DuckDuckGo's Browser Now Blocks Most YouTube Ads
3 81 Nerds.xyz reports: DuckDuckGo just gave its browser a feature that a lot of people have been waiting for. The privacy-focused browser can now block most video ads on YouTube, letting users watch videos without sitting through the pre-roll and mid-roll interruptions that have become part of everyday life on the platform. The feature is already enabled by default for iPhone, Windows, and Mac users running the latest version of the browser. Android users can turn it on manually... with DuckDuckGo planning to enable it by default in a future update...
To make it work, DuckDuckGo relies on the same community-maintained filter lists used by uBlock Origin, along with some of its own compatibility rules. The company says you might notice a bit of extra buffering before a video starts, but once playback begins, most ads should be gone.
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli argues that the feature raises questions about how creators are compensated when ad revenue is bypassed.
3 comments
In the beginning (Score: 5, Informative)
by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday July 11, 2026 @04:57PM (#66233420)
In the beginning, websites hosted their own ads. Then they farmed them out to someone else to manage, then that was (almost instantly) abused to deliver malware, then people started using adblockers and websites started implementing adblocker detection and refusing to serve people with such protections enabled.
Nobody seems to be willing to route both the original video and the ads through the same server to seamlessly splice the ads in and make ad detection and suppression more or less impossible.
Pffft (Score: 5, Funny)
by spaceman375 ( 780812 ) on Saturday July 11, 2026 @05:14PM (#66233440)
I use firefox under linux with ublock origin and Privacy Badger. I haven't seen any of these ads since people started bitching about them, and I watch youtube almost every day. I suppose this makes it easier for windows & mac users, but they should probably be running their browsers in a vm anyway just to avoid malware.
Firefox + uBlock Origin (Score: 5, Insightful)
by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Saturday July 11, 2026 @07:59PM (#66233616)
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin , on Linux as well as Android. ...
No ads in YouTube at all
And there is a bonus: videos continue to play, even when the tab isn't the on that has focus. Handy for listening to music, while reading.