I use (d) Youtube a lot, but from about 18Oct I can’t, basically.
Because I run an adblocker (plus Malwarebytes also blocks bits of youtube (I think)) then any attempt to watch something on youtube gets
’ Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service
It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled.
Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide.
You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium and creators can still get paid from your subscription.
I obviously disabled adblock plus and malwarebytes - at first this worked, but last 2 or 3 days they have tightened even more and I now cannot get past the message.
Essentially, some of us are getting blocked and others (me included) wonder what the fuss is about, because we’re using ad blockers without any problem.
I had the same problem but I removed Adblock Plus which I have used for a long time and replaced it with AdBlocker Ultimate on my Chrome browser and it seems to have cured it.
I’ve just stumbled upon something interesting on YouTube. I clicked on a link on my phone, which is set up in French (to make me practice my language skills). The subject isn’t really relevant, but it was uploaded by Mark Rober, an American guy who previously worked for Nasa but now makes entertaining videos about engineering.
I know that for many years now YouTube has been able to transcribe the subtitles into foreign languages, but this is the first time I’ve seen them also dub the actual audio track into a foreign language too. The video is available in 13 languages!
Even more impressive, the background music and sound effects from the original version appear to have been kept in the dubbed version somehow. I’d heard a British car vlogger (Mat Armstrong) talk about this feature coming soon, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it being used.
I’m not sure whether Mark Rober has paid for a native speaker to do it. I’ve not seen it on any of his other ones. Mat Armstrong said it’s a feature YouTube are deploying soon, as he’s previously paid voiceover artists to do it for him.
There was another video shared not so long ago about an AI tool that could swap languages and even modify the video so the mouth moved naturally in time to the dubbed language… I’ll see if I can dig it out.
Yeah he started out fixing his girlfriend’s Audi TT on his driveway at the start of the pandemic, and it all took off from there. His dad was a mechanic, I believe. I’m not sure I’d have the confidence to drive a supercar that I’d rebuilt myself in my own garage without any formal training
He’s fascinating to listen to about managing social media too… he’s very switiched on about that and saw the potential and is maximising YT for all it’s worth. Good on him
If you’re into classical music there are loads of recordings of all sorts of music in lots of different versions, mostly audio. Fascinating to compare.
Not exactly ‘What’s up with YouTube’, but I’ve noticed a growing number of YouTube channels, such as this one, which I consider are AI generated. The speaker in the 1st clip I watched gives her interpretation of Mark Carney’s speech at Davos 2026, which sounded interesting. I thought to begin with she was a real woman.
In her video about Mark Carney’s speech, the background, books, papers, photos etc are in exactly the same positions as in the other 9 videos, and her clothing, her gestures, her eyes etc are always the same. Nothing changes from video to video, 2 weeks apart, except the words spoken.
It does say, which I hadn’t seen at the beginning, that AI is involved, but I don’t like the anonymity. She’s not real. I want to listen to genuine, real, live speakers.
YouTube now seems full of AI narrated videos, often with the occasional ugly mistake, but it’s usually a voice-over-clip rather than a proper animation because that’s just easier to arrange. Any AI presented video immediately loses credibility for me because of this.
It’s become frustrating that training videos for work have also become AI presented, with annoying moving images that serve to distract and divert attention away.
