For YouTube A/B testing victims. Removes the unhelpful clickable fake links, when trying to highlight text in YT live stream chat.

yt-dehyperlink-chat.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name            De-hyperlink YouTube chat
// @description     Remove the unhelpful clickable fake links when trying to highlight YT live stream chat
// @namespace       YoutubePlsStop
// @version         0.1.1
// @match           https://www.youtube.com/*
// @updateURL       https://gist.github.com/Rainyan/275de6c59005945804110f661685e5d8/raw
// @run-at          document-idle
// @noframes
// ==/UserScript==

"use strict";

const PRINT_DEBUG_LOG = false;

let storedHref = "";
// Used for tracking the found state, so that we can only parse the dom when needed.
let found_chat_field = false;
let findInterval = null;

findChatField();

function log(text) {
    if (PRINT_DEBUG_LOG) {
        console.log(text);
    }
}

// Can't use mutation observer for Youtube's in-place page loading voodoo, so just loop like a madman
function youtubeSucks() {
    if(storedHref !== location.href) {
        log("URL Changed", storedHref, location.href);
        findChatField();
        storedHref = location.href;
    }
}
setInterval(youtubeSucks, 1000);

let LIVE_PAGE = {
    getChatField: () => {
        const chatFrame = document.getElementById("chatframe");
        const contentDoc = chatFrame ? chatFrame.contentDocument : null;
        // Can be null if chat window is minimized by user, which would throw an error, so we check.
        if (contentDoc !== null) {
            return contentDoc.querySelector("#items.style-scope.yt-live-chat-item-list-renderer");
        }
        return null;
    }
};

function findChatField() {
    let FindCount = 1;
    clearInterval(findInterval);
    findInterval = setInterval(function() {
        if (found_chat_field && LIVE_PAGE.getChatField() === null) {
            found_chat_field = false;
        }
        if (found_chat_field) {
            return;
        }

        ++FindCount;
        if (FindCount > 180) {
            log("The chat element cannot be found");
            clearInterval(findInterval);
            FindCount = 0;
        }
        if (document.getElementById("chatframe")) {
           if (LIVE_PAGE.getChatField() !== null) {
               log("Found the chat element: ");
               log(LIVE_PAGE.getChatField());
               found_chat_field = true;

               initialize();

               // Don't clearInterval, because we wanna keep on tracking
               // for any new chat fields in case user closed/minimized the chat.
               //clearInterval(findInterval);

               FindCount = 0;
           }
        }
    }, 250);
}

function initialize() {
    log("initialize...");

    if (LIVE_PAGE.getChatField() !== null) {
        ChatFieldObserver.disconnect();
        ChatFieldObserver.observe(LIVE_PAGE.getChatField(), {childList: true});
    }
}

const ChatFieldObserver = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
    mutations.forEach(function(e) {
        let addedChats = e.addedNodes;
        for (let i = 0; i < addedChats.length; ++i) {
            addedChats[i].removeAttribute("whole-message-clickable");
        }
    });
});