• dan@upvote.au
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    2 months ago

    The article makes it sound like a new concept, but it’s a very old approach for adding ads to video streams. I mean, it’s essentially how regular TV works.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I just hope they don’t start running commercials during the streams like quarter and half screen commercials over top the existing content. A lot of TV channels started doing that when DVRs first popped up.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        2 months ago

        I suspect that this will be a thing eventually… It’s a reasonably easy way to defeat apps/systems like Comskip that detect and remove ads from videos. Comskip is what Plex, Jellyfin, etc. use to detect ads in DVR recordings.

        Those ad removal systems usually find ads by looking for changes in the video. For example, sometimes there’s black frames before and after the ads, sometimes there’s a TV station logo that goes away during ads (especially on channels like CNN), sometimes there’s a change in volume, etc. If they make the ads look similar enough to actual content, it becomes very difficult to automatically remove them. Online platforms like YouTube are trying to achieve the same thing - Make ads “look like” non-ads to make them harder to block.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Comskip has a pretty wide array of detection. They also look at percent scene change,volume , closed captioning, aspect ratios and duration patterns. The sweet part about the duration patterns is we know the contents supposed length. You could analyze the piece of media figure out how long it would be without it and look around for other options that are less obvious but make the right time code.

          I’ve been using comskip for years, I suspect if it ends up being the tool we need will have an arsenal of people working on it to tune it for whatever YouTube’s doing.

          They’re just looking to knock out the easy methods, they’re not going to try to wage a full-on ground war. Their primary goals are probably to stop ublock and brave, and keep YT-DLP from downloading without ads. secondary goals being to stop or slow down revanced, though I think Google’s going to try to do that for them in security.

          I think the next logical step if they can’t block us with reasonable means would be to do some custom encryption in the app. Again not insurmountable but hard to crack out right.

          I think using a server to download the whole steam with ads then remove the ads, compress and store the files is really the hardest thing for them to stop.

  • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    If YouTube offered premium without music for a discounted price I’d probably be willing to pay for it. But I just want no ads, not a bunch of bundled stuff.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I’m a bit surprised they don’t do this actually. Premium is good valued off you use the music side of it as well, which I do, but not for just ad free YouTube.

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      2 months ago

      This is exactly me.

      I’ve been paying £5 a month by using a VPN to sign up for Premium from Ukraine. Been doing so for the past couple of years without complaint. Literally all I need from them is to fuck off the adverts. I have Apple Music for music and I’m happy with it.

      Now they’ve rumbled us and will be cutting off our Premium next month.

      I am fucked if I’m paying those ratfuckers £20 a month just so I can watch other people’s hard work without the adverts they force in. Fuck that noise.

      So I’m now researching ways to get my subs onto Plex so I can carry on watching on my Apple TV.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      I get what you’re saying, but YouTube music is pretty much just a different front end for the normal site.

      Sure, it does some filtering to attempt to be music only (though I’ve seen non music stuff sneak in before) but in the end, you get pretty much the same core experience if you open up the YouTube app and start “watching” a song (with premium for the background play capability).

      I’d be willing to bet this is why they won’t go the route you’re talking about.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I’d prefer some kind of limited amount of viewing. I don’t watch a ton of YT, so give me some kind of reasonable ad-free cap. I’m willing to pay to not see ads, but I don’t watch enough to be worth their asking price.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          I would rather micro transactions. Like just load up a dollar and get like 1000 minutes ad free…with the ability to turn off and save for later.

          • Auli@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            Don’t think a dollar is going to give you anywheee near 1000 minutes of ad free video.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Yeah, I’m guessing an ad makes them at most a couple cents, and I’m totally willing to compensate them for not getting the ad revenue. I just don’t like the current options: ads or tons of money per month for a service I don’t use enough to justify.

    • Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      And then there are people like me, who aren’t opposed to paying for access in theory, but will never be okay with having the videos I watch be tied to an account. It’s inconvenient and I don’t trust Google with my watch history, even when the option is turned off.

      Also I wouldn’t pay until: Youtube stops showing ads for hate groups; stops its manipulative recommendations and push towards right-leaning and extremist content; stops manipulating creators to all make the same kind of video in order to please the algorithm; removes hate content and extremist content; stops auto-flagging and removing fair-use content.

    • Lad@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      Even then it doesn’t have sponsorblock or a customisable UI like revanced does.

      It’s crazy how unofficial free is actually better than official paid.

      • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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        2 months ago

        See, I don’t really mind the sponsored segments. Some creators actually have fun with their ad reads, like the Map Men or Colin Furze. But if it’s boring I just tap the forward button on my Apple TV remote and skip past.

        • Evotech@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          If I’m paying for premium, I just don’t want ads! But they keep trying to shove it down my throat regardless

          • Auli@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            Different ads though. One is from YouTube and one is from the creator.

              • tomsh@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Exactly. In my opinion, that’s Google’s biggest mistake, and I can’t believe some people are okay with it. Everyone attacks YouTube as if they are the biggest villains, but let’s not forget that without them, most creators would be nothing. Most people here are aware of how difficult it is to maintain such a platform, yet they are unrealistic with their attacks. And yes, I am someone who has LineageOS installed, which says enough about what I think of Google, but sometimes you have to be fair. If they banned creators from having ads within their videos, I might even consider paying for premium.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The ones that pay are the ones running the ads. If the content creators have to pay, they will be the ones doing ads. This is how AV content has worked since the dawn of broadcast radio.

      • Auli@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        So then you have to pay the content creator to watch their videos? Like float plane? Creators aren’t doing this for free and they need to make a living.

  • saltesc@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s like Alphabet hate guaranteed money.

    “How can we boost the next six months of investment for sake of stable income over the next decade?”

    “More ads. Studies show everyone with internet access fucking loves them.”

    *Brilliant! Welcome to entry level lower senior-ish management, Jenkins."

    “YESSSSS! I can’t wait to tell the family about this when I’m on leave from this wonderfully accommodating work campus. All hail, G.”

    “All hail, G.”

    • oldfart@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Fuck them, but it’s not like anything changes for people who currently watch ads, or who pay for Premium. It’s us who they’re fighting, and we don’t generate any income.

  • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Imagine all the cool stuff we could be doing if we weren’t wasting the time of hundreds of engineers figuring out how to shove ads in people’s faces.

    • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Machines could be doing all the work. We could have clean energy , air ,water and food and shelter for all…

      • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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        “Line go up” is the animating force of the age, the critical philosophical principal around which our entire society is arranged.

        Gives me a fucking headache.

        • Isoprenoid@programming.dev
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          “Line go up” is the animating force of the age the rich and powerful, the critical philosophical principal around which our entire society their lives is are arranged.

          I choose not to confuse their values as mine or that of my community.

          • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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            Agreed. I really hate it when people see the problems in the world, fall for misanthropy, and blame everyone, most of whom are blameless beyond their failure to put their lives at risk to change things.

            People are great. We’ve done great things. We’re a species who’s defining advantage is cooperation. None of what we see today would be possible if most of us were greedy, hateful, idiots.

            People can be lead astray. but who can blame them? We’ve created a world more complicated than any one of us could fully understand. It’s bad enough that a handful of psychopaths can take advantage of that, we don’t need to add to it by making it seem like everyone’s at fault for not instantly bashing their heads in.

            • ochi_chernye@startrek.website
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              2 months ago

              I really appreciate this take. It’s good-hearted and makes good sense. I’ll try to remember it going forward, when cynicism overwhelms.

          • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Unfortunately, the powerful have the power so they’re arranging my life too. To the best of their ability, at least.

            You’re right that we should not confuse their values for our own, however.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If everyone were a paying subscriber we could actually do all those things. No one wants to be ad supported, including the people at YT. But there are bills to pay.

      • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/02/us-cities-and-states-give-big-tech-93bn-in-subsidies-in-five-years-tax-breaks

        They get loads in governments tax breaks and they data mine the fuck out of us so fuck them and their ads.

        https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/19/social-media-companies-surveillance-ftc

        I’ll continue to block them as long as we can and then move on to something else if we can’t. By paying you are just rewarding this exploitative behavior.

        If you simply must pay for something then donate it to a charity instead. These companies do not need your money.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          I did $390 in charitable giving last month and paid $23 for YT Premium. My priorities are just fine so please don’t lecture me on how to spend my money.

      • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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        I’m not terribly sympathetic to arguments about covering costs when it comes to corporations. If they were just looking to cover costs or even just make a reasonable profit, there are all sorts of arrangements we could come up with that would be acceptable to most people.

        But they’re not trying to do that. Profit isn’t enough for a corporation. They need to make the most profit. And then after that they somehow need to make more than the most.

