this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Oh, they absolutely are capable of telling if you have uBlock Origin installed. However, uBlock is also capable of blocking scripts, so you can make a filter to block whatever part of the scripts on the page it is that detect your adblocker. I've never seen an anti-adblocker that didn't use Javascript, and the great thing about Javascript is that your browser can just... Ignore it.
It would be pretty trivial for them to just block playback completely for any agent that's blocking their ad scripts. Or make their ad videos indistinguishable from the actually video you want.
The question isn't CAN they enforce this, it's WILL they enforce this? Thus far we've been succeeding at this cat-and-mouse game simply because the cat is too fat and lazy to chase us. But this cat is looking more hungry and motivated every day....we'll see.
Ad publishers have been in a war with adblockers for a decade now, were it trivial to detect adblockers, they would have already won. This is the sole reason Google has introduced the idea of DRM for websites.
In fact, the only trivial thing is bypassing anti-adblock. There is no anti-adblock that relies upon Javascript that cannot be bypassed without issue. The way Javascript is executed on the user's computer, unobfuscated, means it can be altered in whatever way you want before it is ran.