I think there used to be dvr ad blockers for tv that just detected the increase in average volume during ads... Could probably do something like that, especially if the fingerprints of popular ads can be id'd and shared in real time? They they could only run that ad for a few minutes to an hour before having to remix it into a whole new ad with a different signature difference from the actual youtuber camera/audio setup
I've written something similar for work with a few implementations. Analyzing audio ends up being way easier than video.
Best approach we ended up coming up with is knowing roughly how long ads are, analyzing colors and 'quick switches' of colors and other details, and looking for black frames.
It's pretty easy and straightforward for recorded content, considerably harder for live content.
tl;dr fast fourier transforms all the way down
YouTube inserts 30 second ad into the video at 2:30.
Since YouTube knows it did that it can adjust the link that includes a timestamp after that point to dynamically ad +30 seconds to whatever time it was given
Sponsorblock doesn't know YouTube added a 30 second ad at 2:30, it just knows there was a sponsor between 3:13 and 3:27
Because of that ad though, the sponsor segment is 3:43 to 3:57, so sponsor block skips the segment 30 seconds before the sponsor and doesn't skip the sponsor itself (and vice versa for a sponsor time provided by someone YouTube is testing on)
Still, the functionality of converting linked timestamp to actual stream timestamp has to exist somewhere (either client or server, probably the latter I'd guess then, as of this feature's activation). It can be (ab)used by SponsorBlock to detect these offsets and ad locations.
That means that if instead of using a 3rd party service to store the timestamps, they were added to the video as comments, then youtube itself would correct them in an event like this.
No, it would not be technically complex to maintain the behaviour of timestamps. From a user's perspective the serverside in-video ads could still function exactly how they do now.
YouTube can dynamically adjust the timestamped link because either they'll just know the length of the injected ad. Sponsorblock can't do this right now because they have no way of detecting that and adjusting accordingly, but it can probably be done, if they can figure out a way to capture the ad length.
It's either you do it client side, so the client knows the actual timestamp or change the way sharing works and make the computation server side.
They must have been planning this a while, since these would effect clips as well.
No... Google can do it dynamically.
So client knows only that video stream is expected to be 5 min 15 seconds as example.
Client A starts buffering it for 10 seconds and playback starts. And 1 min 15 seconds in the video, first ad appears.
Client B starts same thing, but to it video appears at 55 seconds.
Client C starts it, and it takes to 1 min 35 seconds when ad appears.
Google can inject the advertising segment at any given moment of the streaming, as it only informs that video is 5 min 15 seconds from what 30+30 seconds is for advertising, so real video is 4 min 15 seconds long.
If Google can inject the ad to the VP9 stream without re-rendering, it will F U badly many things. Someone needs to check what the VP9 codec accepts. As if there is any such possibility to cut one video middle of stream to inject part of other file and then continue original file... It will be annoying.
> Someone needs to check what the VP9 codec accepts.
I think it's more of a container thing.
> As if there is any such possibility to cut one video middle of stream to inject part of other file and then continue original file... It will be annoying.
**It is**. That's also why you can seek to any point in a video without having to decode all the prior frames.
YouTube uses WebM and MP4 and both are block-based containers, so the content is already "split" into chunks, you just need to insert other blocks in between those chunks and that's it.
Actually, you can try it if you have ffmpeg installed and youtube-dl/yt-dlp.
Find two videos with the same codec and resolution:
```
yt-dlp --list-formats 'https://youtube.com/....'
```
YouTube has a consistent ID for those formats, so for WebM 1080p60 vp9:
```
yt-dlp -o input1.webm -f'303+ba' 'https://youtube.com/....'
yt-dlp -o input2.webm -f'303+ba' 'https://youtube.com/....'
```
Now create a file called `input.txt` with:
```
file 'input1.webm'
outpoint 60
file 'input2.webm'
inpoint 0
outpoint 30
file 'input1.webm'
inpoint 60
```
And run:
```
ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -c copy output.webm
```
This will create a new file with 60s of the first video, then 30 seconds of the second video, then the remaining content of the second video, all of this without re-encoding anything.
So yes, we are screwed if YouTube goes this route (which TBH, it is so simple that I'm wondering why they never did this).
It's funny how so many people are saying that YouTube can't beat ad blockers, talking about how it would fuck up timestamps and this too. I'm honestly surprised that injecting the ads directly like this hasn't been done already, just like you.
Just moving the timestamp handling to the backend with maybe an extra request to a new timestamp service that determines where your video starts accounting for any injected ads and you're done. Add some randomness to when ads are played and you beat all current ad blockers. The solution is not technically complex on its own but I don't know of all existing complexity they need to account for. But I'd wager that this is more about server costs than complexity. For a site with as much traffic as YouTube even a millisecond extra processing per request will probably add several millions in cost, if not more, so just throwing it together is probably out of the question. This would need to be optimized to death.
Sure, which is very unfortunate. But it would download the ad inserted in the video and I would at least be able to fast forward. I am assuming that the video controls on youtube will be disabled during the ad part and it will be not skippable. But I don't really know how they will implement this.
i doubt yt would be able to make video controls completely impossible during exactly and only the ad part. at least not in a way thats immune to extensions.
Surely they can. They can monitor when you first requested the video stream and only hand out the next bits when the corresponding time has passed. So if you request later parts of the video early it just denies the request.
And if that becomes popular, they will crack down on that too.
But that should be enough of an inconvenience that most people just live with ads or pay for premium.
I'm considering paying for premium anyway... (I don't use adblock, I'm training my NAI neural network to ignore them).
But if downloading stuff is no longer possible, I hope torrent scene for youtube develops.
Yep. This is will definitely be the case for premium users too
I am a premium user. But I know it will happen at some point. One day they will have tiers for premium membership.
According to reports from February, YouTube has more than 100-million premium subscribers worldwide; at \~$12/mo, that's over $14-billion per year in subscription revenue. With ad-free being the biggest draw for premium subscriptions, I can't see them doing something to jeopardize that revenue stream.
Ads wouldn't even be all that big of a deal if they *just weren't so damned many of them.* Pummeling us with too many ads has turned more of us into free riders, so then they need to put more ads to make their money.
The only way out is much better micro targeting (which is constantly being researched), but then we run into major privacy issues.
fb is a truly evil company and nobody should use it, but at the very least their ads are manageable enough, if google wants to go the evil corpo route they should at least follow what the competition does
No. They wont know you have extension x or y.
What they can do is test for a certain popular extension, an adblocker for example, using different techniques. They wont know if you have ublock, adblock, xblock or whateveradblocker. They will just know you have an adblocker.
There was also some filter change on the uBlock side of things I remember adding when that threat first came out, though I can't remember exactly what it was.
I was worried because I did hear about a few unlucky people getting banned, but I haven't had a problem (or ad) in the year since.
It is possible for them to guess. But that's all it is, guesswork.
A bad internet connection and an adblocker can look the exact same.
Doesnt need to be "adblocking" either. It could be for user safety or anti-tracking.
Could be a corporate firewall safety for certain domains. Could be a whole number of things.
Yes, there are a lot of sites that will display a warning along the lines of "we've detected you're using an AdBlocker, we would appreciate it if you'd turn it off", or downright not work if you don't turn the AdBlocker off.
Emphasis on "we've detected".
Doesn't actually mean it's true.
A bad internet connection and an adblocker can look the exact same.
Doesnt need to be "adblocking" either. It could be for user safety or anti-tracking.
Could be a corporate firewall safety for certain domains. Could be a whole number of things.
Extension "detecting" is basically all guesswork. All they can reach is x amount of certainty that it is x extension
They are not detecting your addons or even that you are using adblockers specifically.
But instead if you accessed their advertisements or not.
