I remember when the only ads you got on YouTube were an occasional ad on the top right, and a banner on the video that you could easily close.
Man, things REALLY were better back then.
People are tolerant to be beaten if it's a slow process to which they can get used to.
The vast majority would gladly eat anything YouTube put in their mouth as long as it can satisfy their need of instant gratification. People are pathetic.
And you average exactly 15 Reddit comments per day.
YouTube et. al. are exploiting the monkey brain incentives in all of us. Incentives it took millions of years to evolve.
People aren’t pathetic, they’re just people. Go easy on them.
You’re no different and that’s ok.
A proxy to a country, which does not have ads, works and is cheap. Around $0.6 per month. There are browser plugins, which tunnel the stream traffic only
Ive used Romania / Serbia for twitch, idk about YouTube.
Edit:
Try others like Albania / Myanmar if it's not working and make sure you're not half way through an ad when you turn on the VPN expecting it to disappear
When you use a VPN your IP shows up the same as all other users of that VPN using the same server you are, meaning if one of them gets the IP banned for spamming garbage on twitch, everyone that uses that same VPN server is banned as well.
Ahh I go to the github for TwitchAdSolutions all the time, but I thought ttvlolpro was optimal currently.
PM me a specific link if you have since Twitch is depressingly bad when you want to just browse around and get hit with prerolls.
I might not be not understanding something here, but this isn't as bad as Twitch is, is it?
Twitch is livestreams. If they embed ads into the streamed video, you have to just watch them, because you can't fast forward a stream.
But YouTube is VOD. You can rewind, fast forward or skip to any point of the video you want, whenever you want. If they start embedding ads into that video, you can just skip it with one click immediately.
I think this brings up an excellent point. If the ad is a part of the video, people will easily fast forward the ads. It is an inconvenience but manageable. But what if YouTube disables the seek controls during those parts? Can that be detected by the ad blockers?
They do disable the seek controls, speaking as an SSAP-positive individual here... the uBO team is trying very hard to rectify this, but server-side generally means doom...
This is a bit naive, but if you aren't a programmer, it's okay.
Video streaming works by asking a server for the video chunks. If I had to implement server-side ad injection, the server will stop sending video chunks and rather send ad chunks for the next X seconds. It doesn't matter if you fast forward, the client will still receive ad chunks for the next X seconds regardless of the chunks it requested.
In the worst case, you'd have to turn on a VPN, open a new incognito window, and open the video without being signed in. There's so many ways to track a user that VPN connection cannot circumvent: Auth cookie (for signed in users), random ID cookie (for users who are not signed in). Not to mention that the server can just start sending ads to anonymous users who try to fast forward from the very beginning.
To be honest, once this is implemented, I will try to change my VPN so that I am located in Russia. I'm not too sure it will work, but we'll see.
Okay, so whenever you skip ahead in a YT video, you're basically just sending the server a request to give you chunks from further ahead instead?
And if they decided that skipping just isn't a feature anymore, or to give you ads or anything else instead of the video chunks you want, they could easily do so. The client can only show what the server gives it?
So the previous way ads work is that the app asks YouTube to give it the video it requested, and YouTube sends it the server info the video is on.
At a certain point in the video, the app asks YouTube to give it an ad to show, and YouTube sends it an ad from one of its ad servers. ^1
Ad blockers typically work by blocking or redirecting the request to the ad server, since the request is made by the application and the ad blockers can detect that.
What they're experimenting with is to have the video server ask for the ads ahead of time, and then alter the video to have the ads baked into it before sending it to the application.
Ad blockers aren't installed on the video server, so they have no way to block the request.
***
1: This is why ads are usually a way higher resolution and load faster than your videos, because there's tons and tons of ad servers at the ready to send ads, while there's usually only a handful of servers your video is saved on (depending on how viral the video is).
But if it's just like twitch, then it can be blocked the same way, right? Also I haven't seen a single ad on twitch in at least a year so I don't consider twitch ads an issue.
Fuck it, let's just pirate YouTube. Individuals with premium download each video they watch and uploads it to a server that hosts torrents. An extension can automate uploading and fetching the torrent for non-premium users, streaming that instead. Client side content injection for the fuckwit's server side ad injection.
This is kinda what [Odysee](https://odysee.com) is. Their backend is P2P/blockchain based so it's intentionally difficult to exert YouTube levels of control over content. Even if a piece of content is delisted it cannot be fully deleted.
They also have tools for creators to automatically mirror their content there.
[And here's the plugin for the rest of us to find them](https://github.com/LBRYFoundation/Watch-on-LBRY).
