Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf (2022)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Apple TV TLS interception & certificate pinning

  • Several commenters were surprised tvOS allows installing custom CAs, enabling HTTPS MITM on Apple TV; some speculate this is for enterprise/EDU environments and reuse of iOS plumbing.
  • Others note most modern apps use certificate pinning and bypass the system store; some express surprise YouTube didn’t, while others say many mobile apps (especially banking) still pin.
  • People point out that newer Android restricts user CAs by default, and that pinning breaks corporate SSL proxies but is still widely used in apps.
  • There’s disagreement over whether YouTube should add pinning: it would easily kill this hack but might break corporate setups and legacy devices.

Protobuf “flaw” vs design & potential countermeasures

  • Technically minded commenters argue the described “flaw” (changing field tags so ad fields are ignored) is just Protobuf working as designed: unknown fields must be ignored for forward compatibility.
  • Others say the real “flaw” is YouTube’s app treating failures to parse ad info as “no ads to show” instead of erroring.
  • People note Google could instead:
    • Sign Protobuf payloads to prevent in-flight tampering;
    • Use certificate pinning;
    • Delay serving video segments until ad time elapses.
  • Some argue the business tradeoff (keeping playback robust across versions) likely outweighs the small number of users doing MITM ad-blocking.

Server-side ad insertion & technical limits

  • Multiple comments discuss server-side ad insertion (SSAI), noting Twitch/Hulu already splice ads into streams and ad stacks offer this “as a checkbox.”
  • Others counter that dynamic A/V splicing at scale raises complexity and compute/bandwidth costs; YouTube probably keeps client-side ads to stay cheap and flexible.
  • Several suggest community tools (e.g., SponsorBlock-style segment signatures) could still skip embedded ads, even if server-side.

YouTube Premium, creator revenue & fairness

  • There’s extensive debate about whether users should just pay for Premium instead of hacking around ads.
  • Some say Premium yields creators more per hour than ads and is “worth every penny,” especially given heavy usage and included music.
  • Others doubt official numbers, report mixed income splits, or note Premium still leaves inline sponsor reads and other platform-level promotion.
  • A recurring ethical thread:
    • One side: blocking ads while not paying is freeloading; if you value the content, support it.
    • Other side: ad ecosystems distort content (clickbait, length tuning, advertiser-driven censorship), and paying doesn’t fix those “second-order effects.”

Addiction, shorts, and network-wide friction

  • Many commenters express frustration with infinite-scroll formats (YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels) and their own or their kids’ difficulty disengaging.
  • Suggested mitigations:
    • Network-level blocking (Pi-hole, pfSense, OpenWrt) for ads or specific paths;
    • Browser/user-script tools that hide feeds, comments, or shorts;
    • Artificial friction (delays, bandwidth throttling, Screen Time limits) to break the “instant reward” loop.
  • Some wish platforms simply offered a “disable shorts” setting; others argue this conflicts with the platforms’ incentives.

Alternatives & tooling

  • A large side-thread surveys alternatives:
    • Invidious instances, Yewtu.be, FreeTube, NewPipe, ReVanced, RSS + mpv/yt-dlp;
    • Local proxies (mitmproxy, goproxy-based) or custom C++/Go MITM filters instead of pfSense/mitmproxy overhead;
    • Apple TV alternatives (Android TV boxes, WebOS with homebrew) and discussion of UX tradeoffs.
  • Some report YouTube rate-limiting or blocking IPs used heavily by yt-dlp, suggesting a continuing arms race.

Piracy, DRM, and “ownership”

  • Several commenters argue piracy is morally justified given “buy” often means revocable access, paid tiers now include ads, and DRM blocks fair use (e.g., screen recording on mobile).
  • Others maintain piracy guarantees creators get nothing and that the underlying digital-media economy is broken but not a moral blank check.
  • There’s a broader resentment toward ad-driven “enshittification” and platforms exploiting their quasi-monopoly and town-square role, versus calls to either pay or opt out entirely.