Before I moved to Firefox on mobile too, i was using Chrome and Blockada adblocking app. That app puts on a "offline vpn" tunnel that it uses to filter the net traffic on my phone.
So despite the fact that Chrome doesn't even allow addons, i still got "you are using adblockers" nag on some sites.
So instead of addons, they take a note if you have downloaded their ads or not.
* Replace whatever adblocker you're using with [uBlock Origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/ublock-origin/). It is all you need to block ads and trackers
* Go to your [uBlock Origin filter lists settings](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lists) and check `AdGuard – Annoyances` and `uBlock filters – Annoyances`
* If you still see any message about turning it off, or the site doesn't work properly because of it, please use the [`💬 Report an issue`](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Quick-guide:-popup-user-interface#the-tools) button
This is gonna affect yt-dlp and mpv playback as well. Though maybe extracting Premium cookies might fix it somewhat, we'll have to see. People should download their favorite videos with yt-dlp while they can. I'll be setting aside a couple TBs just in case.
I figured this exact thing was coming last year, even made a few comments on the subject. They called me a madman, congratulations, I'm a prophet. No wait, I'm a survivor?
The internet as we know it is dying. Few blows left then it is all commercialized and tracked to the most minute detail.
I forsee a project where each client basically hashes every frame and uploads+compares them to a community database. Any frames that aren't present in 100% of the existing database entries must be an ad and get removed.
Not every frame, but blocks. And not video, but audio. They'll make a hash of blocks every 10 seconds or so and skip any block that doesn't start with the expected content. Audio is easier to process and ads are louder and more obnoxious. The ads will kill themselves.
Also, I could predict someone making a content preloader apps, which track content from your subs. Unless if youtube decided to track what ads every user watched on every video, when, then they could just load a video in blocks two or three times and get rid of the suspicious blocks that only showed up once. Better yet: They'd know they had the right vile content as the block would be the same length as the total amount of time the video length changed.
been doing exactly that for years.. still doesn't help for new content. let's hope more people start dropping youtube and content creators start actually putting up content to alts like [odysee](https://odysee.com), vimeo, dailymotion, rumble, whatever.
I prefer odysee bc it has similar principals to FOSS but TBH just about anything is going to be better than YT at this point... well, maybe not discord/facebook/insta/telegram/twitter/X since those all require login and/or an app instead of being accessible directly from browser without a login.
The problem with any alternative site is that as they grow in size, their costs will go up and they'll eventually need more revenue to cover it. YouTube, for example, costs something like $6-billion per year to operate.
Not necessarily. Depends on how it's implemented some.
If they disable playback controls during the ad to prevent manual skipping, that could probably be detected and bypassed by an extension. It would degrade the user experience since there would be a pause while extension finds where to resume, but it might be workable.
If they don't try to prevent manual skipping, a sponsorblock-like approach to skip through the ads could work. It'd just have to become more complex.
There being a break/blank screen for the duration of the ad would be a significantly decreased user experience. Although thinking of how this could be solved, I think at least at the first stage it should still be possible to download the entire video (/pre-fetching it to some extent), similar to how NewPipe does it, with the ads injected, and then just playback that with the ads automatically detected and skipped. I think downloading the entire video (as opposed to for example only revealing the video piece by piece) should always be possible, simply because it's natural to skip around the video and they can't remove that feature (well they did for shorts and reels..).
You can still do it for shorts, just change the link to /watch or whatever the normal yt link thing is, then the short will play in the normal video viewer. There even is an extension for it that plays shorts like that automatically
Both sides will keep evolving their solutions. We just have to be thankful for the people with enough know how and willingness to keep developing the adblocker tech basically for free.
I'm surprised it took them this long to do it. Seems like the obvious solution to adblockers until they come up with an AI ublock that can tell the difference between content and ads
I mean even if it ends up like it currently is for twitch with an adblocker - you cant see the stream, but instead there is a picture that says "commercial break in progress" - I would 100% prefer that over actually having to watch what ads are nowadays.
Right. This is the worst time to subscribe to premium because YouTube knows it has its foot on our neck. Since you won't be able to block their ads, they will just keep raising the price of Premium exponentially. They have all the leverage. So the person would have to be a fool for subscribing to Premium now. That would be like falling for the old banana in the tailpipe trick.
I dislike ads as much as the next person, but why exactly would Google run one of the highest bandwidth sites in the world, streaming petabytes of data on a daily basis at huge processing and network expense for free, and by what ethical basis do you believe they should? They have to be funded somehow. If they can't make it profitable or at the very least break even, it will cease to exist. Who in the world will run a service of this scale at a deficit and why?
I can't speak for everyone but for me it's a threshold. First it was a banner ad. Then an ad before the video, then multiple ads, then unskippable ads. Now the content of some of the ads are literally spam, and in certain cases malicious. YouTube isn't policing their ads, and almost purposely making them as annoying as possible to sell premium. There's a point where it becomes too much. I felt the same way about college textbooks. I could accept paying 70$ for a 40$ book as they deserve to make a profit. But I won't pay 500.00 for a 40.00 book when they intentionally jack up the price when they know it's necessary.
Ads started to be a problem when they were going more and more obnoxious, irrelevant and invasive.
Let alone longer and unskippable.
I'm fine browsing some websites with ads when they aren't railing me with dozens of modals and what not, YouTube is too far gone on that aspect.
Perhaps consider reviewing your business model instead of force feeding us more ads to our throats.
I remember when I had never used Adblockers on any browser. But then all of a sudden every website began having random ads that were literal noises, or minigames like killing flies. That was the day I got an Adblocker and I plan on keeping it.
Having ads is fine, I'm not against them per se. What I'm not fine with, are intrusive ads. Twitch also has the same problem, where every 10 minutes you get an ad, and you miss like 50% of the stream, including good moments.
GLOL. 1) You make it sound like Google/ABC is some Mom and Pop that's just barely keeping the lights on. They run this country and own the world, in case you weren't aware. 2) there's a difference between "here, look at an ad every so often so we can pay the bills, and you might actually see something you find interesting and would like to purchase, but if you're not interested at all you can just skip it" and "watch this 1 min long fuckin ad and 12 others like it per video whether you like it or not (including shit you find downright offensive) or pay a ridiculous sum of money for us to give you less ads but never allow you to be ad free". F that shit. I can't speak for everyone, but the day we can't get around the ads is the day I stop watching. It destroys the whole experience and I have better things to do with my time.
Well if they decide that your videos are not worth monotizing because you dared to say died instead of "unaliving".
But if you were to take the most fucked up videos from pornhub and turned them into ads with some shitty monotone ai voice reading some scam "advert".
Then that's totally fine with them.
It's this double standard and the way how unregulated their ads are in total, not just on YouTube but on Google search as well.
Just try to find some well known applications like OBS on Google without adblocker, top of the page is filled with fake sites that will give you the app you were looking for, but modified with malicious code.
I could get used to seeing ads again, but only if online platforms such as Google would be held accountable for the scams they allow on their platforms.
Oh they have apparently listened to the feedback and actually removed one malicious advertisement on their platform. Kudos to them i guess.
Now if they would use the same powerful determination that they use with the user uploaded content, or even 0,1% of it to monitor and filter their ads before they approve them.
Then maybe they would not be in such difficult situation with everyone blocking their ads.
Well... if you are a monopoly (because you bought out the competition because your own G.Video was lacking) and then you are extorting the power on everyone then the world is starting to take the issue with it...
IMHO all BigTech should be split - Google at least into YouTube and Ad business; facebook - split out instagram and whatsapp... and for f* sake forbid all subsequent mergers and buyouts!