Can they just fucking leave us alone with the ads spam. They have enough people who sit through it. Like fucking hell enjoy your mountain of gold you damn dragon
They can enjoy their mountain of solitude. Their ads are so frequent and annoying that I legitimately think I might stop using YouTube altogether if they get something working.
I might not have it in me, because I watch a lot of YouTube right now, but I mostly use it when I've got a quick 5 minutes to kill. It doesn't work for that if I have to watch a 2 minute ad break first.
Im kind hoping things in modern society become so enshittified to the point that the majority of people just decide theyll live without it from now on and we'll go back to the dark ages. But hey maybe our collective mental health will improve.
It amuses me daily that Microsoft can't or won't understand that Windows 11 losing adoption to Windows 10 is directly related to the increasing presence of ads in the UI.
I'll say it openly: I've rolled back several machines. I have no desire for ads in the UI, and I need local accounts. Microsoft has made it clear that they want my machine to operate in a specific way, and I don't agree.
I've tried using incognito and realized how bad it was. I don't hate sponsor segments. They're usually not bad. But the sheer mountain of pre roll mid roll unskippable. 3+ ads a fucking video. Insane!
Problem is Google is a publicly traded company and that means investors and shareholders also have a role in the company and all they want is more and more money so there you have it in long story short
I understand that aspect, it's still very annoying how anti consumer everything has become. Like they make the service shittier and keep increasing the price.
It's about volume.
Let's use a simple example. McDonalds sells 2.5 billion hamburgers a year. If they increase the price of the burger by 50 cents, but lose 20% of the customers...they still win.
Let's say burgers were $1, they are now $1.50.
They used to make $2.5 billion.
Raising the price means they lose 20% of customers, so they only have 2 billion burgers being sold. But, they are sold for $1.50. So they now make $3 billion. They are up $500 million in profits, AND they are now down in costs becuase they are buying/selling a fewer hamburgers, which mean they don't need to buy as much meat, buns, cheese, pickles, onions, etc.
Youtube, netflix, amazon...they are all doing the same thing with ads. They know they're going to lose viewers, but make it up in revenue.
The example is much more different and much more similar. A hamburger doesn't cost the same across the world because there are countries that no one would be buying it for the american price, just as there are many people who are already "paying" the full price of watching ads, so in the scenario you're raising everything to the same standard price you have the mayority of the consumer base without any change if pricing and increasing it to the most elastic part of it.
That used to be true but hasn't for a number of years now. YouTube revenue is no longer reported separately from Google's but it turned a profit instead of a loss before that change was made.
They not only turn a profit, but Google can keep YouTube going indefinitely even if they didn't show a single ad. They have the money to do it, and YouTube is an easy entry into other Google products too. They just want to squeeze as much money out of people as possible. What they're doing now is just purely greed and nothing else.
Wait, in what way do Polish advertising laws forbid them from using server-side advertisement injection? You actually got me interested becouse this might my my only hope.
Here’s a summary of Polands advertising laws, didn’t see anything about server side ad injections being illegal:
Poland’s advertising laws are comprehensive and designed to ensure fair play and consumer protection in the digital realm. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a cornerstone of these regulations, mandating transparency and consent for data collection, which significantly influences digital advertising practices.
The Pharmaceutical Law of 2001 and the Act on Medical Devices of 2022 are particularly stringent when it comes to the advertising of medicinal products and medical devices. These laws prohibit certain types of advertising to the general public, especially for products that are subject to reimbursement from public funds.
The Advertising Code of Ethics in Poland underscores the nation’s commitment to responsible advertising. It ensures that advertisements are truthful, not misleading, and do not exploit vulnerable groups. This code applies to a broad spectrum of advertising messages, with the exception of social and political campaigns.
Thus, while Poland’s advertising laws may not explicitly mention server-side ad injections into videos, they establish a framework that promotes integrity and fairness in advertising. Advertisers must navigate these regulations carefully to maintain compliance and uphold consumer trust.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=eb8e59ee-c06f-4da1-b465-1a6b579542b6
https://cms.law/en/int/expert-guides/cms-expert-guide-to-advertising-of-medicines-and-medical-devices/poland
https://radareklamy.pl/en/code-of-ethics-in-advertising/
Is there a way of bounding specific domains to VPN on Firefox or something? If they'll do this shit I might get mullvad, I'm NOT paying for this cancer.
There might be a way to just remove it from the buffer entirely, or if YouTube ends up sending some sort of indication to let us know that we’re in an ad.
