EFForg
Error reports for www.youtube.com
We are getting lots of error reports for www.youtube.com; it's our most-reported-on domain for the latest Privacy Badger (version 2017.7.24).
Here is some of what our users say:
video won't load
Youtube video shows: 'Request blocked by extension'. Fixed by switching on s0.2mdn.net
video said an extension blocked requests to the server
Videos laden anfangs nicht - Meldung "Anfragen an den Server wurden durch Erweiterung blockiert"
Ads don't appear instead it says an extension is blocking the ad content. Ad blocks still appear just without the actual ad.
preroll Advertisement on Youtube "blocked by an extension".
Can't say I've had any of these issues. Don't even see s0.2mdn.net on youtube, but I have noticed it breaking things on other sites (see #1236)
Can't reproduce on FF either, even when toggling other extensions. Though my FF profile is rarely used so my PB isn't as learned as my Chrome profile (and I can't import my Chrome data into FF cuz the new update hasn't been pushed out yet, so #1318 is still broken).
I also have been unable to reproduce this. Hopefully fixing #1475 will help this.
Since last August (2017-08), reports have somewhat fallen in frequency for the www.youtube.com FQDN, but this still seems like a big problem:
+---------+-------+
| ym | count |
+---------+-------+
| 2017-12 | 91 |
| 2017-11 | 158 |
| 2017-10 | 173 |
| 2017-09 | 236 |
| 2017-08 | 305 |
| 2017-07 | 139 |
| 2017-06 | 54 |
| 2017-05 | 57 |
| 2017-04 | 68 |
| 2017-03 | 71 |
| 2017-02 | 67 |
| 2017-01 | 72 |
...
Some recent messages from reports
Not able to watch YouTube videos, only sound works. No picture.
Video plays with only audio and black screen
Visiting certain channels frequently results in video playback that appears to be audio only. Might be related to preroll advertisements. AdBlock handles them okay.
With Badger enabled, YouTube's player doesn't "remember" my volume setting and is always on the highest volume when opening a new video.
"requests to server...." video goes to gray box with above text
I get the following error on all YouTube videos: "Requests to the server have been blocked by an extension." The videos eventually work, but it takes several minutes, and this extension is the only one I have that blocks anything. Thanks!
Video won't play
Youtube autoplay (where it loads the next video after the current video has finished) is broken. Using Privacy badger with uBlock, Ghostery, DuckDuckGo and HTTPS: Everywhere. Using firefox 57.0.3 (64-bit) on windows 10.
videos no longer load, refresh 2-3 times before video plays, and droped video quality to make it load faster
Videos laden nicht mehr.
no images are loading
Video not loading
video not playing
Sound for the video was not working until I disabled privacy badger for the site.
video not playing
Similar messages seem to be coming from both Firefox and Chrome browsers. Most messages are from Windows users, but this may just be because most Privacy Badger users are on Windows.
I'd experienced this a number of times in August with Chrome, though haven't seen this in several months. Looks like there haven't been any other reports recently so I'll close this for now.
Ah, sorry! Had a tab open on this from about 12 hours ago and neglected to refresh it before posting an update. Reopening as per @ghostwords's update above.
I too have problems with www.youtube.com (detailed below). But I am submitting the bug here instead of via the usual, "Did Privacy Badger break this site? Let us know!" PB drop-down button, because when I fill in the info and hit, "Submit error" button, I only get the (tiny) red error message, "Oops. Something went wrong.", preventing me from submitting the error via the PB extension itself. Grr..
I then tried to give a screenshot of the PB dropdown error using my KDE screenshot functionality, but unfortunately, hitting Print-Scrn button results in the Privacy Badger pop-up disappearing each time just before the screen is snapped. (Double Grrr..!) :-) )
Thus, I will just report the original youtube.com problem here at github. Below is a paste of the message I was trying to submit via the PB drop-down:
If privacy badger is turned on for youtube.com home page, it breaks the home page and redirects me to a broken youtube page of just one of my channels. Thus, I have to either a) not use the yt home page, but just go to my subscriptions page, or b) disable privacy badger for yt home page
I have had this youtube.com error for some months now. If I disable PB for www.youtube.com, the problem goes away. But I would really like to use YT with PB enabled, if possible.
BTW, I am on Linux (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) with all latest updates. Firefox 73.0.1, with Privacy Badger plug-in version 2020.2.19.
Please let me know if there is any more information I can provide. Thx.
The error rate remains consistent and high. However, I think this is mostly a case of YouTube being a very popular site, YouTube sometimes not working for whatever reason (YT is down, user's Internet is slow, ...), and users blaming Privacy Badger for it.
It's not clear what if anything we should do about it. We might want to show a special message somewhere in the popup just for YouTube where we say something like the following, or maybe better yet update the FAQ with the following and point there:
- Are ads not blocked? Privacy Badger is not actually an ad blocker.
- Yes, there are no third-party trackers on YouTube. The tracking on YouTube is first party and is mostly inseparable from the functionality.
- Is YouTube not working? It's probably not Privacy Badger's fault, but try disabling for YT and if that helps and if re-enabling breaks YT again, please reach out to us directly.