        So they put in ads. But that’s not enough and oh look there are more places we haven’t put in ads, we should fix that. Oh look, our studies show that if we make the ads more obnoxious in these ways they increase this number by 3%. Oh wait, we have all this info we got from spying on people, why don’t we sell that too? Hey guys, we’ve heard you about the ads. Have we got a solution for you! For a small protection payment subscription fee of $10/month, you can get rid of those pesky ads we know you don’t like! Oooh sorry everyone, the price of the subscription went up again. We promise this is all necessary. Oh by the way, we’re adding ads back into the service. But don’t worry, wait until you hear about our NEW subscription tier! (I don’t think that last one’s happened with YT premium yet, but it’s happened with cable and most of streaming at this point, so I wouldn’t put it past them.)

        There’s no way we can have nice things while this is the driving force organizing where our resources go.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          I’m not terribly sympathetic to arguments about covering costs when it comes to corporations.

          That’s fine. No one needs you to be.

          If they were just looking to cover costs or even just make a reasonable profit, there are all sorts of arrangements we could come up with that would be acceptable to most people.

          What are those? No, really, this is the crux here. The whole rest of your comment is about growth capitalism generally, and I agree it sucks in many ways. But until you can reasonably provide a working alternative to property ownership, we will continue to have things like rent and lending. Investment is a form of lending. And yes YT shareholders don’t give a shit about anything but more and more and MORE insane profit. Because to succeed, a company has to not only profit but profit above expectation, rewarding the speculative investments others have made in them.

          It’s foolish though to think that YT’s management are the source of this desire for profit. It’s their shareholders. YT really want to deliver the best product while making a good living, and their staff are also minor shareholders to some extent.

          But your problem is capitalism. And if it took ads on the pause screen to get you to see the issues with growth capitalism, then sheeit you are late to the game and I won’t wait up to hear what your alternative suggestions are going to be. I’ll just point out that you waved your hand at that subject and then moved on like we wouldn’t notice.

          • darthelmet@lemmy.world
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            And if it took ads on the pause screen to get you to see the issues with growth capitalism,

            I don’t know why you’d assume that. I’m pretty staunchly communist from a mix of seeing our current problems and understanding history enough to know that this didn’t start yesterday. But if it takes companies being really obviously greedy for some consumers to see anything is wrong, it doesn’t hurt to try to focus their anger to a productive understanding of the problem rather than whatever other nonsense they might get drawn to.

            As far as alternatives. I’m always up front with people in saying that I don’t have precise answers for what our future ought to be after capitalism. That’s a difficult problem and up to everyone to work together to figure that out. But there is no future where we stick with capitalism. Or at least, not one we’d want to live in for very long. It’s a cruel system and it’s going to be responsible for ending the human habitable environment if we don’t do something about that. People need to understand this and they need to understand that tweaking around the edges isn’t going to fix the issue.

            The thing about if they were ok with a reasonable profit is a thought experiment or rhetorical device more than it’s a proposed solution. It’d be nice if it worked that way. Capitalists want us to think things do or could work that way. Hence corporations saying they NEED to cut costs or raise prices while continuing to make increasing profits. But it’s important to understand why it could never work that way, at least for very long.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They’d have more paying subscribers if they didn’t charge more than Netflix for what amounts to user-generated content that they’re getting for free.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          They’re not getting it for free. They pay video creators. And they know that the more they can pay them, the more and better content they will get.

          And with any product pricing, there is always a balance between charging less to get more customers, or charging more to get more money per customer.

          I’m pretty sure YouTube knows more about how to price their service than any of us.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            They’re not getting it for free. They pay video creators. And they know that the more they can pay them, the more and better content they will get.

            barely, most of that payment is from premium subscribers and memberships, people who spend their own money on this, youtube gives them a share of the ads, sure, but ads are basically a fraction of the majority of most youtuber incomes these days.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Everyone in every aspect of this economy tries to get the most while paying the least. I swear people in here are bitching about absolute economic basics that they themselves are guilty of.

              If you hate monopolies, go pay for Nebula and Curiosity stream like I do.

              • Petter1@lemm.ee
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                I do pay for Nebula, it is not the Solution to our Problem. We need regulation.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              It’s not like YT is a democracy LOL

              And YT was never free. It has had ads from the beginning. Perhaps not its very first months as a startup but those were supported by its seed investment capital so obviously a special and finite circumstance.