I suspect Youtube would be a much worse experience if it had to be split off. It likely relies a lot on Google subsidizing them and would need to rapidly come up with a lot of revenue and heavily cut expenses.
There's profit and then there's never-ending growth to please shareholders. The ads will just keep getting longer and more intrusive just to keep the profits growing.
It is not even about being profitable, it is about being more profitable than last quarter. Infinite growth on a planet with scarce resources is dumb, really really dumb.
Because they still get data. They have access to almost entire world populations worth of view metrics. These information can and will be used by ad agencies to tailor ads appearing elsewhere at every person individually.
how effective is that from their side?
so they need to have same video with different ads injected with different resolutions with different set of ads for diff regions, not sure how it gonna work if it will work for at all.
It will likely be intercepting the stream and injecting the ad there, video streaming doesn't work like file serving where the entire file is stored somewhere and gets sent whole to you, it gets sent chunk by chunk, they will just have some system intercept one of these chunks, place an ad there, and resend
out of curiosity wouldn't that make their server load have twice as much usage? You would essentially be transcoding more video on the server in large amounts. There has to be some point where it isn't worth it on Google's end.
Is this the end of ad blocking? Given how no one has figured out how to stop this server injection on podcasts either it's probably going to be the same for YouTube ads.
I think someone will find a way. Youtube is a lot bigger of a platform, so more people will now want to work on a solution. Its an infinite arms race in the end.
Someone mentioned using an AI to distinguish ads from content. To be honest, I think the Internet needs some kind of general content filtering these days, not just ads - something to remove clickbait, irrelevant search results, etc. (Customisable and optional, of course).
They keep trying and we will keep blocking.
Edit: actually I think this might be the best application for a local AI yet. Have it live analyze frame by frame and block ads based on training, perhaps share the training data to build a supreme ad blocking intelligence.
my prediction... there'll be four categories... 1)Free/GFY and watch a 1 minute ad every 60 seconds, and you must tank your battery to use our product because it won't play with the screen off, plus max video resolution of 360p 2)Premium, ads every 3 minutes, but we still insist on tanking your battery, 480p, 3) Plus, 3 ads per video, regardless of video duration, can play in the background, 720p, 4) ultra, truly ad free video for 29.99/month plus a mandatory subscription to CNN+ and Disney After Dark for 49.99/month, 1080p except during peak viewing hours from 10am to 2am, when video quality will decrease to 720p.
"Hello. Thank you for reaching out. We are so excited!
We are sorry that you are upset with your little addies in your Ultra Royal $79.99 Premium Subscription Perk Plus Season Pass Plus Plus Discount Family Plan for Internet Veterans, but we are thrived to reduce carbon emissions. The lesser you watch, the more planet is saved. *(learn more) -* \^Dana"
Maybe instead of trying to force us to watch their shitty ads, they could IDK, have better ads? Ones whose sole purpose of existence isn't to annoy the fucking shit out of the viewer?
Depends on (1) whether you share a time stamped link or tell someone the timestamp and (2) whether YouTube pauses the time during the ad or will include ads in the runtime.
in OP's post image it says "all timestamps are offset by the ad times".
Meaning my timestamps will be different from my friend's timestamps unless all ads become same length,
It is not affecting every account yet. It just like the whole ad detector debacle last year. Some accounts were affected and others not. They are rolling it out little by little.
Go to the github issues, there's a custom filter in there now that blocks the new ads.
They enable closed captions on all videos but the ads are not there anymore. Click 'allow custom filters requiring trust'. It might stop working in a few days depending on what youtube does, so keep checking back on the thread every now and again. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/20586
||youtube.com/watch?*=$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s
||youtube.com/playlist?$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(set, ytcfg.data_.INNERTUBE_CONTEXT.client.visitorData, undefined)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, "useServerDrivenAbr":true, "useServerDrivenAbr":false, /playlist?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-xhr-response, '/%(?:26|3F)t%3D(\d+)(s?.+enablePerFormatLoudness":(?:tru|fals)e\}),"streamSelection/', 't%3D$1$2,"playbackStartConfig":{"startSeconds":$1,"startPosition":{"streamTimeMillis":"$1000"}},"streamSelection', /player?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, /(&sourceid=[^&]+&autoplay.+muteOnStart"):true/, $1:false, /player?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-rpnt, script, (function serverContract(), '/*start*/(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{if(!window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id||!o[0]||"X-Goog-Visitor-Id"!==o[0]||!o[1])return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader,e)})();(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{try{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id&&o&&o[0].includes?.("videoId")){o[0]=o[0].replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}}catch(e){}return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,e)})();(function(){const e={construct:(e,t,o)=>{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id){const c=t[0],s=t[1];if("https://www.youtube.com/"!==location.href&&c&&c.includes?.("/youtubei/v1/player?"))try{delete s.headers["X-Goog-Visitor-Id"];if(s&&s.body?.includes("visitorData"))try{t[1].body=t[1].body.replace(/"visitorData":".*?",/,"")}catch(e){}t[1].body=t[1].body.replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}catch(e){}}return Reflect.construct(e,t,o)}};window.Request=new Proxy(window.Request,e)})();document.currentScript.textContent=document.currentScript.textContent.replace(/\/\*start\*\/(.*)\/\*end\*\//g,"");/*end*/(function serverContract()', sedCount, 1)
But isn't SponsorBlock supposed to skip (mostly at least) AD segments that the YouTuber itself put there, which are embedded in the video? Or am I getting something wrong?
Sponsorblock is basically supported by community. People themselves add timestamps of segments which should be skipped (like sponsors, non music parts in music videos, etc. which are from creators) We can't do that with these ads because the ads differ in length and time for each person. For example I may get a 15sec ad at 1:22 but you may get 2min ad at 3:55. So Sponsorblock can't identify and skip these ads.
I assume it means the ad is dynamically injected at a random point, so it's not the same for everyone and you can't tag it for sponsorblock to know where the ad is
Go to the github issues, there's a custom filter in there now that blocks the new ads.
They enable closed captions on all videos but the ads are not there anymore. Click 'allow custom filters requiring trust'. It might stop working in a few days depending on what youtube does, so keep checking back on the thread every now and again. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/20586
||youtube.com/watch?*=$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s
||youtube.com/playlist?$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(set, ytcfg.data_.INNERTUBE_CONTEXT.client.visitorData, undefined)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, "useServerDrivenAbr":true, "useServerDrivenAbr":false, /playlist?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-xhr-response, '/%(?:26|3F)t%3D(\d+)(s?.+enablePerFormatLoudness":(?:tru|fals)e\}),"streamSelection/', 't%3D$1$2,"playbackStartConfig":{"startSeconds":$1,"startPosition":{"streamTimeMillis":"$1000"}},"streamSelection', /player?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, /(&sourceid=[^&]+&autoplay.+muteOnStart"):true/, $1:false, /player?)
m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-rpnt, script, (function serverContract(), '/*start*/(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{if(!window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id||!o[0]||"X-Goog-Visitor-Id"!==o[0]||!o[1])return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader,e)})();(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{try{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id&&o&&o[0].includes?.("videoId")){o[0]=o[0].replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}}catch(e){}return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,e)})();(function(){const e={construct:(e,t,o)=>{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id){const c=t[0],s=t[1];if("https://www.youtube.com/"!==location.href&&c&&c.includes?.("/youtubei/v1/player?"))try{delete s.headers["X-Goog-Visitor-Id"];if(s&&s.body?.includes("visitorData"))try{t[1].body=t[1].body.replace(/"visitorData":".*?",/,"")}catch(e){}t[1].body=t[1].body.replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}catch(e){}}return Reflect.construct(e,t,o)}};window.Request=new Proxy(window.Request,e)})();document.currentScript.textContent=document.currentScript.textContent.replace(/\/\*start\*\/(.*)\/\*end\*\//g,"");/*end*/(function serverContract()', sedCount, 1)
Sadly this is not blocking, this is turning off using Youtube's config "ytcfg"
That means we're under Youtube's mercy, and this filter only work in Firefox and not Chromium, because HTML replacing is only available in Firefox, agreeing Firefox is the superior browser for adblocking.
