Block Google & YouTube Ads Once and For All — Protect your privacy

Have you also thought that YouTube ads are out of control? The moment you choose to watch a video you will see a youtube ad playing instead. And sometimes this occurs more than once in the same video. This has worsened the user experience on the platform leaving many users with doubts whether a free and ad orientated platform is in their best interest.

With the increase in monthly subscription models like Netflix and Spotify, we see that users now are interested in more valuable content over free plans with ads. YouTube also tried to take its claim on this growth by launching YouTube Premium. With YouTube Premium, a user can access all videos and music on the platform without advertisements.

However, YouTube has always been marketed as a free video hosting platform. Monthly subscriptions with no ads are not coherent with their branding. So subscription-based business models can never work for YouTube.

Ads, however, seem to serve YouTube well. The platform has attracted more than 1.9 billion creators, while YouTubers that earn 6 figures per year increased by 40% in 2019.

A survey from Business Insider showed that Facebook and YouTube Ads are considered the most annoying by 45% and 43% respectively. With those stats, it comes as no surprise that more than 80% of the population uses ad blocker for one of their devices. In fact, 30% uses ads blocker for 3 or more devices.

Google ads have become extremely intrusive and are disrupting the user experience. Thankfully, some websites do not function under ads like Patreon, Medium or Shabingo. But for most blogs or video hosting sites on the internet, you will need to install an ad blocker to have a clean experience.

For this reason, I have prepared you a list of the best free ad blockers you can use for your desktop. Get rid of YouTube ads with these tools:

Ad Blockers

These tools are extensions you can use on your current browser to block pop-ups and cookies from being collected while you visit various websites. You can choose the one that best fits your needs.

AdBlock Plus

If you are searching for the best ad blocker then that is AdBlock Plus. It has extensions for chrome, safari, firefox, and opera. It is free and can block most ads and malware from youtube and other sites. AdBlock Plus allows “non-intrusive advertising” through its filters. This is an option a user can disable, though, from the settings.

AdBlock

AdBlock, just like AdBlocker has extensions for chrome, safari, and firefox and it is also very well trusted on the internet. It also gives you the option to donate some money to continue having its services.

Poper Blocker

Poper Blocker is an extension for chrome. This tool runs additionally to your normal ad blocker and is focused on blocking pop-ups, pop-unders, overlays, timed and scroll pop-ups, and other varieties that might slip past your regular ads blocker tool.

AdBlocker Ultimate

This tool is being marketed as the ad blocker that lets no advertising pass through and gets no sponsorships from advertising companies. It has extensions for chrome, firefox, and safari and blocks all known malware, adware, and tracking domains.

uBlock Origin

uBlock Origin is a simple yet efficient ad blocker with a low resource overhead. You have the option of adjusting its features and blocking options and it’s available on chrome and firefox.

Fair AdBlocker

Fair AdBlocker blocks obtrusive pop-ups, overlays, and other obnoxious advertising but it also allows not so intrusive advertising. It calls it “fair advertising”. For this reason, it doesn’t work with filters like all the previous tools but with an algorithm. This algorithm determines which ads to allow and which not.

Privacy-focused web browsers

If you are interested in keeping a more secure online behavior then below you will find a list of browsers you could use instead of tweaking chrome. With these tools, you can browse the internet without being tracked by internet providers.

Opera

The Opera browser includes ad-blocking features into the browser without the need for an extra add-on. This doesn’t mean that you can not customize it further with additional extensions. Also, it offers privacy-friendly tools such as an unlimited, built-in VPN service, incognito mode, fraud and malware warnings for suspicious links and pages, and more.

Tor

Tor is a great tool if you want to keep yourself anonymous while browsing the net. Tor blocks all third-party trackers, clears cookies and histories when you close the browser and it tries to make all browser users look identical. However, Tor is designed for physical and digital anonymity, not security and encryption. It is available both on Windows and macOS.

Brave

Brave is an excellent browser for those who do not know or want to figure out what they must do to be kept anonymous. Brave’s default settings block all advertising and third-party tracking, and its built-in HTTPS Everywhere feature ensures you’re always connecting to the most secure version of the website you’re browsing. It is available on Windows and macOS and gives you the option to exclude some websites from its blocking features as a reward to your favorite creators.

Author: Evi Tsokanaki

Originally published at https://shabingo.com.