- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
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Didn’t they roll out Manifest V3 to counter ad blockers already? The hell happened to that?
Different set of ideas. Plus, manifest V3 only cages chrome users. Firefox users never had to deal with that dumb bullshit
In order to fuck with everyone that is using browsers with built in ad blocking like brave and opera and people using firefox with ublock origin and custom clients
With the state of AI and computer vision, and legal requirements to disclose ads, i wonder if a ytdl + editing script will he the nicest way to watch at some point
I have a ytdl script download my “subscriptions” automatically to my jellyfin media server and an invidious server for everything else.
Its already is a much nicer way to watch content right now.
If it’s built into the video I watch in mpv can’t I just skip?
Yep, can I play it at 2x speed or skip ahead? If not, then it’s the ad. At the very least blank the video and mute the sound. I’ll enjoy a moment to breath and consider if there’s something better I should be doing.
Good idea. 1.2x speed is how I save time on videos I expect to be long
Forced quite breaks of nothing instead of adpocalyps Is such an unironic wholesome idea. Our brains really need that more.
This wouldn’t be a problem IF content creators were paid a fair share. I wouldn’t actually mind ads nearly as much knowing that the channels I enjoy watching were getting paid reasonably for every ad that I watched. Google has the technology to make it possible.
Also if the ads were actually curated and we didn’t have crypto scams running amok
community driven skippable timestamps and remove click bait thumbnails.
Cool, but that doesn’t work when ads are inserted randomly
I can imagine a plugin system that gets submissions of hashes of specific frames - or just entire frames - when users play them, then checks those frames to detect which parts of the video are unique vs common, then automatically requests new frames to narrow down the timestamps and carve out the additions.
Probably wouldn’t take more than a handful of views across the entire network to get a pretty solid ad removal system. Even better it wouldn’t even rely on user input, which itself is already pretty fast. I have never encountered even the newest video that wasn’t already in the sponsorblock system.
Honestly this sounds like a fun project, I imagine it wouldn’t take the heroes that develop things like sponsorblock very long to figure it out. Plus they have spite on their side.
Edit: actually, rather than rely on randomised frame checks to find the collisions, have the clients submit frames then send frames out and ask clients to see if those frames appear in their videos. Then you very quickly determine which frames are unique.
you might be onto something.
now if only we could fund this project… maybe through advertising
yeah, i realized it later. i don’t see normal ads, forgot they’re injected randomly. still a great plugin
I will say, I don’t know what they’ve done but it’s been fucking up my casual circumvention nicely. Now I just get forced into almost 10 minutes of ads every time, and the ad bars shows up underneath videos, the end cards at the wrong time…
I’ll just write a greasemonkey script that detects unskippable time and mute audio. Let’s play this game google, fuckin I dare ya.
this one? https://gist.github.com/BrockA/2625891
Ha, nope. But i see I’m not alone. There is hope dear people.
Youtube 2026: you are no longer allowed to skip ahead in videos in order to blend the video and ad “experience” together.
what a time to be alive…
Can you have it replace the video screen portion with cat videos from another source during the unskippable part?
Sure, popover video of cute cats and turtles eating strawberries
Only other thing I need is a button to click to pause the video once the ad is over because I’m going to the bathroom.
Instant millions of installs
At this point you can just replace the video with the same video using a timestamped link from just before the ad started. Under IPv4 they can’t tell if it is the same person/device requesting the same video. So unless they put the ad at exactly the same timestamp (which they won’t) you can just blank out the video when an ad starts and replace the stream with the same video using the timestamp to start the video where you left off.
But think of the cats!!!
I’m pretty sure ads will likely be different audio level or light level that would be detectable. If there is no option to detect the ad via API that would be one way to know when the ads begin and end.
The idea here is that ads will be unskippable, aka, you skip ahead 10-20 seconds but can’t. They’re will be controls that appear to catch this. If they incorporate ads and I can just fast forward, then who cares. This is google, they want to watch ads.
Even if it becomes impossible to block the ads out I will cover my ears, close my eyes and shout ‘lalala’ to avoid them.
An appropriate response to this nonsense.
If it becomes impossible to block ads I’m blocking the site, because at that point it’s unbearable
Or use it to implement a script that just downloads the video and cuts the ads out entirely for later watching.
Or, failing any of those, a script that pops up a reminder that YouTube has unskippable ads so you can back out and just do something else with your time.
Don’t get why they don’t just embed them in the middle like a few growing and actually good channels I watch do with their content.
I just fast-forward but they’re embedded in the content so there’s not really a way to “block” them but I don’t mind skipping if im not interested like 45-60 secs.