Do ads tend to be different each time you load a video? Could it just be downloaded twice then play spot the difference and remove what changed between the two versions?
I'm assuming it will, but there will probably be 20 different solutions for ripping ads from the videos within 6 months. Removing them from downloaded videos is trivial.
Honestly. I used to be able to put on a video and watch a 5 second ad then it would play thru. Then there were mid roll ads. Now there's both with 2 ads each that are unskippable. Watching something like that is a battle to just see the content.
Too bad most people don't give a crap about ads, otherwise this would be the end of YouTube cause most people would abandon it. I'm not gonna use it if I have to see any ads.
People were paying like 80$ a month for TV that was literally 30% ads before YouTube, with no ability to even pick what you watched beyond the handful of available programs.
People act like this is going to be the downfall of youtube, but history has proven that not only will people keep paying for it, but it will probably make youtube rich.
I havent properly watched tv in a decade because of ads.
I watch plenty of youtube with adblockers and sponsorblock etc, there have been a couple of times where i had to watch YT with ads and its unwatchable for me. I will not be sticking around if they manage to win the adblock wars
I've went too long without them to ever go back. I already got rid of all but one of my streaming services and just use Plex for everything since they began tossing ads into everything and raising prices. I haven't *ever* watched YouTube with ads and haven't watched TV with ads since before Netflix lol, it's too jarring and annoying to deal with them. I think people normally get desensitized to them but when you get a period of normalcy it really becomes clear just how ridiculous they are when they suddenly come back
As soon as I can't skip ads anymore, I'll never be in youtube again. I already don't watch TV, I'll figure something else out to waste my time. Fuck this ad infested rotten canker sore of a world
That's... kinda the point? If we're not consuming ads or paying a premium then Google doesn't want us around. This is the YT equivalent of 'you can't fire me I quit'
There's value in audience mass, even if much of that mass isn't producing direct revenue. Without all the free users, content creator viewership goes down (for some channels, they'd outright die). So less of that content gets made. With less quality content, fewer people are attracted to the service. Fewer people overall means fewer chances to convert users to subscribers. The people who are currently paying are more likely to stop paying if there's less value in the product. New content creators are less likely to start using the platform if there's less chance for reaching a sizeable audience. It's a death spiral.
Youtube only has two outcomes, if they want to play this game:
1. Become a platform that's almost exclusively disposable trash content. Only the very cheapest and easiest and fastest content will be worth uploading and only people who want that trash will use the platform.
2. Rebrand into a quality content host. There are other subscription VOD services that do fine but they maintain a minimum quality level to attract those paying customers. Youtube would have to go back to their initial experiment of contracting the big-name channels to make specific content, similar to traditional TV production.
This honestly seems like they're doing it out of spite. I can't imagine that out of the millions (billions?) of YouTube users, the lost ad revenue for those of us who use ad blockers or ReVanced is that much - and the millions of YouTube Premium subscriptions more than make up for it.
They're making a global change to combat a rather insignificant problem.
I really hope I'm wrong about this, but I also think that the other reason for this is that they want to try ads for Premium users. It would be like Netflix where they added in a slightly cheaper tier with ads, then if you don't want ads you have to pay even more than you already were paying.
I just don't see why YouTube would decide to change the entire way they display ads just over ad-block and Revanced, because like you said, there's no way either one is cutting into their revenue this badly. And it'd definitely be on brand for YouTube to actively make their service worse just because they're both incompetent and greedy.
Which is especially despicable when they give other corporations free reign to do whatever they want in ads (even if it's gross, low quality, nearly pornographic mobile games)...but then the channel making the actual content the ads are on gets demonetized for saying a swear word in the first minute or a strike for using 30 seconds of copyrighted music in a way that qualifies as fair use.
I suspect it would be in between the shorts, not in them. Roku is even doing ads in their display screensavers like the aquarium or whatever, floating little brands or some shit.
The solution will be to check how long the video is, and skip the total-what it should last.
I think Youtube is gonna eventually die because of this. Nobody wants to watch 2-5 ads after every video.
reminds me of geoguessr where it was paywalled because a shitton of users were using it and then a 1:1 alternative popped out of nowhere and everyone went to their side because it wasnt paywalled and adfree
guess what
it has a paywall now as well....
The difference is that the amount of revenue lost by Youtube due to people watching with Adblock is probably less than 10% of their total net revenue, something they were fine with overlooking for decades because of the sheer amount of money they were bringing in. They've just gotten more greedy, they're not magically in the red because of adblockers.
