fadblock VS AdNauseam

More information: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock/issues/157

> https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

I'm trying out alternatives fadblock seems to work well enough so far, but this is enshitification.

If it comes to it I'll migrate over to using yt-dlp or disregard YT entirely and find somewhere else. I believe others feel similarly. Ads are not acceptable to me.

Fortunately, nothing breeds innovation like war, and a new type of adblocker has been born, Fadblock. Fadblock does not block ads from loading, like uBlock, but rather tricks youtube into thinking they've been played, and it does so in a very clever fashion - by playing them... at 10,000x speed (with no audio). This effectively skips ads and the video loads instantaneously.

It's definitely pretty tricky to try and even come up with statistics.

ublock was having issues early on, that required a laundry list of things to do to make sure youtube couldn't detect that something was up. I don't know if this has changed or not.

So rather than troubleshoot, what I did was turn it off on yotube, and install https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock, which isn't 100% perfect like the original ublock experience, but has been very durable against google's efforts.

Google may or may not believe they were successful in my case, depending on what they are looking for.

This thing seems to work pretty well: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

Instead of actually blocking the ad elements, it just auto-forwards the videos to the end once loaded. Slightly jankier, but much harder to detect.

This all seems over-complicated.

Why not just use fadblock?

https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

It doesn't need to be updated in this cat and mouse game. it just skips the ads in milliseconds and you don't even notice them.

GitHub: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock (read the FAQ)

https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

Seems to do a lot of DOM querying using a setTimeout

   if (isAd && skipLock) {

Might I suggest this little fella: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock ?

It does not actually clicks on the ads. It sends the request to ad server but does not execute any response from the server, so it's safe to run

https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...

>https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...

>AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.

Isn't this easily detectable? XHRs are easily detectable through various headers, so it's trivial to filter out the fake traffic from this extension. Failing that, thanks to ad fraud there's a whole industry of bot/ad fraud detection firms using browser fingerprinting and behavioral analysis to detect fake ad clicks. I have no doubt that an extension that's "clicking" on every ad using XHR is going to get detected and filtered.

I'd think it's infeasible for advertisers to regularly audit third-party apps on reddit's behalf to make sure the ads they're paying to display aren't being requested but cosmetically hidden or even shadow-clicked. I'm sincerely curious if there are any example platforms that do this with their API; I can't find anything after a search.

What is your opinion on AdNauseam?

Please use this page to report issues or ask questions about Ad Nauseam. This specific issue has already been addressed:

Other than that, Libredirect and AdNauseam to be pretty neat. Allows me to avoid using certain sites directly and when I do, I mess with their ads engagement enough. A bit petty, but I'll take what I can get.