🐞Today the adblocking was flagged

[s0cr4tes]

Concise Description

Hey, today i could not get by the ad-block error when watching content on YouTube. "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service". Never had problems with those before tonight.

I tried removing all adblock extensions in Chrome, but no go. But when i removed "ImprovedTube, all works as normal :| Then i could add Ublock and the other adblockers and watch as i could yesterday.

Did something happen, did i miss an up-date?

Browser/s

Chrome

Other Browser:

No response

'Steps to reproduce' - Which of our features is required for the bug to happen?

Using the extension. Worked earlier today, not tonight.

Since when?

Last 12h? Posibly 24h

Does the bug still happen when you log out of YouTube?

No

..No? Then please paste your yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS. Twice (With the error & Without)

No response

Are any errors or related log-messages shown in the Browser-Console? (F12)

No

Tested as the only active extension? (incognito mode or another browser users):

None

Expected preferred behavior:

No response

ImprovedTube Version

No response

Your Settings (From the Extension's ⋮-Hamburger menu > Settings > Backup & reset > Export settings)

No response

Your YouTube-Document

No response

OS / Device:

No response

[RetroEra]

i use improve tube for themes and other things, my main adblocker adguard works some of the time.

[Freedbot]

I can confirm that I've had anti-adblock warnings for the past week as well with Improve Youtube. I haven't played with the config yet to see what settings specifically are aggravating the evil overlords, but I'll report back if I do find something. I'll start by doing the obvious and "enable" ads in the general config and leave it to uBlock to handle that aspect.

EDIT: just that one ad setting change has done the job for me so far.

My other related extentions that seemingly aren't causing any issues are: DeArrow, Return Youtube Dislike, SponsorBlock, Unhook, uBlock Origin, and Tampermonkey with the scripts: Youtube - Stay Active and Play Forever and Youtube Playlist Autoplay. I also have a custom adblock filter to increase the homepage thumbnail count.

[mclardass]

Same same. Firefox with Improve, uBlock, upstream AdBlock, and PiHole has worked for a year or so. The past couple of weeks I've been getting the YT adblock warnings and upgraded to the latest uBlock beta but that didn't help. Disabled upstream AdBlock and all extensions except uBlock and no more warnings. Enabled extensions one at a time and tested YT and Improve seems to be getting flagged. Haven't gone through each Improve setting since Google could be focusing on something specific or just looking for a sub-group of extensions, no idea.

[merlin555]

So far you have often been able to press up F5 (Refresh) to unblocking. Or switch around with the two Add-ons "uBlock Origin" and "Ghostery", that either only one of the Add-on was active or the other was deactivated. It has always worked so far with ImprovedTube.

Only today that can be hardly done and this message comes constantly.

But it works! I use Vivaldi and in Vivaldi itself, simply choose via the browser, "New private window" and copy the link from the YouTube video.

[merlin555]

Addition: The Vivaldi browser is very quick when you suddenly have several videos where the blocking comes.

• Select all tabs with the YouTube videos
• Press the right mouse there and select "Add x Tab to bookmark". All selected videos are added to the bookmarks as folders.
• Now you can open "New private window" in Vivaldi. And watch all YouTube videos conveniently there without blocking.

[ImprovedTube]

Thank you @s0cr4tes @merlin555 @mclardass @Freedbot @RetroEra @trackq @mclardass @Danie10 @kevincali @nydur @therealpunkdog

This could have caused uninstalls / reinstalls 2 weeks ago, yet not many and indistinguishable form trial and error mistakes.

I'll start by doing the obvious and "enable" ads in the general config and leave it to uBlock to handle that aspect. EDIT: just that one ad setting change has done the job for me so far.

It always hides the top right banner next to the player, but visibility of this might be specifically tested, unlike the (javascript-)click on "skip ad" ?

To-do

• [ ] Split into two toggles / sub-options.
• [ ] Add information

Raszpl restructured this in his version https://github.com/raszpl/tweaks4ytube/commit/49b9f0cd3b39bfad9eb68ea2cd5ed9f8f723f1d3 https://github.com/raszpl/tweaks4ytube/commit/26bc7c30590fb3258f7f923dd1f930daa3f5ea35 Not sure if it includes functional changes or fixes
( @Raszpl as always: all your edits were welcome 💕 and we seemed to have had a misunderstanding, when coincidentally working on this repo simultaneously. You won't need to care if i hope for better collaborative [github-]features or delayed linting style changes a bit. [And you could also manage the repo if you see an advantage in that.] Instead of a whole "fork", the features you deleted could also be removed through a toggle or a build script )

thanks

---

Recent uninstalls

672 31/Mar/2025
722 30/Mar/2025
790 29/Mar/2025
791 28/Mar/2025
817 27/Mar/2025    
791 26/Mar/2025   (Some more YouTube activity on weekends;  Less wikipedia activity )
776 25/Mar/2025
859 24/Mar/2025
834 23/Mar/2025
834 22/Mar/2025
987 21/Mar/2025 
1070 20/Mar/2025 Saturday
 670 19/Mar/2025
 717 18/Mar/2025
 723 17/Mar/2025
 762 16/Mar/2025
 853 15/Mar/2025

[ghost]

Unfortunately Stands Adblocker, not normally flagged by YouTube, was also flagged by YouTube with this downloaded, with the same errors. Perhaps this extension is overriding Stands? It's also doing it for PIe Adblocker too so I think it might, you may wanna check that out again :/

[nydur]

I use a combination of this extension along with uBlock Origin Lite, and it currently works for me with the Ads setting turned On. Anything else (Off or Skip) would trigger the flag.

Although some other settings such as Force Autoplay Off will have varying results depending on the OS (Chrome on Mac vs Chrome on Windows). But that's another issue altogether.

[ghost]

Depending on the OS

Yea I'm using both Android 14 and Fedora 41.2 and it's triggering on both :/

I uninstalled it and it immediately went back to normal

Edit: the Chrome I have was from an RPM file with a Fedora tag on it :)

[ImprovedTube]

#2987 @gh0stfang