Trouble launching videos on YouTube with AdBlock Plus enabled

VoodooPriest

Hi all,

I have been for a few days now unable to launch videos on YouTube. This issue started like 5 or 7 days ago, but it could be older since my watching videos online is pretty sporadic.

Using the Developer Tools, I could see in the Network tab that the URL fragment get_video_info?html5=1&video_id=… was being blocked. The Status column reads "(block:other)".

I have been able to pinpoint it on AdBlock Plus, simply by disabling it on YouTube and seeing that I could then launch videos. The thing that I don't get is that the extension has not been updated since February.

Another test that I ran is watching the video in another browser. No issues in Firefox and Chrome.

I'm wondering if somebody else is experiencing the same issue, and whether it's due to one of the latest updates of Vivaldi. If so, I'd be grateful if you can share your knowledge. Thank you.

Komposten

I have had a similar issue with AdBlock Plus recently.

In my case I couldn't play anything on YouTube Music; I just got a black video player with a spinning circle.
On YouTube it tried to play ads but the actual ad content was blocked, so instead I got a black video with a duration set for 30 sec - 1 minute. The play button did not work. However, the black video usually disappeared after a few seconds and was replaced by the actual video (as if the invisible ads were skipped automatically after a couple of seconds).

My guess was that YouTube changed how they displayed ads on their website, so AdBlock Plus would only block some parts of the new ad system (which caused these weird bugs).

I fixed it by going to the AdBlock Plus settings (click the AdBlock Plus icon and then the cog icon) and then telling it to update all filter lists.

Pathduck

Even if the extension's not been updated the blocker lists it use might have. Sometimes forcing another update of the filters can fix issues like this, if they've discovered the error.

However, if not, you'd need to dig into the issue yourself. There should be no reason for a URL like you said above should be blocked by an adblocker.

I use uBO myself, and it's got a logger, I assume Adblock had something similar. Open this, and examine the blocked elements to find what rule from what list triggers them. Then you can create an exception for the URL (make it as general as possible), until the Adblock devs fix it.

If you know your way around Github, most lists are there, and you could create an issue on the list detailing the issue. Or create your own pull request to fix the error

VoodooPriest

Thanks for your replies.

I had indeed updated the filters lists, both a few days before my post, in which case it worked, and right before posting. In the latter case, it did not work. But I've just found the culprit: it's another extension called AutoplayStopper:

AutoplayStopper + ABP => fail
ABP only => pass
AutoplayStopper only => fail

This means that any time AutoplayStopper is enabled, the video will not play. I ended up disabling it for YouTube. It's probably that YT added a parameter that matches a filter that this extension uses to block some URLs.