              YT is ad supported. It always had been. Free services need to make money somehow and ads are one way. It is baffling watching people realize this for the first time because they’ve been shielded by their ad blocker for years, but dude, here outside that little bubble, in the real world, this is how things work.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        ah yes all you have to do is spend like 100 USD yearly, ever year, and pay for features you don’t want, just so youtube can maybe stop posting ads.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          It’s not a “maybe” for me. I haven’t seen a YT ad in years. That’s Premium.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            that’s great, how long until you think youtube makes a new premium tier that starts showing ads?

            Or that one notable bug where premium shows you ads.

            my point is that there is no guarantee in the quality of the service, they have no legal requirements for it (here in murica at least)

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Ads give more profit than subscriptions, since if you would adjust subscription price to match ad income, too less people would buy it at that price.

        Source: Netflix and Disney Ad-supported tier analysis.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          I can point you to some people who need your money more than you do. Are you going to give it to them? Why not?? Doesn’t money flow to those who need it??? Isn’t that how this works???

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            I can point you to some people who need your money more than you do. Are you going to give it to them? Why not?? Doesn’t money flow to those who need it??? Isn’t that how this works???

            i can point you to the basic fact that if i just keep my money, i can very well do more work with that money that i keep, rather than just giving it away to other people.

            Money doesn’t flow to those who need it, money flows to those who get it through commerce most effectively.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            It doesn’t, which informs the rise technical mitigations of YouTube’s terrible ad schemes. YouTube isn’t interested in a more egalitarian society but serving its shareholder masters, and it sucks even at that.

            YouTube subscriptions are not a good deal for the consumers, so they’re not going to be popular, which might serve to explain to you why everyone is not a paying subscriber, nor will they ever be.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              All you have to do is look at other streaming services which are subscriber-only to see the truth of what I said. Even the ones that have ads are not doing backflips to cram them everywhere as the other commenter complained, because ads are just supplementary revenue, not primary. The subscription model is incredibly strong historically and currently. It’s patently ridiculous that you think you can wave it away so easily. You’ll also notice that most other subscriptions are cheaper than YT Premium - because they’re going for subscriber scale where YT has a powerful ad business in place that subscriptions replace.

              If you’re not following me, I’ll simplify: if everyone on YT has to subscribe, as on Netflix, it in fact would cost a lot less. But you don’t, so you get ads up the wazoo.

              I’m even more baffled by your criticism that YT cares more about shareholders than creating an egalitarian society. Thats true of literally every business including the one you work for. YT never said they were trying to make society egalitarian. Where do you even get that shit from?

              • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                I’m even more baffled by your criticism that YT cares more about shareholders than creating an egalitarian society. Thats true of literally every business including the one you work for. YT never said they were trying to make society egalitarian. Where do you even get that shit from?

                The pissed-off engineers that develop effective adblockers, for which there remains robust support.

                Much like the west coast oyster monopolies of the 1880s that were scourged by oyster pirates, YouTube is fighting a losing battle.

                PS: I take you’re aware of the cord-cutting epidemic of cable television, yes?

                • scarabic@lemmy.world
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                  Piracy, cable TV, cord cutting.

                  You’re throwing a lot of words together without making any argument.

                  YT is winning the battle against blockers as evidenced by the extreme vitriol toward them here right now.

                  YT are winning at business: they are massively successful.

                  YT are winning competitively. Just listen to the cries of monopoly around here. That’s how strong YT are.

                  YT won my business by making something I use every day and mostly can’t find a substitute for.

                  What are they losing again? They’re not even losing the ad blocker users, who clearly and obviously depend greatly on YT or they wouldn’t be so mad that their free ride is over.

                  Explain to me again how someone who writes an ad blocker gives you the idea that YT is supposed to be creating an egalitarian world? That part made no sense.

      • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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        I would love to be a subscriber if Google could guarantee that they won’t take my viewing information and then sell it to other advertisers or data brokers, or use that info to push ads on behalf of those brokers in other Google products.

        As it stands now, why would I pay with my money AND my data? Google shouldn’t get to double dip.

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          This is not double dipping, because the value of your data is factored into the subscription cost.

          Personally, I don’t care that much if I watch YouTube videos about Game of Throne and then see ads for HBO House of the Dragon in Google search. But that’s me. I don’t have this overinflated concept of how precious my YT watchlist is to me.

          An old coworker of mine started a company that was an ad network that paid YOU for your data every month, drawing from the ad revenue they got from using your data. The fact is that your data is not worth very much at all on the open market.

          With some exceptions I think all the “BUT MY DATA!” is disingenuous pearl-clutching. Because everyone ITT has a credit card in their wallet right now, and that company has sold their personal information and purchasing habits thousands of times over and they’ve never cared.

