and two popups.

And yes, if you already have an adblocker it may have eliminated the ads previously, but with this, there is no need for the adblocker.

And I'll bet four of the ads and both pop ups were for a brand of soap I will never purchase due to the irritation I suffer from the adeluge.

I run ublock origin in chrome. Great little extension.

Schweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Nerd rabbit hole: Would a redirect in the host file work to make this semi-permanent in Windows?

quote:

Originally posted by Veeper:
Nerd rabbit hole: Would a redirect in the host file work to make this semi-permanent in Windows?

Oh, you want nerdy, do you?

It is, more likely IMHO, that the match in the redirect in the server configuration doesn't succeed with a fully formed URL. The dot after .com makes is a fully-formed URL, and if ellided, is assumed by the resolver on most systems. Much as not including the terminating slash in a URL is ignored by most browsers.

.com. is technically proper, the final "." stands for the root of the DNS (Domain Name System) tree.

.com is technically incorrect in DNS specification grammar.

Server redirects use a match/action syntax, "translating" one URL into another. So the redirect specification on the YouTube server that directs the browser to load the ad(s), matches ".com", but not ".com."

When their log analysis software recognizes that thousands of "customers" are avoiding ads through this technique, it will undoubtedly be updated, a three character edit in a configuration file.

If my conjecture is correct, changing anything on the client side (like a hosts file, or the answers returned by a resolver) will not make an iota of difference. If you have a bookmark stored in your browser ending with .com., or hand-type it in, this should be preserved, and honored while visiting the site.

Cool!