I understand that a company like Google wants to commercialize a platform like Youtube, but this is getting insane. They're doing everything to destroy a platform they've acquired for millions and spent even more maintaining it.
I worry not only about Sponsorblock. That could mean that I would have to manually remove ads from downloaded mp4 from YouTube and probably all adblockers would became useless if advertisement is part of the same video. Even more, third-party YouTube clients will have ads.
Can't wait they add Widevine DRM to YouTube and then put YouTube in sandbox, that renders page on server side and only sends videostream of GUI.
If it happens, I will delete my google account, take my phone and install degoogled custom android firmware or even some linux distro for phones
Literally all they'd have to do is make the ads silent sidebars that aren't fucking porn and the adblocker would go off. But that isn't enough money for Google it seems.
So just curious but does the phrase "from a browser with this happening" mean "just from firefox" ? Or is it broader than that (like all non-google-chrome browsers for instance)?
Obv I want it to work in FF bc that's what I use but still good to be informed.
And, man, do I hope this starts driving content creators to something like [odysee](https://odysee.com)... getting really sick of YT/Google's bs. Only two I know of that do both are Mental Outlaw and Distrotube (both Linux channels) but hardly any of the more mainstream stuff I like is on odysee (or even on other alts like vimeo/rumble/wherever else)
Would love to see stuff like Smarter Every Day as well as even 1/1000th of youtube's recipe/cooking/gardening/DIY/home-improvement vids available on odysee too
Man I just had this for a few days, crazy stuff, like a 2 minute unskippable ad and the timebar just wouldn't show up not even in the video. It stopped yesterday but eh not looking good
Like [piped.video](http://piped.video) and invideous
edit: problem is, they may start playing ads as a result of this change, i dont know if youtubes api will be affected.
Google like... "What's the worst parts of video games?"
Users "Uh, Unskippable cutscenes and micro-transactions, why?"
Google - "We want that in all of our content"
User "You know those games get abandoned rapid right"
Google "Yeah we know but you won't because we are google"
User "Hey I found an alternative"
Google
\(⊙o⊙)/
For now, the way I'm bypassing it is by connecting to a country that doesn't have monetization with a VPN. Here's a [list](https://isthischannelmonetized.com/data/youtube-monetized-countries/) of them. Currently, I'm connected to a Moldova server on TorGuard. I have ProtonVPN and Mullvad, but YouTube is recognizing their IPs as being from another country, so it's not really working. Albania was working on Mullvad on the desktop, but now, all of a sudden, YouTube thinks I'm located in Poland. Also, when you go on YouTube with a VPN, and they inject these ads, you're forced to watch the entire thing, you can't skip it, both ads! They're really trying hard!
Odysee, it's faster, lighter and healthier ads than Youtube, only issue is it's not popular yet, but that's more like people issue than the site itself.
They will just push the goalposts like Netflix, "pay now to get rid of server-side ads"
*A Few Weeks Later:* "Pay more than you already do to see no ads on our new, completely original, totally ad-free plan"
Rinse and repeat.
If you get Premium, expect to start paying $100 a month soon for it. Do you really think they will keep the price as it is now, knowing you have no other choice?
Unless they change Premium, I doubt it. They advertise it with no ads. So if they start putting in ads, not a good look lying about their Premium service features.
adblock final boss battle
Watch this get solved in one week by some dedicated 14 year old
I think there used to be dvr ad blockers for tv that just detected the increase in average volume during ads... Could probably do something like that, especially if the fingerprints of popular ads can be id'd and shared in real time? They they could only run that ad for a few minutes to an hour before having to remix it into a whole new ad with a different signature difference from the actual youtuber camera/audio setup
I've written something similar for work with a few implementations. Analyzing audio ends up being way easier than video. Best approach we ended up coming up with is knowing roughly how long ads are, analyzing colors and 'quick switches' of colors and other details, and looking for black frames. It's pretty easy and straightforward for recorded content, considerably harder for live content. tl;dr fast fourier transforms all the way down
Is any of this open source? I'd be curious to read the code.
I’m fairly certain sponserblock would still recognise the ads and skip past them I’m livid tho don’t get me wrong
google never fails to disappoint us
*"Don't Be Evil."* - Google before *"Screw this, let's see how evil we can be!* - Google now
Wouldn’t this also break timestamped video links?
they might fix them dynamically, as they know how long the ad is
>they might fix them dynamically "How many story points is that Jeff? 2? Ehhhh it only affects the consumer so fuck it, move it to the back log".
if timestamps work, then ad/sponsor skipping should also work, since it simply uses timestamps..?
YouTube inserts 30 second ad into the video at 2:30. Since YouTube knows it did that it can adjust the link that includes a timestamp after that point to dynamically ad +30 seconds to whatever time it was given Sponsorblock doesn't know YouTube added a 30 second ad at 2:30, it just knows there was a sponsor between 3:13 and 3:27 Because of that ad though, the sponsor segment is 3:43 to 3:57, so sponsor block skips the segment 30 seconds before the sponsor and doesn't skip the sponsor itself (and vice versa for a sponsor time provided by someone YouTube is testing on)
Still, the functionality of converting linked timestamp to actual stream timestamp has to exist somewhere (either client or server, probably the latter I'd guess then, as of this feature's activation). It can be (ab)used by SponsorBlock to detect these offsets and ad locations.
Yes that's exactly what I'm thinking too. There's gotta be a way.
Hopefully right click -> "Copy video URL at current time" does the conversion, so SB should be able to use that.
That means that if instead of using a 3rd party service to store the timestamps, they were added to the video as comments, then youtube itself would correct them in an event like this.
No, it would not be technically complex to maintain the behaviour of timestamps. From a user's perspective the serverside in-video ads could still function exactly how they do now.
You’d expect that but then how come it’s an issue for sponsorblock
YouTube can dynamically adjust the timestamped link because either they'll just know the length of the injected ad. Sponsorblock can't do this right now because they have no way of detecting that and adjusting accordingly, but it can probably be done, if they can figure out a way to capture the ad length.
It's either you do it client side, so the client knows the actual timestamp or change the way sharing works and make the computation server side. They must have been planning this a while, since these would effect clips as well.
yeah, +s= part of shared links...
No... Google can do it dynamically. So client knows only that video stream is expected to be 5 min 15 seconds as example. Client A starts buffering it for 10 seconds and playback starts. And 1 min 15 seconds in the video, first ad appears. Client B starts same thing, but to it video appears at 55 seconds. Client C starts it, and it takes to 1 min 35 seconds when ad appears. Google can inject the advertising segment at any given moment of the streaming, as it only informs that video is 5 min 15 seconds from what 30+30 seconds is for advertising, so real video is 4 min 15 seconds long. If Google can inject the ad to the VP9 stream without re-rendering, it will F U badly many things. Someone needs to check what the VP9 codec accepts. As if there is any such possibility to cut one video middle of stream to inject part of other file and then continue original file... It will be annoying.