          But suddenly they have to sit through a YT ad because their ad blocker got killed, and now people suddenly care about their data, and fairness to creators, and capitalism, and privacy!

          All those are just ways to legitimize the fact that people lose their minds when they have to wait 15 seconds to get the thing they want for free. They’re ashamed to admit that they are that childish, so they make it about their deep, deep commitment to data integrity.

          People need to take a step back from their devices IMO.

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            2 months ago

            There’s a lot of implicit assumptions about me and my ego in your reply by grouping me with some nebulous group of “childish”… tech privacy moralists?

            You’re right, people should take a step back from their devices…

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Don’t worry, I spent zero seconds considering who you might be. I’m arguing with your point of view as expressed here by you but also similar statements by others.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I’m using lemmy right now and it’s not ad supported and I’m not the product.

        It’s always weird to me when people post on lemmy and just assert something that implies lemmy is impossible, bro your using it right now!

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          LOL I donate to my instance, “bro.” Lemmy costs money. You’re just freeloading for the moment.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            yeah, the admin of the instance chose to do so, they often accept donations, so you can stuff money there if you feel like it.

            I’m not getting a “free lunch” the instance admin is giving me a free lunch at their own expense, and being compensated in other manners.

  • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    When Twitch this I rented a VPS in Russia that costs me $3 a month. I now route all my traffic through it and have no ads in Twitch (and im assuming YT too now?)

  • diffusive@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Well it sounds more scary than it realistically will be.

    YouTube must pass to the player the metadata of where the ads start/end. Why? Because they need to be unskippable/unseekable/etc. If the metadata is there it is possible to force the seek 🤷‍♂️

    Just matter of time

    • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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      2 months ago

      Why would that be the case? The player can simply be locked into ad mode till it gets the cue from the server all of the ads have been streamed. Only then will the player unlock. When watching what amounts to a video stream, this doesn’t have to be handled clientside.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          and making them server site, while possible would introduce tremendous amounts of lag, and put that much more load on the servers. Imagine a server that has to handle playback of billions of users all at once. That’s probably quite a bit worse than most average, or even high-level DDoS attacks.

        • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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          2 months ago

          I’m not talking about the player or the controls being server-side. I’m talking about the player being locked into a streaming mode where it does nothing but stream the ads. After the ads are streamed, the player returns to normal video mode and the server sends the actual video data.

          This means no metadata about the ads are required on the player side about the ads.

          Sure you can hack the player into not being locked during the streaming of the ads. But that won’t get you very far, since it’s a live stream. You can’t skip forward, because the data isn’t sent yet. You can skip backwards if you’d like, with what’s in the current buffer, but why would you want to? You can have the player not display the ads, but that means staring at a blank screen till the ads are over. And that’s always the case, one can simply walk away during the ads.

          Technically I can think of several ways to implement this, without the client having meta data about the ads. And with little to none ways of getting around the ads. Once the video starts it’s business as usual, so it doesn’t impact regular viewing.

          • azuth@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Sure if you fundamentally change what YouTube you can make it work.

            You need very small buffers or complete disablement of seeking even outside of ads. Otherwise a client can reconstruct the video without viewer interruption.

            People however expect to be able to skip ahead in YouTube videos, otherwise its just TV.

            • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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              2 months ago

              Nope that’s not necessary at all, the client experience can be the same as it’s always been. See my other response for what I was thinking of.

              Also, this doesn’t work very well in the current YT implementation. If you skip around a video with ads, sometime you’ll get ads even though you’ve just watched a pre-roll for example.

          • azuth@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            I just read your list and it confirms mine.

            Small buffer AND can’t skip ahead on a boring video because you can only get served the ads to unlock further video after time equal to the served video duration has passed.

            That is not YouTube, it’s online TV and there will be an impact on the product. Preloading a video via a 3rd party client will still easily beat this scheme. Just get a headstart equal to the first ad break.

            • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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              2 months ago

              No, you misunderstand. You get seconds assigned to your token. It doesn’t matter where in the video you use those seconds.

              So if you watch an ad you get say 60 secs of video until you need to watch an ad again. You can watch 30 secs, then skip 2 minutes ahead and watch another 30 secs, then you get an ad. In reality the times would be larger, but to illustrate a point.

              In the current setup YT uses, if you watch an ad, watch 2 secs of video, then skip ahead of the next adbreak, you get more ads.