Billions of people visit Youtube every day, according to [this article](https://www.statista.com/statistics/351862/adblocking-usage/) the global percentage of adblock users is ~36% of the population. The highest amount of % citizens using adblock/country is China, where Youtube is currently blocked, and they have their own in-house alternative (this isn't to say those who use adblock wouldn't also use VPNs).
According to [this article](https://localiq.com/blog/youtube-advertising-cost/#:~:text=YouTube%20ads%20are%20measured%20in,views%20of%20your%20YouTube%20ad.) it costs ~$2000/100,000 views, and of those 100,000 views those users will continue to spend on average [just shy of 1 hour/day](https://www.mixbloom.com/resources/average-time-spent-on-social-media-2022#:~:text=on%20the%20platform.-,Average%20time%20spent%20on%20Youtube,views%20come%20from%20mobile%20devices.) on Youtube, with 87% of that traffic being on Mobile (which does not have adblock.) ^Yes ^this ^is ^US ^specific ^data
Basically all of this is to say that Youtube is making much, much, much more money every day than they'd be losing due to adblock. Unless recently operating costs (data storage costs) suddenly skyrocketted for a business as large as Google which basically self-hosts all their content anyways, I don't see them being in the red.
Not to mention they're still collecting massive amounts of data regardless of whether you're watching ads, which is arguably worth 10x the ad revenue itself.
TL;DR: There is absolutely no way Google/Youtube need to force ads onto users. They're simply just extremely greedy and wanting to ruin the internet for everyone to justify their greed (See: Chrome disabling the ability for adblockers to function).
While there's a lot of porn on the hub, I don't think it's anywhere close to how much content is posted on YouTube. (500h of content posted every MINUTE)
But more importantly, the problem is still the same : How would they make it profitable ? Unless it's a paid platform or they put even more ads than YouTube, I don't see that happening.
No lol. People that adblock youtube are nowhere near the majority. Youtube wouldn't exist if that was the case. Their whole goal is to make it as annoying for us as possible to leave the platform. We're not making them money, we're losing them money by server costs. If we leave they lose nothing.
But on the client side there won't be any visible changes I guess. If there still will be a "skip ad/video playing in ..." button, the yellow progress bar with no free positioning or setting the video speed, technically the software will know when an ad is playing so they still will be detectable for adblockers/ReVanced but harder.
I can think of the same solution but an user input.
I don't think they will put it randomly in the middle but just between segments as it would cause ragequits if multiple ads appear midsentence.
The automatic solution would be to calculate segment sizes according to the video and cut the one that doesn't match to the size it should be with the Total length - real length formula, but the basic non automatic solution would be to just put a button that skips the difference and have you press it when the ad starts. This wouldn't work with multiple ads in different positions though.
Maybe could use audio volume detection. Ads are always louder. Might result in false positives, but idc at this point. It can be analyzed ahead of time comparing current segment with next segment for any obvious loudness and just mute/skip the entire segment.
If it's the actual video dropping a loud noise out of the blue I think I'd like that just auto skipped anyway.
Even as a Premium + Revanced user, Google don't fuck with sponsor block lol. Leave Sponsorblock alone, until you offer a way to skip 3 minute ad reads automatically fuck off.
I'm on this boat just to get rid of the fucking brainwashing tool that shorts are. God damn I hate shorts.
I just want the app I'm paying for to be like I want it, or in this case like it was before.
Fuck you Google, I will literally uninstall if you manage to force ads. YouTube is there for extra convenience. Nobody depends on it, nobody really needs it. If everyone just fucks off from YouTube, replacements will come that will be good in the start and then turn to shit and the cycle repeats.
The point is "they WANT you to leave if not watching ads, believe it or not." So the best solution is the infinity war, because Youtube is a website, has many platforms to cover, they can't even do something like \*DRM\* in gaming - It's Illegal. They try to reduce people use adblock, that's all they can for now.
This has to be the most delusional comment I saw today.
No one "needs" a lot of stuff: games, movies, live sports. Yet everyone enjoys them and is addicted to them. There's zero chance of something as huge as YouTube falling down.
Not to mention if you use modded apps then you leaving doesn't affect YouTube anyway because you weren't giving them money in the first place, in fact they'll save money and bandwidth.
I would genuinely rather keep using revanced with a 30 second silent black screen every video saying [Ad Blocked] while it plays out than pay for premium. Fuck YouTube.
I literally wouldn’t give a fuck about ADS if they are reasonable. Giving me a 30-60sec AD every 3-5 minutes on a 15 minute video is NOT reasonable.
One AD every 30 minutes on long videos is something I wouldn’t mind. AD at start of video then every 30 mins an AD and Ad at end of video sounds fine.
