After careful consideration and deliberation, I regret to inform you that I have made the difficult decision to discontinue the development and support of the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Addons uBO-YouTube extension.
This project had been a labor of love for some time.. several years, and I am immensely grateful for the support and feedback from our users throughout this journey. However, due to a combination of personal commitments, my job and family responsibilities, and other projects demanding my attention, I find myself unable to devote the time and resources necessary to maintain the project and navigate the constant changes that YouTube is implementing to circumvent adblocking.
I have come to the realization that YouTube's increasingly aggressive stance towards adblockers has shifted my perspective on the original mission of this project. While the intention was to find a middle ground between adblocking users and content creators, the landscape has evolved, and I no longer align with the premise of enabling adblocking on a selective basis.
Google simply has more resources at their disposal in this adblock vs anti-adblock arms race. For example, the "Skip Ad" button used to have a simple "click" event listener that we could trigger with a simple click event onto the "Skip Ads" button once a video has ended. The button (and its parent elements) now have a "real click" series of event listeners, involving a complex dance of mousemove, mousedown, mouseup and click events. Its the same type of technology that is used in the "I am not a robot" technology that Google uses in its captcha-replacements. The amount of time/effort that it would take me to re-create these events out is simply untennable for me and likely easily worked-around by Google. It is significantly easier to simply block ads based on network requests (like uBlock Origin does), which essentially means blocking all ads since otherwise the creator channel ID/username will (by YouTube's design) only be available after the video and ad content have been loaded. Additionally, this extension makes use of the blocking webRequest API to accomplish certain functions. With Google's Manifest V3 this wont be possible anymore. See uBlock Origin's statement on the subject: https://support.ublock.org/hc/en-us/articles/11749958544275-Google-s-Manifest-V3-What-it-is-and-what-it-means-for-uBlock-Users .
There are alternative avenues for supporting content creators, such as sponsors, Patreon, superlikes, and other direct contribution methods. As such, I feel it is time to explore and promote these alternative means of support rather than perpetuate a model that may not align with the current ethos of the YouTube community.
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and I want to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for your support, feedback, and understanding throughout the lifespan of this project.
As for the next steps, I will be archiving the GitHub repository for the project and closing down the extensions on both the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Addons. This decision was not made lightly, but I believe it is the most responsible course of action given the circumstances.
Thank you once again for your understanding and support.
Dear users,
After careful consideration and deliberation, I regret to inform you that I have made the difficult decision to discontinue the development and support of the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Addons uBO-YouTube extension.
This project had been a labor of love for some time.. several years, and I am immensely grateful for the support and feedback from our users throughout this journey. However, due to a combination of personal commitments, my job and family responsibilities, and other projects demanding my attention, I find myself unable to devote the time and resources necessary to maintain the project and navigate the constant changes that YouTube is implementing to circumvent adblocking.
I have come to the realization that YouTube's increasingly aggressive stance towards adblockers has shifted my perspective on the original mission of this project. While the intention was to find a middle ground between adblocking users and content creators, the landscape has evolved, and I no longer align with the premise of enabling adblocking on a selective basis.
Google simply has more resources at their disposal in this adblock vs anti-adblock arms race. For example, the "Skip Ad" button used to have a simple "click" event listener that we could trigger with a simple click event onto the "Skip Ads" button once a video has ended. The button (and its parent elements) now have a "real click" series of event listeners, involving a complex dance of mousemove, mousedown, mouseup and click events. Its the same type of technology that is used in the "I am not a robot" technology that Google uses in its captcha-replacements. The amount of time/effort that it would take me to re-create these events out is simply untennable for me and likely easily worked-around by Google. It is significantly easier to simply block ads based on network requests (like uBlock Origin does), which essentially means blocking all ads since otherwise the creator channel ID/username will (by YouTube's design) only be available after the video and ad content have been loaded. Additionally, this extension makes use of the blocking webRequest API to accomplish certain functions. With Google's Manifest V3 this wont be possible anymore. See uBlock Origin's statement on the subject: https://support.ublock.org/hc/en-us/articles/11749958544275-Google-s-Manifest-V3-What-it-is-and-what-it-means-for-uBlock-Users .
There are alternative avenues for supporting content creators, such as sponsors, Patreon, superlikes, and other direct contribution methods. As such, I feel it is time to explore and promote these alternative means of support rather than perpetuate a model that may not align with the current ethos of the YouTube community.
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and I want to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for your support, feedback, and understanding throughout the lifespan of this project.
As for the next steps, I will be archiving the GitHub repository for the project and closing down the extensions on both the Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Addons. This decision was not made lightly, but I believe it is the most responsible course of action given the circumstances.
Thank you once again for your understanding and support.
Best regards,
x0a