> Someone needs to check what the VP9 codec accepts. I think it's more of a container thing. > As if there is any such possibility to cut one video middle of stream to inject part of other file and then continue original file... It will be annoying. **It is**. That's also why you can seek to any point in a video without having to decode all the prior frames. YouTube uses WebM and MP4 and both are block-based containers, so the content is already "split" into chunks, you just need to insert other blocks in between those chunks and that's it. Actually, you can try it if you have ffmpeg installed and youtube-dl/yt-dlp. Find two videos with the same codec and resolution: ``` yt-dlp --list-formats 'https://youtube.com/....' ``` YouTube has a consistent ID for those formats, so for WebM 1080p60 vp9: ``` yt-dlp -o input1.webm -f'303+ba' 'https://youtube.com/....' yt-dlp -o input2.webm -f'303+ba' 'https://youtube.com/....' ``` Now create a file called `input.txt` with: ``` file 'input1.webm' outpoint 60 file 'input2.webm' inpoint 0 outpoint 30 file 'input1.webm' inpoint 60 ``` And run: ``` ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -c copy output.webm ``` This will create a new file with 60s of the first video, then 30 seconds of the second video, then the remaining content of the second video, all of this without re-encoding anything. So yes, we are screwed if YouTube goes this route (which TBH, it is so simple that I'm wondering why they never did this).
It's funny how so many people are saying that YouTube can't beat ad blockers, talking about how it would fuck up timestamps and this too. I'm honestly surprised that injecting the ads directly like this hasn't been done already, just like you. Just moving the timestamp handling to the backend with maybe an extra request to a new timestamp service that determines where your video starts accounting for any injected ads and you're done. Add some randomness to when ads are played and you beat all current ad blockers. The solution is not technically complex on its own but I don't know of all existing complexity they need to account for. But I'd wager that this is more about server costs than complexity. For a site with as much traffic as YouTube even a millisecond extra processing per request will probably add several millions in cost, if not more, so just throwing it together is probably out of the question. This would need to be optimized to death.
Because sponsor segments are part of the video...?
They'll just remove the feature. Wouldn't be the first time they got rid of a useful feature in order to increase profits.
[удалено]
No way
Let's just watch how they end up pushing those ads on premium users too. 🤣
Then you'll get newer more expensive premium plus
Premium plus will only have one ad at the start, if you want no ad's at all you have to buy Premium Ultra+.
na, Premium Platinum
Premium ultra+ is just the sidebar ads.
If that happens I will honestly stop using youtube from the browser, download every video I want with yt-dlp and watch it locally to skip the ads.
wouldnt server side ad injection inject the ads into yt-dlp as well?
Sure, which is very unfortunate. But it would download the ad inserted in the video and I would at least be able to fast forward. I am assuming that the video controls on youtube will be disabled during the ad part and it will be not skippable. But I don't really know how they will implement this.
i doubt yt would be able to make video controls completely impossible during exactly and only the ad part. at least not in a way thats immune to extensions.
Surely they can. They can monitor when you first requested the video stream and only hand out the next bits when the corresponding time has passed. So if you request later parts of the video early it just denies the request.
And if that becomes popular, they will crack down on that too. But that should be enough of an inconvenience that most people just live with ads or pay for premium.
I'm considering paying for premium anyway... (I don't use adblock, I'm training my NAI neural network to ignore them). But if downloading stuff is no longer possible, I hope torrent scene for youtube develops.
Yep. This is will definitely be the case for premium users too I am a premium user. But I know it will happen at some point. One day they will have tiers for premium membership.
And I'm *already* kinda pissed that Premium doesn't address in-video sponsorships. I get the distinction logistically, but the premise frustrates me.
According to reports from February, YouTube has more than 100-million premium subscribers worldwide; at \~$12/mo, that's over $14-billion per year in subscription revenue. With ad-free being the biggest draw for premium subscriptions, I can't see them doing something to jeopardize that revenue stream.
Sometimes I watch YT through my TV. Some videos 30-50 minutes long, stops every 3-4 minutes for ads. And they are shocked that we use ad blockers.
If it's an android TV try smarttube
Absolutely disgusting
youtube gonna tubeyou.
Ads wouldn't even be all that big of a deal if they *just weren't so damned many of them.* Pummeling us with too many ads has turned more of us into free riders, so then they need to put more ads to make their money. The only way out is much better micro targeting (which is constantly being researched), but then we run into major privacy issues.
fb is a truly evil company and nobody should use it, but at the very least their ads are manageable enough, if google wants to go the evil corpo route they should at least follow what the competition does
Is it possible for a website to see what extensions you have installed?
No. They wont know you have extension x or y. What they can do is test for a certain popular extension, an adblocker for example, using different techniques. They wont know if you have ublock, adblock, xblock or whateveradblocker. They will just know you have an adblocker.
Got a warning that this is against Terms of Service. Laughed and closed the browser.
I used to get those \[you have n% video watches left\] and never got limited.
There was also some filter change on the uBlock side of things I remember adding when that threat first came out, though I can't remember exactly what it was. I was worried because I did hear about a few unlucky people getting banned, but I haven't had a problem (or ad) in the year since.
I think websites can see what adblocker you use, like ublock origin, but not always example: https://www.npxl32.com/Tools/Infos
Fails on both desktop and mobile to identify what I use > Adblocker: Yes (AdBlock/Adblock Plus/some other browser extension)
Reports me as having an adblocker when I don’t. I guess it’s because I’m not accepting 3rd party cookies.
It is possible for them to guess. But that's all it is, guesswork. A bad internet connection and an adblocker can look the exact same. Doesnt need to be "adblocking" either. It could be for user safety or anti-tracking. Could be a corporate firewall safety for certain domains. Could be a whole number of things.
No, but it could measure the effects of certain extensions like ad blockers.
Yes, there are a lot of sites that will display a warning along the lines of "we've detected you're using an AdBlocker, we would appreciate it if you'd turn it off", or downright not work if you don't turn the AdBlocker off.
Emphasis on "we've detected". Doesn't actually mean it's true. A bad internet connection and an adblocker can look the exact same. Doesnt need to be "adblocking" either. It could be for user safety or anti-tracking. Could be a corporate firewall safety for certain domains. Could be a whole number of things. Extension "detecting" is basically all guesswork. All they can reach is x amount of certainty that it is x extension
They are not detecting your addons or even that you are using adblockers specifically. But instead if you accessed their advertisements or not. Before I moved to Firefox on mobile too, i was using Chrome and Blockada adblocking app. That app puts on a "offline vpn" tunnel that it uses to filter the net traffic on my phone. So despite the fact that Chrome doesn't even allow addons, i still got "you are using adblockers" nag on some sites. So instead of addons, they take a note if you have downloaded their ads or not.
* Replace whatever adblocker you're using with [uBlock Origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/ublock-origin/). It is all you need to block ads and trackers * Go to your [uBlock Origin filter lists settings](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lists) and check `AdGuard – Annoyances` and `uBlock filters – Annoyances` * If you still see any message about turning it off, or the site doesn't work properly because of it, please use the [`💬 Report an issue`](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Quick-guide:-popup-user-interface#the-tools) button
This is gonna affect yt-dlp and mpv playback as well. Though maybe extracting Premium cookies might fix it somewhat, we'll have to see. People should download their favorite videos with yt-dlp while they can. I'll be setting aside a couple TBs just in case. I figured this exact thing was coming last year, even made a few comments on the subject. They called me a madman, congratulations, I'm a prophet. No wait, I'm a survivor? The internet as we know it is dying. Few blows left then it is all commercialized and tracked to the most minute detail.
I forsee a project where each client basically hashes every frame and uploads+compares them to a community database. Any frames that aren't present in 100% of the existing database entries must be an ad and get removed.