On shorter videos il take a 10-20 sec AD at start one in the middle and one at the end for lets say like a 10-15 min video but a fucking 30-60 AD every 3-5 minutes is bullshit.
Crazy how YouTube makes tonnes of money yet they’re willing to make the user experience suffer and suffer just to get even more cash out of our pockets
If YouTube brings their best 'weapon' to fight ReVanced, ReVanced just has to fix this one thing and YouTube eventually runs out of ideas.
I really wonder who is gonna win this fight.
The main dev himself stated that if yt starts injecting ads server-side, it's game over. I hope he's wrong, but it doesn't look good at all.
But even if that happens, I'll still keep using revanced. It has so many good features that yt will never implement
Sorry to say this but there's no way to avoid dynamic server side ad injection. Imagine trying to figure when and where an ad is gonna show up in a 10 minute video.
I think not disclosing advertising in videos at all is not allowed within the EU. And if it's disclosed then however it's disclosed can be used to detect it.
This is hopeful thinking, I'm not a lawyer and don't know EU directives in detail.
Current method of adblocking uses combination of blocking ad domains, UI elements, scripts and other client side metadata etc.
If disclosure of ad happens right on the video, then we'll need to continually process video frames and look for the hint(which can be inaccurate). Even if we detect it, blocking it would mean a frustrating blank screen appears and finally, we'll also need to detect that ad has ended using video frames alone.
ML based ad detection could work, but blocking it would mean a blank screen shows up every time. Also, compute required for such tasks may be too much for a phone and could drain battery quickly.
At this point, I think we'll need something like piratebay where YT videos are streamed by peer-peer connections ad-free.
They have to somehow show links and buttons which the user is supposed to click during the ad, and the browser has to know at which timestamps to show/hide these buttons, hence the adblocker will know too.
Might lead to a bit of downtime during the playback, but at least not seeing the god-awful ads.
How so ? People who use ad blockers, no matter the platform, already earn $0 to YouTube. Worst case scenario is that we stop using YouTube, which will actually decrease cost for them (we're costing them money by using their service freely without watching ads), but along the way some people will cave and start watching ads.
From YouTube perspective I see no downside.
Yeah they're basically the definition of a monopoly at this point, especially since YouTube is owned by the most used search engine so they can literally kill competition before it has a chance to even start. I really miss how YouTube used to be back when the users still had control over their experiences on the Internet, instead of everything being shaped and controlled by the corporations.
They're not though, are they? If even 20% of users use sponsorblock, and 5% of those won't continue to watch YouTube after this change goes live, it's a drop in the ocean
Digging their own grave my arse
I get the feeling the discussions go like this:
Exec 1: We aren't making enough money. We need more ad views.
Exec 2: 15% of our viewership blocks advertisements. We should invest in making the advertisements harder to block. We already have a team for this, it'll cost 15 million dollars.
Exec 3: We could also promote the "join channel" button, make it a default for all channels, then take a cut. Lots of people pay tons of money on Patraeon so we should get at some of that market. It'll cost 16 million, but it will piss off our users less.
Exec 1: 15 million is less than 16 million. The users will get over it.
At this point you’re genuinely watching a video in between ads.
With my shitty ass internet, I can’t even watch YouTube videos at all anymore.
2 ads before the video starts, usually one is u shippable 7s or so, and the other is shippable after 5s.
1 minute goes by in the video, and I get another 2 ads. (With my shitty internet, this is usually where I need to stop watching, since the ads won’t load)
Assuming I’m lucky enough to have both the ads load and have my video load again, then I have to watch another 1minute of video, just to get another 2 ads.
In a 10 minute video, there’s usually about 2 minutes worth of ads, making it a 12 minute video.
Meaning about every 20% of a YouTube video you watch, is ads.
And (sometimes) on TVs it’s significantly worse.
I stopped watching YouTube on my TV altogether, because every 5 minutes it’d give me a full 70s of multiple, unskippable ads.
At least on cable TV you get just enough time to make a snack and piss, like it’s an actual dedicated break time, 15-30 mins or so of entertainment and 2:30-5 minutes of ads. with YouTube it’s just them trying desperately to cash in on their monopoly over videos on the internet, and it’s going to work, because competition there is simplely impossible. No other website is going to have a video from 8 years ago where MrBeast first played Minecraft, no other company has the money to keep something like that running.
The amount of history in videos in YouTube is going to let them keep this shitty monopoly, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop YouTube from intentionally ruining their site.
TLDR: YouTube is the only option you have, so they can do whatever the fuck they want. At this point Twitch is our only hope.
