• Rolando@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    some people still recommend using a VPN and IP address from a country where YouTube ads are prohibited, such as Myanmar, Albania, or Uzbekistan.

    Wait, you can just prohibit YouTube ads at a national level? That’s somehow awesome and terrifying at the same time.

  • ours@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This must cost YouTube a fortune doing additional processing and reduced flexibility. They are going to hurt themselves and blockers will find a way.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There’s already extensions that somehow skip sponsorship sections, so it won’t even take that long.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Every bit of effort and resourcing they spend on this returns revenue directly. Which is more than they can probably say for a lot of things they do. And they’re smart enough to know that they can’t eliminate blocking, just make it harder and harder so that fewer and fewer people do it.

  • Rinox@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    How it works is that once you start getting these Server Side Ads (SSA), Youtube will create a sort of queue of videos in place of your usual video, with the first few being ads that can’t be skipped and have a red bar (not yellow) and in the end you’ll get your video. They are not literally part of the original video stream, they are separate streams that get injected as if they were the original video. It’s called SSAP, and I’ve been experiencing it from the last weekend. In the meantime, they’ve pretty much broken their player to implement this.

    Ublock Origin has released a temporary fix yesterday here

    Alternatively, you can use this extension to redirect from YouTube videos to piped.video I used it, it works very well, can’t guarantee for much more.

    edit: fixed wording

  • Emerald@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Worse case scenario, we gotta make an extension that detects the ad UI and blanks the screen and mutes the audio until its over

    • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Why not use that screen time to promote alternative to YouTube?. Or even a simple Fuck google screen : " insert why google sucks here".

        • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Not if it brings people to a user controlled FLOSS platform (Peertube for example ) and make them ditch Youtube. We need to move the viewers and content to FLOSS alternatives so anything that will bring new users is good. Youtube will be the biggest battle IMO. Plus it would be kind of fun to trash Youtube on their own platform. Let’s settle for an optional functionality.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Let me simplify this for you: If I’m getting an addon to stop seeing ads, I’m not going to choose an addon that replaces them with other ads. I will choose the addon that doesn’t give me ads.

            The only people who would even consider such an addon are not the target audience for the ads because they already support it.

            • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              What if I offer you an add-on that would promote healthy life-habits instead of black screen? Would you be interested in that? For example, it’s important to squeeze the sponge after using it, this would be super useful to remind you about it!That’s just an example, there are dozens of small tips like that requires a daily reminder.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                What if I offer you an add-on that would promote healthy life-habits instead of black screen? Would you be interested in that?

                No. I want to watch the thing I specifically decided to watch, and not what someone else wants to advertise to me.

                • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Ok hear me out: an add-on that promotes “Watching less youtube!!!”. Isn’t that genius? It could be 50/50. 15 seconds of blackscreen for people like you who enjoy starring at it, and 15 seconds of “less screen time” promotion. That way you are frequently reminded that you could do better things with your time. Example : “You have starred at a black screen for XX minutes today. Did you know that a basic ukulele cost around 30$ and you can learn playing by investing as low as 30 minutes per day?” On top of it, I will ad a functionality that let you customize the color of the blackscreen! What do you think, are we getting somewhere or what?

  • polle@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Doubt. Never underestimate the hate and motivation against ads.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    And once everybody is watching ads and nobody is skipping them, YouTube will start making the commercials shorter and less invasive, right Anakin?

  • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    My gut reaction is that this won’t work long-term. Users on youtube often point to specific timestamps in a video in comments or link to specific timestamps when sharing videos, meaning there needs to be some way to identify the timestamp excluding ads. And if there’s a way to do that there’s a way to detect ads.

    Of course, there’s always the chance they just scrap these features despite how useful they are and how commonly they’re used; they’ve done similar before.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Feedback across the Firefox and YouTube subreddits highlighted that it could break timestamped video links and chapter markers. However, YouTube knows the length of the ads it would inject, and can offset subsequent timestamps suitably.

      The move also adds a layer of unnecessary complexity in saving Premium viewers from these ads. If they are added server-side, the YouTube client would have to auto-skip them for Premium members, but that also means ad segment info will be relayed to the client, opening up a window of opportunity for ad blockers to use the same information meant for Premium subscribers and skip injected ads automatically.

      It sounds like there’s a silver lining after all.

      • Tamo240@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Surely at the server side it knows the premium status of the user it is supplying the video to, so just wouldn’t insert the ads? I don’t see why that would need to be client side.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I am excited. This will break my YouTube addiction.

    It’ll only affect me when I need to fix something I’m unfamiliar with, and it’llead creators to using other platforms for that kind of material, and lower the barrier to entry.

    I don’t know why Google is shooting themselves in the foot like this. I mean, it’ll be profitable in the short run, yes, but this will almost certainly be devastating to their bottom line in the long run if it works as planned.

    • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      devastating to their bottom line in the long run if it works as planned.

      Google knows their service is addictive and is banking on people being willing to eat an unlimited amount of shit in order to watch a bald man from Vancouver spend 12 minutes talking about his Peloton ride that morning. Realistically, they are probably right. There is no competition to YouTube. Hasn’t been for years. And there probably never will be ever again. Capitalism trends towards natural monopolies as infrastructure and complexity of operations makes startup costs prohibitive.

  • andrewth09@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If the YouTube interface restricts you skipping during certain parts of the video, an ad blocker can detect that and skip over it anyway. Otherwise, I myself will just skip over the ad.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Or at the very least detect when you can’t skip and mute the tab and put a black box over top of the video.

  • catch22@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    People will find a way to get around it, I could see buffering a video for 5 mins or even downloading the entire video ala locally playing podcasts, then using AI or some type of frame analyzation technique t to skip ads. Or just skip them like good old fashion Tivo from your player.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Right? I already don’t use youtube as much as possible. Piped helps, but if that stops working, I just won’t watch movies on youtube.

      I understand why people are upset anytime a company fucks their customers for money, but the solution is always to walk away.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldBanned
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    1 year ago

    We’ll just copy the video and recast without ads I guess? I do watch several videos many times over for diy, so it would be relatively painless to just download and modify.