Youtube - No View Count for Adblock Users

[Turitoo]

Recently I noticed that youtube doesn't count views of adblock users.

You can test it on your own:

- find a random youtube video with less than 300 views
- enable adlbock --> view the video (just reload video page 2 or more times) --> view count doesn't increase
- disable adblock --> view the video (just reload video page 2 or more times) --> view count gets instantly increased

Well that's all, I just wanted to post this information since I couldn't find anything about this issue via google.

[mapx]

what subscriptions are you using ?

[Turitoo]

The default ones, I didn't change anything in the settings.

Since I'm from germany, it's:
- EasyList Germany+EasyList
- Malware Domains
- EasyPrivacy

[mapx]

the count doesnt increase even with ABP disabled for YT, did you test logged in or off ?

[Turito]

Yes, I tested it for both cases.

Odd... did you make sure to view the video at least 2 times?

[mapx]

sure, I reloaded again and again, always logged in, ABP enabled / disabled, firefox and chrome

[Turito]

Well here is a video demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LSmNXeHQNI

[Turitooo]

Hi it's me again (this time registered ^^).

After some further investigation and experementing with the specific filter options, I found the culprit that is causing the view count blockade. It's the "||youtube.com/get_video?" entry in the "EasyPrivacy" subscription:



When this entry is turned off, youtube will count your views, otherwise it won't. The strange thing about this is that this entry is not responsible for disabling the ads. So even after disabling this entry, ads on youtube are still blocked, but the views will count nevethless.

Does anyone know what the function of the entry "||youtube.com/get_video?" is? If it has nothing to do with ads, why is it in the subscription at all? And do you have an explanation on why this entry affects the view count at all?

_______

@mapx

Regarding your issue that your views don't count at all, here are some possible reasons I can think of (besides the 2 points I already mentioned in the first post):

- maby you have another add-on running in the background that is causing to block your view count (e.g. NoScript); or it's blocked by another program (firewall, antivirus)
- maby you refreshed the video too fast (let it run at least for a sec)
- when adblock was disabled, the video you checked had ads at the beginning on the video; if you refresh the page before the ad is not finished (meaning, the actual video has not loaded yet), your view will not count

[Turitooo]

Oh, about the first line...

Hi it's me again (this time registered ^^).

I actually indeed resgistered here on Turitooo, and tried to post my message here several times, but each time the following error appeared:

Sorry, we don't like Spammers.

Then I tried to post my comment after logging off, and it finally worked. Forgot to remove the first part of my message (since it was copy-pasted).

[mapx]

The filters in easyprivacy manage the privacy/tracking issues, so they don't block ads

fanboy or MonztA can say why that filter ...in easyprivacy

[MonztA]

It appears to be used for tracking, that's why it's blocked.