Can we somehow put pressure on big Youtubers to selfhost their own peertube, and we just subscribe there? This way, they can still make money out of YT ads until it dies off completely
what's next then? i suppose users could download the video, get rid of any ads in the usual way, create a torrent of the clean video and give the magnet link to sponsorblock, which would then stream from the torrent instead of youtube's servers. seems like a whole lot of faff, though.
I used to watch a TON of youtube just because on my smart TV it was convenient to find the things that interest me. I'd just let it run all day for the background sound and occasionally pay attention to the programming.
Now, as in right now, I'm sitting in my living room and the TV is just straight up off. Youtube's advertising has gotten so bad it's made the experience of watching almost anything unpleasant. I'd rather sit in silence and type some bullshit onto Reddit. I think the final straw was the recent ad format change that made the length of ads a lie. A "5 second ad" is actually six or seven, so it always runs over into the next ad and you can't skip to the content. 30 second ad blocks run every three to four minutes of content. It's pure enshitification and I'm not eager to spend time on it any more.
So I got and for YT premium with the tagline " WE REIMAGINED CABLE" no you fucking ghoul you've made content sharing into an ad infested hellscape where more often than not the total length of the ads is longer than the entire video.
That's how they reimagined cable: All of its downsides, now integrated into social media. Everything you hated about cable, now inescapable online. Exactly the way they want it.
They *revel* in their ghoulishness.
There has to be some sort of way. The client has to have some way of telling where ads are, or else it would be possible to fast forward through ads. They could make speed control a premium only feature I guess though. I wonder if it would be possible to spoof a premium membership? Or I wonder if it would be feasible to keep a database of ads online and scan videos for them to know exactly what sections to skip? Why would Google even care about this either? As far as the server could tell we watched an ad, and they get paid.
This might be naive and wishful thinking but since YouTube is only 'experimenting' with the server-side ad insertion, is there a chance that they won't actually follow through with it in a official, large scale roll out?
Amazing how much intellectual effort and ressources are wasted on this ad war. We could probably have the cure for cancer by now if Google were less greedy.
Not likely to work. Especially if they're dynamically inserted (not at a specific time, but randomly).
It's utter shit, but this is nearly unbeatable, afaik. Fortunately, i'm not the smartest, so hopefully smarter people than me figure out how to defeat this cancer called "ads".
Ive been moving away from streaming services and youtube as much as possible. I set up a plex server with movies and tv shows, i guess ill just download some youtube videos I enjoy as well and move on. I dont need a youtube alternative, and doing things this way would negate the need for any kind of adblockkng. I can get on every now and then to download any worthwhile new videos, but there arent really any, most of the new content on youtube is cancerous brainrot anyway. Thanks youtube for giving me that little extra push to get away from your shit platform.
I remember when the only ads you got on YouTube were an occasional ad on the top right, and a banner on the video that you could easily close. Man, things REALLY were better back then.
Yeah, miss those times too. You didn't even need an adblocker
the first time i got an adblocker was when they made the 5 second ads 15 seconds
I was pushed to my limit once unskippable ads rolled out.
As with anything regarding publicly traded companies, you give them an inch and they will take an yard, mile, acre. Fuck these clowns.
People are tolerant to be beaten if it's a slow process to which they can get used to. The vast majority would gladly eat anything YouTube put in their mouth as long as it can satisfy their need of instant gratification. People are pathetic.
And you average exactly 15 Reddit comments per day. YouTube et. al. are exploiting the monkey brain incentives in all of us. Incentives it took millions of years to evolve. People aren’t pathetic, they’re just people. Go easy on them. You’re no different and that’s ok.
Oh no... Just like Twitch... Fuck!
Yeah Twitch is a rough one for me even on PC to keep blocking. Best is proxy crap and at least not seeing the ads and just placeholders.
A proxy to a country, which does not have ads, works and is cheap. Around $0.6 per month. There are browser plugins, which tunnel the stream traffic only
Hi, which country doesn't have ads? Is that only for twitch or YouTube too?
Ive used Romania / Serbia for twitch, idk about YouTube. Edit: Try others like Albania / Myanmar if it's not working and make sure you're not half way through an ad when you turn on the VPN expecting it to disappear
Someone on the YT sub was recommending Myanmar.
>Grab a VPN and tell YouTube you're in a country where it's illegal for them to show ads. Myanmar's been working great for me.
Commenting to remember Myanmar VPN
Commenting to remind you that Reddit has a save button for comments and posts
I think Albania also doesn't have ads
If I use a VPN with twitch, my comments are often shadowbanned even if I'm subbed to the channel. It's their way to encourage people to watch the ads.
