YouTube's New Anti-Adblock Technique: Fake Buffering and How to Bypass It

YouTube has rolled out another round of anti-adblock measures, one of which is "fake buffering." Videos experience artificially long buffering at the start, proportional to the ad duration. This is because YouTube's InnerTube API, when adblocking is detected, returns video streams from GVS (Google Video Services) with delays. The author found a solution by modifying a uBlock Origin filter to add `isInlinePlaybackNoAd: true` to the JSON request. However, YouTube implemented a locker script, necessitating a workaround by hooking Object.assign.