
Tell HN: YouTube fixed the dot after domain ad bypass - foxfired
Last week there was a post [1] that showed how to play YouTube without ads. I didn&#x27;t want to upvote it because well, the more popular it got the more chances YouTube will figure it out and fix it. Now they fixed it.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23479435" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23479435</a>
======
rvz
I guess this is because there are Google employees that look at this site and
have seen this issue reported here and on social media.

Chances were that one Google employee passed this issue on and the YouTube
team was working on a fix. Unsurprising response here.

~~~
dmitriid
There _are_ Google employees here. And the only reason this was fixed is
because it directly affects ad revenue. Nothing else is fixed as quickly or at
all.

~~~
vb6sp6
There was a lawsuit awhile back with Android, something about hyperlinking
phone numbers or something, that required updates to devices.

People were shocked at how fast updates were deployed to remove the offending
feature since updates were regularly delayed for months on end.

------
mellosouls
Great to see Google able to fix things this quickly after being raised on HN -
hopefully this new urgency will now be brought to bear on legitimate apps
being cancelled with no recourse and the various other pain points featured
here on a regular basis, which they've been _strangely_ unresponsive on...

~~~
villgax
There should be a section for such stuff

~~~
rafamvc
Like [Ask HN] but [Google Support]? Often HN becomes a Google Support
fallback.

------
TheChaplain
I had the displeasure to experiencing YouTube without adblocking a few days
ago and oh dear...

30 more years to retirement, and I'm already looking forward to a small house
on the edge of the Canadian wilderness.

~~~
mavsman
Hopefully the price of a house there would dip your timeframe to something
below 30 years.

But yes, my wife watches "normal" YouTube and I don't get it. It makes me itch
to even see video recommendations on the right side of the screen.

------
villgax
I used that domain & a few things worth mentioning are below-

* Pressing T for theatre mode only made the black space wide, the video stayed where it was on the screen

* Videos would pause if you went from regular view to full-screen with F key

* Ads won't show up but a dialog to group/skip ads would appear without any timer on it or ad being displayed

~~~
ta17711771
It's the same domain.

------
habosa
Googler here, but speaking as a consumer

YouTube Premium + YouTube Music is a great deal. Ad-free videos and a music
app that's basically identical to Spotify as far as I can tell.

Hacks like this one are really fun but we all know that YT needs to get paid
somehow. The creators deserve the money and unlike many sites everyone on HN
knows the infra cost to run it is monstrous.

I'm sure I sound like the biggest shill ever right now so I anticipate
downvotes but I was just shocked at how many people here are mad at Google for
fixing a bug to protect ad revenue. Wouldn't your company do it too?

~~~
shwoopdiwoop
Please, for the love of whichever god you believe in, stop asking me to buy
your premium service Every Single Time I open the app. No means no. Such a bad
experience.

~~~
anon9001
You're just using the wrong app. You wanted Vanced instead:
[https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-
yout...](https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-youtube-
vanced-edition-t3758757)

~~~
ta17711771
NewPipe's better.

------
stormdennis
Yes I noticed that this was fixed last night. I tried to watch a 12 min clip
of Germany vs Brazil from the 2014 world cup, an ad break approx every 2 mins.
Insane.

~~~
tartoran
No content in the world would make me accept such toxic experience, rather not
watch if that became a common experience. So far my blockers do their job, but
I imagine one day they won’t and I’d probably go back to paper book reading
instead.

~~~
izacus
Or you could pay a few bucks for the storage, hosting and content creation
costs so they won't have to use ads to do it. The option is a few clicks away.

------
person_of_color
Darn. YouTube ads are seriously scammy nowadays.

------
renewiltord
Guys, this one is easy. You can get ad-free access if you just pay for it
through YouTube Premium.

~~~
superasn
Plus you get youtube music which is just as good as spotify or amazon music -
all this for Rs.129 / mo is unbelievable.

As a matter of fact I often find songs on yt music that are not on Spotify.

~~~
blcArmadillo
I think the price is different based on where you are. In the U.S. the cost is
$11.99 USD which translates to ~Rs. 914

~~~
superasn
Man that is expensive and totally not worth it. I think they are offering
special launch pricing for India? (1)

(1)
[https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+premium+india+price](https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+premium+india+price)

------
_wldu
They need a bug bounty like program (but non security related) to report these
sorts of things. This could have cost them a lot of money.

~~~
Nextgrid
The cost of this was near zero. The people who discovered and publicized it
did so on a tech-savvy forum so the majority of users were blocking ads
anyway. This discovery was more of a novelty than anything else.

------
villgax
Just wished I had a newpipe android app experience on Safari/Desktop as well

~~~
wizzwizz4
[https://invidio.us/](https://invidio.us/). Find a local instance at
[https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Invidious-
Instanc...](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Invidious-Instances).

------
kaidon
This is why we cannot have nice things!!

------
redis_mlc
Wow, quick fix ... must have affected ad revenue or something important.

~~~
villgax
Even a few people using that would have lead to a flurry of error reporting
happening automatically

~~~
ta17711771
Eh, probably not. NewPipe doesn't.

------
thro1
It shall be on HN last page, downvoted out of reach of noobs ;)

------
dna_polymerase
Do they know about the trick using the embed URL to bypass age restrictions?

~~~
ryankrage77
Doesn't affect ad revenue, so don't expect a fix anytime soon.