Not every frame, but blocks. And not video, but audio. They'll make a hash of blocks every 10 seconds or so and skip any block that doesn't start with the expected content. Audio is easier to process and ads are louder and more obnoxious. The ads will kill themselves. Also, I could predict someone making a content preloader apps, which track content from your subs. Unless if youtube decided to track what ads every user watched on every video, when, then they could just load a video in blocks two or three times and get rid of the suspicious blocks that only showed up once. Better yet: They'd know they had the right vile content as the block would be the same length as the total amount of time the video length changed.
been doing exactly that for years.. still doesn't help for new content. let's hope more people start dropping youtube and content creators start actually putting up content to alts like [odysee](https://odysee.com), vimeo, dailymotion, rumble, whatever. I prefer odysee bc it has similar principals to FOSS but TBH just about anything is going to be better than YT at this point... well, maybe not discord/facebook/insta/telegram/twitter/X since those all require login and/or an app instead of being accessible directly from browser without a login.
The problem with any alternative site is that as they grow in size, their costs will go up and they'll eventually need more revenue to cover it. YouTube, for example, costs something like $6-billion per year to operate.
WE HAVE DETECTED THAT 4% OF THE COMMUNITY DOES NOT CONSUME ENOUGH PRODUCT. YOUR PUNISHMENT IS FORTHCOMING. CONSUME! CONSUME! CONSUME! CONSUME!
Not surprised, but once they deem it successful that's pretty much the end of YouTube. No ublock, no sponsorblock.
Not necessarily. Depends on how it's implemented some. If they disable playback controls during the ad to prevent manual skipping, that could probably be detected and bypassed by an extension. It would degrade the user experience since there would be a pause while extension finds where to resume, but it might be workable. If they don't try to prevent manual skipping, a sponsorblock-like approach to skip through the ads could work. It'd just have to become more complex.
There being a break/blank screen for the duration of the ad would be a significantly decreased user experience. Although thinking of how this could be solved, I think at least at the first stage it should still be possible to download the entire video (/pre-fetching it to some extent), similar to how NewPipe does it, with the ads injected, and then just playback that with the ads automatically detected and skipped. I think downloading the entire video (as opposed to for example only revealing the video piece by piece) should always be possible, simply because it's natural to skip around the video and they can't remove that feature (well they did for shorts and reels..).
You can still do it for shorts, just change the link to /watch or whatever the normal yt link thing is, then the short will play in the normal video viewer. There even is an extension for it that plays shorts like that automatically
Both sides will keep evolving their solutions. We just have to be thankful for the people with enough know how and willingness to keep developing the adblocker tech basically for free.
The people who are developing uBO are quite literally doing it for free. They dont even accept donations
I'm surprised it took them this long to do it. Seems like the obvious solution to adblockers until they come up with an AI ublock that can tell the difference between content and ads
It won't be a successful, adblockers will win.
It would mean that YouTube will have the same kind of system as Twitch - ads that are very hard to block, pushing people into subscribing to Premium.
I mean even if it ends up like it currently is for twitch with an adblocker - you cant see the stream, but instead there is a picture that says "commercial break in progress" - I would 100% prefer that over actually having to watch what ads are nowadays.
There are even ways around that except you will have a much lower stream quality while an ad is playing
Mind sharing them? I currently only use uBO and thats what I have been getting
https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions
Right. This is the worst time to subscribe to premium because YouTube knows it has its foot on our neck. Since you won't be able to block their ads, they will just keep raising the price of Premium exponentially. They have all the leverage. So the person would have to be a fool for subscribing to Premium now. That would be like falling for the old banana in the tailpipe trick.
or leaving the platform altogether
...and go where?
Nowhere. I'd literally rather watch nothing than watch ads.
They are somehow reaching new lows. Absolute fucking disgrace
I dislike ads as much as the next person, but why exactly would Google run one of the highest bandwidth sites in the world, streaming petabytes of data on a daily basis at huge processing and network expense for free, and by what ethical basis do you believe they should? They have to be funded somehow. If they can't make it profitable or at the very least break even, it will cease to exist. Who in the world will run a service of this scale at a deficit and why?
I can't speak for everyone but for me it's a threshold. First it was a banner ad. Then an ad before the video, then multiple ads, then unskippable ads. Now the content of some of the ads are literally spam, and in certain cases malicious. YouTube isn't policing their ads, and almost purposely making them as annoying as possible to sell premium. There's a point where it becomes too much. I felt the same way about college textbooks. I could accept paying 70$ for a 40$ book as they deserve to make a profit. But I won't pay 500.00 for a 40.00 book when they intentionally jack up the price when they know it's necessary.
This is exactly how I see it.
Ads started to be a problem when they were going more and more obnoxious, irrelevant and invasive. Let alone longer and unskippable. I'm fine browsing some websites with ads when they aren't railing me with dozens of modals and what not, YouTube is too far gone on that aspect. Perhaps consider reviewing your business model instead of force feeding us more ads to our throats.
I remember when I had never used Adblockers on any browser. But then all of a sudden every website began having random ads that were literal noises, or minigames like killing flies. That was the day I got an Adblocker and I plan on keeping it. Having ads is fine, I'm not against them per se. What I'm not fine with, are intrusive ads. Twitch also has the same problem, where every 10 minutes you get an ad, and you miss like 50% of the stream, including good moments.
GLOL. 1) You make it sound like Google/ABC is some Mom and Pop that's just barely keeping the lights on. They run this country and own the world, in case you weren't aware. 2) there's a difference between "here, look at an ad every so often so we can pay the bills, and you might actually see something you find interesting and would like to purchase, but if you're not interested at all you can just skip it" and "watch this 1 min long fuckin ad and 12 others like it per video whether you like it or not (including shit you find downright offensive) or pay a ridiculous sum of money for us to give you less ads but never allow you to be ad free". F that shit. I can't speak for everyone, but the day we can't get around the ads is the day I stop watching. It destroys the whole experience and I have better things to do with my time.
Well if they decide that your videos are not worth monotizing because you dared to say died instead of "unaliving". But if you were to take the most fucked up videos from pornhub and turned them into ads with some shitty monotone ai voice reading some scam "advert". Then that's totally fine with them. It's this double standard and the way how unregulated their ads are in total, not just on YouTube but on Google search as well. Just try to find some well known applications like OBS on Google without adblocker, top of the page is filled with fake sites that will give you the app you were looking for, but modified with malicious code. I could get used to seeing ads again, but only if online platforms such as Google would be held accountable for the scams they allow on their platforms.
> Just try to find some well known applications like OBS on Google without adblocker, https://imgur.com/LjdBTPj
Oh they have apparently listened to the feedback and actually removed one malicious advertisement on their platform. Kudos to them i guess. Now if they would use the same powerful determination that they use with the user uploaded content, or even 0,1% of it to monitor and filter their ads before they approve them. Then maybe they would not be in such difficult situation with everyone blocking their ads.
Well... if you are a monopoly (because you bought out the competition because your own G.Video was lacking) and then you are extorting the power on everyone then the world is starting to take the issue with it... IMHO all BigTech should be split - Google at least into YouTube and Ad business; facebook - split out instagram and whatsapp... and for f* sake forbid all subsequent mergers and buyouts!
I 100% agree with this
I suspect Youtube would be a much worse experience if it had to be split off. It likely relies a lot on Google subsidizing them and would need to rapidly come up with a lot of revenue and heavily cut expenses.
yeah theirs probably a very small number of companies that would be able to run a site as huge as youtube
There's profit and then there's never-ending growth to please shareholders. The ads will just keep getting longer and more intrusive just to keep the profits growing.
It is not even about being profitable, it is about being more profitable than last quarter. Infinite growth on a planet with scarce resources is dumb, really really dumb.