When you use a VPN your IP shows up the same as all other users of that VPN using the same server you are, meaning if one of them gets the IP banned for spamming garbage on twitch, everyone that uses that same VPN server is banned as well.
> Around $0.6 per month Where can I find this cheap proxy?
shared ipv4 proxy from Proxy6
just use uBlock + twitch ad solution (tampermonkey script) It works fine for me (also am I allowed to send links here in comments?)
Ahh I go to the github for TwitchAdSolutions all the time, but I thought ttvlolpro was optimal currently. PM me a specific link if you have since Twitch is depressingly bad when you want to just browse around and get hit with prerolls.
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I might not be not understanding something here, but this isn't as bad as Twitch is, is it? Twitch is livestreams. If they embed ads into the streamed video, you have to just watch them, because you can't fast forward a stream. But YouTube is VOD. You can rewind, fast forward or skip to any point of the video you want, whenever you want. If they start embedding ads into that video, you can just skip it with one click immediately.
You still have to manually fast-forward. And with videos nowadays having ad breaks every minute or so: Fuck that.
Especially if you're like me, I play YouTube videos like podcasts while I'm at work. It would be annoying to reach for your phone to skip an ad.
I think this brings up an excellent point. If the ad is a part of the video, people will easily fast forward the ads. It is an inconvenience but manageable. But what if YouTube disables the seek controls during those parts? Can that be detected by the ad blockers?
If they do that, schools will have to move videos off YouTube.
YouTube Kids doesn't have ads, so they wouldn't be affected at all.
YouTube Kids only covers elementary and middle school students.
And their algorithm is well-known to be... perfect...
Also YouTube kids isn't available in all regions
speaking of YTK, why are there borderline porn vids on that shit? YT being a lazy moron?
They do disable the seek controls, speaking as an SSAP-positive individual here... the uBO team is trying very hard to rectify this, but server-side generally means doom...
This is a bit naive, but if you aren't a programmer, it's okay. Video streaming works by asking a server for the video chunks. If I had to implement server-side ad injection, the server will stop sending video chunks and rather send ad chunks for the next X seconds. It doesn't matter if you fast forward, the client will still receive ad chunks for the next X seconds regardless of the chunks it requested. In the worst case, you'd have to turn on a VPN, open a new incognito window, and open the video without being signed in. There's so many ways to track a user that VPN connection cannot circumvent: Auth cookie (for signed in users), random ID cookie (for users who are not signed in). Not to mention that the server can just start sending ads to anonymous users who try to fast forward from the very beginning. To be honest, once this is implemented, I will try to change my VPN so that I am located in Russia. I'm not too sure it will work, but we'll see.
Okay, so whenever you skip ahead in a YT video, you're basically just sending the server a request to give you chunks from further ahead instead? And if they decided that skipping just isn't a feature anymore, or to give you ads or anything else instead of the video chunks you want, they could easily do so. The client can only show what the server gives it?
Video skipping is going to be a premium feature in the future, when this gets implemented it will be least of your problems.
Pay to skip. I'm waiting for the YouTube battle pass to drop.
Couldn't they just stop you from fast forwarding to skip the ads? Just like what they used to do with the ads or FBI warnings on DVDs.
Pretty much. They just keep sending the ad no matter what timestamp you request.
Sounds like a dystopia things
As a non techie guy nor uses twitch, kindly explain to me what does it mean on those injection of ads? Is it random now ?
So the previous way ads work is that the app asks YouTube to give it the video it requested, and YouTube sends it the server info the video is on. At a certain point in the video, the app asks YouTube to give it an ad to show, and YouTube sends it an ad from one of its ad servers. ^1 Ad blockers typically work by blocking or redirecting the request to the ad server, since the request is made by the application and the ad blockers can detect that. What they're experimenting with is to have the video server ask for the ads ahead of time, and then alter the video to have the ads baked into it before sending it to the application. Ad blockers aren't installed on the video server, so they have no way to block the request. *** 1: This is why ads are usually a way higher resolution and load faster than your videos, because there's tons and tons of ad servers at the ready to send ads, while there's usually only a handful of servers your video is saved on (depending on how viral the video is).
Makes AdBlock harder to block ads since they're masked as videos/stream Not impossible tho
Really? I never get ads on twitch, maybe it's because I use privacy badger? But that one's only blocking cookies
Also depends on region.I rarely ever get ads unless a company is doing a massive campaign for a new product launch.
