When a mid-roll ad on YouTube is blocked, the user has to pause and unpause the video to continue watching

laiz

Steps to reproduce the issue:

Create a fresh Orion profile
Open a YouTube video that is monetized and has mid-roll ads. I am using as an example here. That video should have a mid-roll ad at 1:55 timestamp (see my recording below).
Once a mid-roll ad is blocked, the video turns black and has a looping download animation:
The user can resume watching by pausing and unpausing the video.

Another way to trigger mid-roll ads it to skip to a random point in a long (>8min monetized video) which also causes the video to be paused on Orion.

Both beta and RC seem to have this issue. In the video below I have also included Firefox+uBlock origin which successfully blocks the ad without pausing the video.

Expected functionality:
The mid-roll ad should be blocked without the video being paused; the user experience should be as smooth as it is on FF+uBlock origin.

Orion and macOS versions:

Version 0.99.127.2.3-rc (WebKit 619.1.1)

Sonoma (14)

dino

laiz can you please check if this is still reproducible with latest 127.3 release?

laiz

dino
As of 127.3 the mid-roll ads no longer pause the video. Instead, they very briefly appear on the screen while Orion skips/blocks them, after which playback usually resumes. I noticed once or twice a pause still occurring and requiring manual inputs but this is a rare event.

Below is a comparison between Orion RC (on the left) and Firefox+uBlock Origin (on the right). As you can see, the FF+uBO experience is still seamless whereas Orion has a brief interruption after each mid-roll ad.

So, 127.3 was a significant leap forwards but there are still some kinks to be ironed out.

Vlad

laiz Thanks, can you identify which block list in uBO is responsible for dealing with YT ads so we can implement it by default

laiz

Vlad
On Firefox 125.0.3 (64-bit) running uBlock Origin 1.57.2, having EasyList as the only enabled list results in mid-roll ads being seamlessly blocked. I tested this by enabling lists one at a time until the mid-roll ads stopped appearing.

Since Orion also uses EasyList, I am at a loss and someone with more experience should step in to explain why FF+uBlock with Easylist works but Orion + EasyList does not.

dino

laiz because Orion don't support some specific filters yet

Extended CSS selectors (Adblock Plus-specific)
Snippet filters

so may be that's the reason why both behaves differently.

Vlad

But Orion + uBO should behave the same on YouTube so it seems @laiz is saying that is not the case?

laiz

Vlad
Just did a quick test:

Firefox + uBO (latest version): videos start seamlessly and play seamlessly
Orion + uBO (the version from popular extensions and the latest version from FF store behave identically in this case): the preroll ads aren't blocked properly so the user has to wait 5-10 seconds before the video starts playing
Orion + built-in content blocker: preroll ads are bypassed in under a second, mid-roll ads cause interruptions and occasionally the automatic skipping doesn't work, instead requiring the user to manually pause the video and resume.

azdanov

I encountered the same behavior for Twitter and Reddit, when using an extension (ABP, uBlock) the ads were filtered out, but with Orion built-in the ads were shown. Easylist should include the rules to filter them out, so most likely it's the missing features support in the built-in content blocker.

azdanov

I keep encountering ads on x.com while using native content blocker with standard lists.

From my research I found out that Orion doesn't fully implement ABP syntax, so some rules from Easylist are not applied.

There is similar behavior with reddit, where Easylist didn't work, but I could block the ads by using a custom filter reddit.com##.promotedlink, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work for x.com

The ads are not shown if using uBlock, but I'd like to keep my extensions limited.

I'd like not to see ads 🙂

Version 0.99.127.3-beta (WebKit 619.1.1)

Sonoma (14)

azdanov

➖

laiz

Done @Vlad