              And yes as stated, a separate client can get around this. But as also stated there will always be ways around it, it’s just a matter of making it harder. If it’s beyond what a simple browser plugin can do, it’s good enough. And YT has been banning 3rd party clients anyways, so that makes it even harder.

          • raldone01@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            So you would need buffer barrieres essentially.

            Still user watches video. Ad avoidance skips forward to buffer barrier to play ad in the background. Streamed ad is thrown away and new buffer data is received. User does not notice if the video is long enough.

            In this case the buffer limit is the metadata.

            • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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              2 months ago

              Yeah I’m thinking of a system like this:

              A user opens a session to watch a video, the user is assigned a token to watch the requested video. When the user isn’t a premium subscriber and the video is monetized the token is used to enforce ads. To get video data from the server, the user needs to supply the token. That token contains a “credit” with how many seconds (or whatever they use internally) the user can watch for that video. In order to get seconds credited to the token, the user needs to stream ad content to their player. New ad content is only available to stream, once the number of seconds they were credited have been elapsed.

              One way to get around this is to have something in the background “watch” the video for you, invisible, including the ads. Then records the video data, so it’s available for you to watch without ads. But it would be easy to rate limit the number of tokens a user can have. There’s ways to get around that as well. But this seems to me well beyond what a simple browser plugin can do, this would require a dedicated client.

              The idea is to make it harder for users to get around the ads, so they’ll watch them instead of looking for a way to block ads. In the end there isn’t anything to be done, users can get around the ads. Big streaming services use DRM and everything and their content gets ripped and shared. With YouTube it would be easy for someone to have a Premium account, rip the vids and share them. But by putting up a barrier, people watch the ads. YouTube doesn’t care if a percentage of users doesn’t watch the ads, as long as most of them do.

              My point was, there’s ways to implement the ads without sending metadata about the ads to the client.

  • TheAmishMan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    On my phone I use youtube revanced and adguard dns, kiwi browser with ublock origin. On my PC I use just ublock origin. So far** I havent run into issues

  • bokherif@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Only if premium did not have ads. They show you ad videos as if they’re part of your “recommendations”. They also allow creators to get sponsorships within videos. So even the premium experience isn’t really ad-free and they tout that shit everywhere.

    • HC4L@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      As a YT Premium subscriber I really don’t mind the sponsor sections. Money goes to the creator and a few taps and I’m back to watching. Also, I think outright banning sponsor segments is going to make creators more creative in a bad way…

      • bokherif@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I totally understand your views, although I’m paying this platform to not show me ads, that money should then go to the creators if they have to insert ads into their videos for some change. This is the platform’s fault.

        • HC4L@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I mean, it’s very easy money given you already have a channel and a name dor youself. What would YT have to pay creators to not care about such easy money?

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      i would consider paying for premium if they broke out the payments properly, i don’t fucking want youtube tv youtube music or whatever other bullshit is attached, just fucking get rid of the ads and charge me like 5 bucks a month and i’ll fuck off.

    • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Won’t happen. People are too addicted at watching"creators" talking shits.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      I wanted to jump into using Peertube, but unfortunately Youtube grew enormous because it was the only thing at the time. Pulling people from it to other platforms with less viewers and usually no compensation is tough. (although YT compensation as of late is a joke as well)

  • tomjuggler@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So AdGuard works on the YouTube website. I haven’t been there for some time - I use 2 other methods to watch YouTube ad-free.

    1. Newpipe - Android app that works by parsing the website, will probably be affected?
    2. YouTube Kodi add-on - works with Google YouTube API, I was wondering when this loophole is going to be plugged…

    Anyone with knowledge of the matter care to comment? So far my YouTube watching is still ad-free.

    I also run pi-hole in front of my WiFi. Nothing gets through. Or will it?

    I noticed some podcasts these days have random server injected ads - usually the same ad repeated 2 or 3 times, is this going to be my video stream soon?

    • bokherif@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Pihole will not work because it works on the DNS queries. With server side injection it’s gonna be tougher to block ads, but I’m sure we’ll find a way

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      use ublock origin, so far it’s been pretty much problem free.

      Outside of this, use something like yt-dlp to run your own jellyfin instance or something.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Nothing gets through. Or will it?

      You would have to block the video itself to get rid of them

    • dan@upvote.au
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      2 months ago

      If ads are injected server-side like the article is taking about, your downloads in Newpipe and Kodi are going to have the ads in them.

  • Goodie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m really curious if they can make video injection of ads cost effective.

    It feels like mangeling video streams into one, potentially re-encoding the video as they go… sounds expensive