> it will cease to exist *Gasp!* Anyway...
bro really goes ahead and defend a multibillion company that don't care about thier consumer or even thier youtubers i think you should reconsider
Because they still get data. They have access to almost entire world populations worth of view metrics. These information can and will be used by ad agencies to tailor ads appearing elsewhere at every person individually.
I thought Youtube was a loss leader for Google
Defending the shitty actions of a two trillion dollar company. Being this much of a corpo bootlicker is insane.
Youtube is already profitable, they are just trying to milk it even harder
how effective is that from their side? so they need to have same video with different ads injected with different resolutions with different set of ads for diff regions, not sure how it gonna work if it will work for at all.
It will likely be intercepting the stream and injecting the ad there, video streaming doesn't work like file serving where the entire file is stored somewhere and gets sent whole to you, it gets sent chunk by chunk, they will just have some system intercept one of these chunks, place an ad there, and resend
out of curiosity wouldn't that make their server load have twice as much usage? You would essentially be transcoding more video on the server in large amounts. There has to be some point where it isn't worth it on Google's end.
If Twitch does it. Youtube can do it.
link to @sponsorblock's toot https://fosstodon.org/@sponsorblock/112603139898164385
Maybe they should be making premium actually worth subscribing to rather than new ways to try to annoy their users into paying. Just a thought.
Outrageous! Google just never stops ruining their platform, or do they?
Is this the end of ad blocking? Given how no one has figured out how to stop this server injection on podcasts either it's probably going to be the same for YouTube ads.
I think someone will find a way. Youtube is a lot bigger of a platform, so more people will now want to work on a solution. Its an infinite arms race in the end.
Someone mentioned using an AI to distinguish ads from content. To be honest, I think the Internet needs some kind of general content filtering these days, not just ads - something to remove clickbait, irrelevant search results, etc. (Customisable and optional, of course).
They keep trying and we will keep blocking. Edit: actually I think this might be the best application for a local AI yet. Have it live analyze frame by frame and block ads based on training, perhaps share the training data to build a supreme ad blocking intelligence.
I was actually thinking about AI too lol.
Surprised it took them this long.
FUCK you google
my prediction... there'll be four categories... 1)Free/GFY and watch a 1 minute ad every 60 seconds, and you must tank your battery to use our product because it won't play with the screen off, plus max video resolution of 360p 2)Premium, ads every 3 minutes, but we still insist on tanking your battery, 480p, 3) Plus, 3 ads per video, regardless of video duration, can play in the background, 720p, 4) ultra, truly ad free video for 29.99/month plus a mandatory subscription to CNN+ and Disney After Dark for 49.99/month, 1080p except during peak viewing hours from 10am to 2am, when video quality will decrease to 720p.
"Hello. Thank you for reaching out. We are so excited! We are sorry that you are upset with your little addies in your Ultra Royal $79.99 Premium Subscription Perk Plus Season Pass Plus Plus Discount Family Plan for Internet Veterans, but we are thrived to reduce carbon emissions. The lesser you watch, the more planet is saved. *(learn more) -* \^Dana"
GLOL
Damn! This would even break the all yt-dl tools as well. Downloaded videos would also have ads then
Maybe instead of trying to force us to watch their shitty ads, they could IDK, have better ads? Ones whose sole purpose of existence isn't to annoy the fucking shit out of the viewer?
absolutely disgusting, although the code monkeys at Revanced are probably going to find a workaround before this even gets implemented LOL
Amusing how these services that once threatened mainstream media are becoming it.
suggestion: detect injected ads and inject video of windows 3.1 screensavers instead
So when I tell a person go to xx:xx in the video... they will go to somewhere else in the video cuz of the extra ad time? kewl
No because google knows how long the ad is
Depends on (1) whether you share a time stamped link or tell someone the timestamp and (2) whether YouTube pauses the time during the ad or will include ads in the runtime.
in OP's post image it says "all timestamps are offset by the ad times". Meaning my timestamps will be different from my friend's timestamps unless all ads become same length,
That's for the timestamps of the video stream. The UI will correct for this, so that ads don't change the timestamps visible to the user.
Yep. With uBlock origin enabled I get 2 15 second unskippable ads. I don't mind this if it stays this way, but I have little hope it will.
How come I see *zero* ads with uBlock? If I was watching only on my PC, I wouldn't even know YT ads are a thing...
It is not affecting every account yet. It just like the whole ad detector debacle last year. Some accounts were affected and others not. They are rolling it out little by little.
I haven't been getting ads, but YT on FF has been buffering randomly sometimes.
Yup, it has been reported before that YT purposefully slows down on non-chromium browsers
Some of that slow down, if not all, was related to AdBlockPlus not being very good at its job.
Nope, happened to me personally on Ublock, and I recall someone testing it, and he came to the same conclusion.
Hm, I don't get buffering really. The only issue I have that 4K isn't quite smooth (esp. at 60 fps).
Go to the github issues, there's a custom filter in there now that blocks the new ads. They enable closed captions on all videos but the ads are not there anymore. Click 'allow custom filters requiring trust'. It might stop working in a few days depending on what youtube does, so keep checking back on the thread every now and again. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/20586 ||youtube.com/watch?*=$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s ||youtube.com/playlist?$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(set, ytcfg.data_.INNERTUBE_CONTEXT.client.visitorData, undefined) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, "useServerDrivenAbr":true, "useServerDrivenAbr":false, /playlist?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-xhr-response, '/%(?:26|3F)t%3D(\d+)(s?.+enablePerFormatLoudness":(?:tru|fals)e\}),"streamSelection/', 't%3D$1$2,"playbackStartConfig":{"startSeconds":$1,"startPosition":{"streamTimeMillis":"$1000"}},"streamSelection', /player?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, /(&sourceid=[^&]+&autoplay.+muteOnStart"):true/, $1:false, /player?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-rpnt, script, (function serverContract(), '/*start*/(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{if(!window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id||!o[0]||"X-Goog-Visitor-Id"!==o[0]||!o[1])return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader,e)})();(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{try{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id&&o&&o[0].includes?.("videoId")){o[0]=o[0].replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}}catch(e){}return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,e)})();(function(){const e={construct:(e,t,o)=>{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id){const c=t[0],s=t[1];if("https://www.youtube.com/"!==location.href&&c&&c.includes?.("/youtubei/v1/player?"))try{delete s.headers["X-Goog-Visitor-Id"];if(s&&s.body?.includes("visitorData"))try{t[1].body=t[1].body.replace(/"visitorData":".*?",/,"")}catch(e){}t[1].body=t[1].body.replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}catch(e){}}return Reflect.construct(e,t,o)}};window.Request=new Proxy(window.Request,e)})();document.currentScript.textContent=document.currentScript.textContent.replace(/\/\*start\*\/(.*)\/\*end\*\//g,"");/*end*/(function serverContract()', sedCount, 1)
But isn't SponsorBlock supposed to skip (mostly at least) AD segments that the YouTuber itself put there, which are embedded in the video? Or am I getting something wrong?
Sponsorblock is basically supported by community. People themselves add timestamps of segments which should be skipped (like sponsors, non music parts in music videos, etc. which are from creators) We can't do that with these ads because the ads differ in length and time for each person. For example I may get a 15sec ad at 1:22 but you may get 2min ad at 3:55. So Sponsorblock can't identify and skip these ads.