Ads are the worst at the start and more tolerable in the middle, altho that is reversed for music where the content needs to maintain continuity
Ads are the worst regardless of where they are. I have never once given a shit about whatever garbage they try to push. I don’t give a rats ass about them, their ads or anything they do. Provide a service and thats it. I actively avoid companies that try to shove ads in my face. I basically buy NOTHING anymore because of it and my bank account is SOOOO much better off these days. Constantly saving tons of money because of my fuck you companies attitude.
Oh, absolutely! I would never pay for YT+ because its paying for me to still be G’s product and I won’t do it. Just saying that its interesting that what I’ve seen is tolerable (not that it isn’t a thistle in the side) and they want to overengineer some grand final solution that will alienate a lot of people
The next decade or two are going to be interesting in that consumer habits by necessity and choice are shifting so radically that a lot of dumb legacy industries and models are gonna have serious existential difficulties and are dead corps walking.
Guess I’ll just be blocking YouTube.com on my DNS server and all subsequent Google URLs. I am fed up with their nonsense anyway.
- They don’t care because you aren’t watching ads anyways.
- Where are you going to watch videos now?
Oh I just won’t in the future. Like I already ripped discord out of my life alongside most social media. Meaning I’m capable of doing it with YouTube as well especially as I was terminally online on discord. Plus I have literally infinite media to consume anyway via piracy and games on steam to get to alongside the odd source port or two.
I don’t get why so many people begrudge YouTube for trying make money. They serve up 5TB of video data every second. Somebody’s got to pay for all of that. They know ads suck, that’s why they sell no ad subscriptions.
YouTube makes 8 billion per quarter selling ads. I think they will be able to eat tonight.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the numbers. This is correct, they make 9.2 billion per quarter from ads and 10.7 billion from subscriptions. I can’t find expenses per-segment, but in 2023 their total “Cost of revenues” was 37 billion. I doubt everything other than youtube costs less than 17 billion, so they’re definitely making a profit.
Source: https://abc.xyz/assets/95/eb/9cef90184e09bac553796896c633/2023q4-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf
Their ads not just suck. They are oftentimes sexist, fraudulent, disgusting and a huge privacy concern.
Google used investor funding to create youtube at a loss for years to crush any competition, so we should be mad that there isn’t an easy option to just switch to a comparable alternative.
Ok, but equally any competition would need to be profitable earlier, you can’t complain you got a service operating at a loss which is now operating at a profit when that’s exactly what any alternative you’d feasibly switch to would do
Google used investor funding to create youtube at a loss for years to crush any competition
There is a difference between needing to operate at a loss when first starting a business because it is necessary and using funding to prop yourself up so much that is undermines all of the competition. Like the difference between being a very successful business and abusing a monopoly.
Oh yeah I absolutely agree with monopoly abuse being a bad thing with a huge caveat that it’s so much worse for essential services and not quite as bad for extras, like youtube. I personally can’t see any competition to youtube being able to provide a better service - it’s in a similar niche to Netflix where they were great until they got competition at which point the userbase and content fragmented, which meant they had to provide a worse service to make money as the content rights agreements made it into several small monopolies and so they were literally unable to compete, which is frankly worse
Now here’s a thought - what if the real workaround Google are using here is targeting only non manifest V3 users?
That would reduce the cost of doing this, since chrome users are already forced to swallow ads and could just be served as normal.
Firefox also implements manifest v3, just without the user-hostile restrictions.
Good to know.
sometimes the best move is not to play
How bout a nice game of chess?
Next up: all web pages are full resolution bitmap files.
Here’s an image viewer example with 0 exposed HTML elements (all UI rendered through a single canvas) and 0 human readable code (all client side code compiled to webassembly bytecode). Trying to block unwanted content in this kind of site would be closer to cracking a video game or patching an android app.
Nah, computer vision for standalone image processing (I mean, not batch processing dozens to thousands of files at the same time) today is pretty lightweight and can be done easily on consumer laptops and smartphones. It is just a different technique and takes people with different skills to do it, but completely doable. Gor example, even face detection AI models can run on your laptop, if AI can learn to classify faces, objects and animals it can learn to classify ads.
I’m surprised DRM’d webpages haven’t been a thing until now.
They’re trying. Give them some time. Users will lap it up like idiots instead of just saying no.
Google was working on a feature that would do just that, but I can’t recall the name of it.
They backed down for now due to public outcry, but I expect they’re just biding their time.
Web environment integrity
Thank you! I was struggling to remember the proposal name.
And I’m testing no longer using YouTube.
Cable was gone years ago, followed by all streaming. Soon all I’ll have left are games and hobbies.
EA, Ubisoft, and Activision are all on my do not buy list. Their games aren’t even worth pirating.
Can’t inject shitty ads in my mountain of board games.
I dunno… Hasbro kind of has a monopoly.