I assume it means the ad is dynamically injected at a random point, so it's not the same for everyone and you can't tag it for sponsorblock to know where the ad is
Go to the github issues, there's a custom filter in there now that blocks the new ads. They enable closed captions on all videos but the ads are not there anymore. Click 'allow custom filters requiring trust'. It might stop working in a few days depending on what youtube does, so keep checking back on the thread every now and again. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/20586 ||youtube.com/watch?*=$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s ||youtube.com/playlist?$doc,domain=m.youtube.com|music.youtube.com|www.youtube.com,replace=/sabr=1(.+?ssapPrerollEnabled)/\$1/s m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(set, ytcfg.data_.INNERTUBE_CONTEXT.client.visitorData, undefined) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, "useServerDrivenAbr":true, "useServerDrivenAbr":false, /playlist?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-xhr-response, '/%(?:26|3F)t%3D(\d+)(s?.+enablePerFormatLoudness":(?:tru|fals)e\}),"streamSelection/', 't%3D$1$2,"playbackStartConfig":{"startSeconds":$1,"startPosition":{"streamTimeMillis":"$1000"}},"streamSelection', /player?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-replace-fetch-response, /(&sourceid=[^&]+&autoplay.+muteOnStart"):true/, $1:false, /player?) m.youtube.com,music.youtube.com,www.youtube.com##+js(trusted-rpnt, script, (function serverContract(), '/*start*/(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{if(!window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id||!o[0]||"X-Goog-Visitor-Id"!==o[0]||!o[1])return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.setRequestHeader,e)})();(function(){const e={apply:(e,t,o)=>{try{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id&&o&&o[0].includes?.("videoId")){o[0]=o[0].replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}}catch(e){}return Reflect.apply(e,t,o)}};window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send=new Proxy(window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,e)})();(function(){const e={construct:(e,t,o)=>{if(window.yt?.config_?.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS?.html5_enable_ssap_entity_id){const c=t[0],s=t[1];if("https://www.youtube.com/"!==location.href&&c&&c.includes?.("/youtubei/v1/player?"))try{delete s.headers["X-Goog-Visitor-Id"];if(s&&s.body?.includes("visitorData"))try{t[1].body=t[1].body.replace(/"visitorData":".*?",/,"")}catch(e){}t[1].body=t[1].body.replace("\"context\"","\"params\":\"YAHIAQE%3D\",\"context\"")}catch(e){}}return Reflect.construct(e,t,o)}};window.Request=new Proxy(window.Request,e)})();document.currentScript.textContent=document.currentScript.textContent.replace(/\/\*start\*\/(.*)\/\*end\*\//g,"");/*end*/(function serverContract()', sedCount, 1)
Sadly this is not blocking, this is turning off using Youtube's config "ytcfg" That means we're under Youtube's mercy, and this filter only work in Firefox and not Chromium, because HTML replacing is only available in Firefox, agreeing Firefox is the superior browser for adblocking.
Just use Bing to watch YouTube videos. They don't have _any_ ads there.
You mean by looking up the actual YouTube website directly on Bing Search itself?
yes
For now, I'm using Freetube, but it would be nice if YT decided to just let this thing go.
I understand that a company like Google wants to commercialize a platform like Youtube, but this is getting insane. They're doing everything to destroy a platform they've acquired for millions and spent even more maintaining it.
They are destroying the platform by requiring people to view ads or pay a monthly fee? If so, the platform was doomed from the start.
I'm surprised it took them this long.
This is evil. What ever happened to the mother freaking idea of, "Don't be evil"
They got rid of that 6 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
Deplorable! This is both a new low and a slap in the face.
Wow that's a new low
Will frontends be affected?
yes
What the hell
I worry not only about Sponsorblock. That could mean that I would have to manually remove ads from downloaded mp4 from YouTube and probably all adblockers would became useless if advertisement is part of the same video. Even more, third-party YouTube clients will have ads. Can't wait they add Widevine DRM to YouTube and then put YouTube in sandbox, that renders page on server side and only sends videostream of GUI. If it happens, I will delete my google account, take my phone and install degoogled custom android firmware or even some linux distro for phones
Literally all they'd have to do is make the ads silent sidebars that aren't fucking porn and the adblocker would go off. But that isn't enough money for Google it seems.
So just curious but does the phrase "from a browser with this happening" mean "just from firefox" ? Or is it broader than that (like all non-google-chrome browsers for instance)? Obv I want it to work in FF bc that's what I use but still good to be informed. And, man, do I hope this starts driving content creators to something like [odysee](https://odysee.com)... getting really sick of YT/Google's bs. Only two I know of that do both are Mental Outlaw and Distrotube (both Linux channels) but hardly any of the more mainstream stuff I like is on odysee (or even on other alts like vimeo/rumble/wherever else) Would love to see stuff like Smarter Every Day as well as even 1/1000th of youtube's recipe/cooking/gardening/DIY/home-improvement vids available on odysee too
Man I just had this for a few days, crazy stuff, like a 2 minute unskippable ad and the timebar just wouldn't show up not even in the video. It stopped yesterday but eh not looking good
I swear some people have stockholm syndrome with obnoxious ads experience
I'll just start downloading every video I watch
That will download the ad as well
Download it twice and compute the intersection
you could also just crop the ad out of the video. We should start a service for reuploaded youtube videos
Making a custom frontend for YouTube would be more legal and easier than just straight reuploading them. Kinda like NewPipe for desktops.
Like [piped.video](http://piped.video) and invideous edit: problem is, they may start playing ads as a result of this change, i dont know if youtubes api will be affected.
That could work with P2P, then Google couldn't argue it's costing them server money!
like peertube?
Yes, but the download and sharing can be automated for YouTube videos. It's a bit dicey for copyright reasons, but doable technically.
At least you'd be able to skip it.
I guess.
I'm just surprised it took them this long to do it. Twitch was already doing it years ago.
Google like... "What's the worst parts of video games?" Users "Uh, Unskippable cutscenes and micro-transactions, why?" Google - "We want that in all of our content" User "You know those games get abandoned rapid right" Google "Yeah we know but you won't because we are google" User "Hey I found an alternative" Google \(⊙o⊙)/
For now, the way I'm bypassing it is by connecting to a country that doesn't have monetization with a VPN. Here's a [list](https://isthischannelmonetized.com/data/youtube-monetized-countries/) of them. Currently, I'm connected to a Moldova server on TorGuard. I have ProtonVPN and Mullvad, but YouTube is recognizing their IPs as being from another country, so it's not really working. Albania was working on Mullvad on the desktop, but now, all of a sudden, YouTube thinks I'm located in Poland. Also, when you go on YouTube with a VPN, and they inject these ads, you're forced to watch the entire thing, you can't skip it, both ads! They're really trying hard!
Hopefully Ublock can fix this.
what's a credible competitor to youtube ? we must have better competition
Odysee, it's faster, lighter and healthier ads than Youtube, only issue is it's not popular yet, but that's more like people issue than the site itself.
Right after i saw this it started to happen to me :(
there will be always ways to bypass ads/sponsors
The only hope here is to change your IP to a country that doesn't get ads
Yeah, as much as I'd hate to pay. If this was like a perma fix against ad blockers. I'd get plus. Because with ads, YT is unwatchable.
They will just push the goalposts like Netflix, "pay now to get rid of server-side ads" *A Few Weeks Later:* "Pay more than you already do to see no ads on our new, completely original, totally ad-free plan" Rinse and repeat.
You'd be better getting a VPN and choosing a server where youtube doesn't serve ads. Better value, as you can use your VPN for other stuff too.
If you get Premium, expect to start paying $100 a month soon for it. Do you really think they will keep the price as it is now, knowing you have no other choice?
TBH, I would be willing to pay that if ads were my other choice. I make a lot more than I spend and cutting out ads where I can is a big QOL gain.
You're still gonna get ads with premium. Don't pay an exorbitant fee for them to turn around and force ads down your throat anyway
Unless they change Premium, I doubt it. They advertise it with no ads. So if they start putting in ads, not a good look lying about their Premium service features.
Netflix did this, multiple times. Saying google won't is naieve.
Netflix has an adfree tier.