EA has been on the boycott list since mass effect 3
Go right ahead. If they actually manage to do it, that will be the end of my YouTube watching. Except on extremely rare occasions. I don’t need it badly enough to deal with that.
Go right ahead. If they actually manage to do it, that will be the end of my YouTube watching.
…
Except on extremely rare occasions.
I’m sorry, I just find it funny that you walked back the “I’m done with Youtube” claim in the very next sentence.
Unfortunately it is such a repository of information that it’s nearly unavoidable anymore. It’s a reference tool. Need to fix your car? YouTube knows how. Need to write a piece of code with a tool you’re unfamiliar with? A random Indian man has posted a YouTube video explaining how. Need to find a hidden item in a video game? YouTube. There are many and varied reasons I’d pull up a YouTube video outside of the intended purpose of “watching YouTube” for entertainment. Many of these things can, technically, be conveyed through different media but often poorly and with a much lower rate of understanding. The sheer volume of knowledge and culture lost if Google ever takes down YouTube’s servers will be akin to the burning of the Library of Alexandria and that is not a joke. I don’t want to “watch YouTube” anymore for the most part but it is inescapable to me for several purposes as a reference material.
I don’t think it can be completely avoided, but it can definitely be trimmed down a hell of a lot. As an example, if you watch YouTube for an hour a day and they make a change like this and you start watching it for 10 minutes a week, that’s a serious reduction.
As we learned from the reddit app changes, the ending of Netflix account sharing, etc etc the people who will take this action are few enough not to matter. Regretfully.
I don’t know about you, but what I learned is we’ll build our own Youtube with blackjack and hookers.
People will accept anything to not be inconvenienced in a purely consumer society.
It’s Idiocracy
Bruh, in Idiocracy, they at least wanted to do the right thing, even if they were too dumb to do so.
How sad is it that Idiocracy overestimated people?
It does matter because it inspires newer platforms that aren’t as shitty like Lemmy, PixelFed, Mbin, and PeerTube.
We’re about to have a great big shattering of the internet and I’m all for it. Collating the pieces will be a pain in the ass for a couple years but some handful of nerds out there blessed by the spirit of Ritchie will create a tool for it, and what’s left of our world will be a better place for it.
This one’s on my bingo card.
Question, if a square on your bingo card is titled, “collapse of society,” can I still use it for this?
I’ve been just recommending Lemmy out there as the new internet, which us what this feels like to me, IS like the old internet again!
That doesn’t matter to me. When a company does shit like this, I won’t use it and will actively avoid it. People can do what they want and if they want to be abused constantly that’s on them. I don’t really care. I make my choice and I stick with it. Change will never happen with companies, they don’t care unless they actually get charged more then the money they make from their abuse and we all know that will never happen .
Each of these exoduses moves the bar a little bit. We only lose if we give up. Eventually the bad decisions will catch up to them, as long as we keep pushing.
Well I don’t know about the Reddit stuff not mattering—I occasionally still check on it for a couple of niche communities and the Reddit I used to enjoy has basically died, it’s like the place is filled with angry idiots now. Those people were always there before but usually buried under a load of downvotes where you could mostly ignore them; they now seem to be a majority of those left contributing over there.
They killed the golden goose in scaring off enough of the people contributing most interesting posts and comments (who were doing it entirely for free!) that the lunatics have taken over and shat on everything
Everyone I’ve spoken to about it has noted that it’s become a very different place. I’ll still use it for reviews and getting tips for serious things like privacy and some basic DIY. But a lot of that advice will be obsolete in a couple years and very few people are replenishing it. Who’s going to give a shit about the best home theater setups of 2023 in two years?
deleted by creator
I’d like to believe that to be true
Same.
I’m excited for YouTube to end my YouTube addiction lol.
Please, Google. Do it. Dare ya.
I genuinely spend too much time on that site, but I haven’t seen an ad in years. If that changes, then I guess I’ll have to change, too.
I went to watch a diy video at work with chrome and was like WTF is this shit, the ads were so bad I walked back across the shop to get my phone and pull up the same video and started watching it before the video even started on the computer. Who in the hell can actually watch shit like that? It’s insane.
Ngl, I’m torn on this because I’m honestly not sure I could stop using YouTube.
I hate ads with a burning passion, though, so we’ll see which wolf wins out there.
If i can’t get around this using something like SponsorBlock, I feel like I’ll probably just set up some kind of pipeline to download videos and remove the ads myself (maybe using AI if it’s that bad) and just serve them over Jellyfin or something. Gonna be a pain, though.
I wouldn’t particularly like it, that’s for sure. But I would ultimately just bite the bullet and do it. At some point, you’re just pushed too far and it’s just not worth dealing with.
Hope folks will actually stick to claims such as this when the time comes