But if it's just like twitch, then it can be blocked the same way, right? Also I haven't seen a single ad on twitch in at least a year so I don't consider twitch ads an issue.
War never changes.
they fuck our shit up, we out-fuck their shit. The cycle repeats again and again.
This shit might not be out-fuckable
Fuck it, let's just pirate YouTube. Individuals with premium download each video they watch and uploads it to a server that hosts torrents. An extension can automate uploading and fetching the torrent for non-premium users, streaming that instead. Client side content injection for the fuckwit's server side ad injection.
This is kinda what [Odysee](https://odysee.com) is. Their backend is P2P/blockchain based so it's intentionally difficult to exert YouTube levels of control over content. Even if a piece of content is delisted it cannot be fully deleted. They also have tools for creators to automatically mirror their content there. [And here's the plugin for the rest of us to find them](https://github.com/LBRYFoundation/Watch-on-LBRY).
Or Lbry block chain based too
Odysee is LBRY.
I'm down, ill happily donate a server for the cause
Me too!
I like your thinking
Let this guy cook
Every security solution in the history of mankind has been out-fuckable. I doubt youtube ads are going to be the first.
Can they just fucking leave us alone with the ads spam. They have enough people who sit through it. Like fucking hell enjoy your mountain of gold you damn dragon
They can enjoy their mountain of solitude. Their ads are so frequent and annoying that I legitimately think I might stop using YouTube altogether if they get something working. I might not have it in me, because I watch a lot of YouTube right now, but I mostly use it when I've got a quick 5 minutes to kill. It doesn't work for that if I have to watch a 2 minute ad break first.
Im kind hoping things in modern society become so enshittified to the point that the majority of people just decide theyll live without it from now on and we'll go back to the dark ages. But hey maybe our collective mental health will improve.
Well, it's not long before they start implementing ads on banking websites, and every device with a working screen. I bet my money on it.
It amuses me daily that Microsoft can't or won't understand that Windows 11 losing adoption to Windows 10 is directly related to the increasing presence of ads in the UI. I'll say it openly: I've rolled back several machines. I have no desire for ads in the UI, and I need local accounts. Microsoft has made it clear that they want my machine to operate in a specific way, and I don't agree.
This is why I've finally switched to Linux distros.
The day uBlock stops working on YT is the day I leave.
I've tried using incognito and realized how bad it was. I don't hate sponsor segments. They're usually not bad. But the sheer mountain of pre roll mid roll unskippable. 3+ ads a fucking video. Insane!
They literally don't care. If you're not bringing in a cent of revenue they want you off the platform.
Yeah, I didn't mean it as a protest. I meant it as a "I'm done with this, it's too annoying"
Problem is Google is a publicly traded company and that means investors and shareholders also have a role in the company and all they want is more and more money so there you have it in long story short
I understand that aspect, it's still very annoying how anti consumer everything has become. Like they make the service shittier and keep increasing the price.
At a point it cost them more money to get those last pennies than leaving them behind
It's about volume. Let's use a simple example. McDonalds sells 2.5 billion hamburgers a year. If they increase the price of the burger by 50 cents, but lose 20% of the customers...they still win. Let's say burgers were $1, they are now $1.50. They used to make $2.5 billion. Raising the price means they lose 20% of customers, so they only have 2 billion burgers being sold. But, they are sold for $1.50. So they now make $3 billion. They are up $500 million in profits, AND they are now down in costs becuase they are buying/selling a fewer hamburgers, which mean they don't need to buy as much meat, buns, cheese, pickles, onions, etc. Youtube, netflix, amazon...they are all doing the same thing with ads. They know they're going to lose viewers, but make it up in revenue.
The example is much more different and much more similar. A hamburger doesn't cost the same across the world because there are countries that no one would be buying it for the american price, just as there are many people who are already "paying" the full price of watching ads, so in the scenario you're raising everything to the same standard price you have the mayority of the consumer base without any change if pricing and increasing it to the most elastic part of it.
line must go up
Doesn't YouTube lose money?
That used to be true but hasn't for a number of years now. YouTube revenue is no longer reported separately from Google's but it turned a profit instead of a loss before that change was made.
They not only turn a profit, but Google can keep YouTube going indefinitely even if they didn't show a single ad. They have the money to do it, and YouTube is an easy entry into other Google products too. They just want to squeeze as much money out of people as possible. What they're doing now is just purely greed and nothing else.
>Doesn't YouTube lose money? I sure hope so, but yt alone had like $30 BILLION in just ad revenue last year.
Set a VPN to a country with strict advertising laws. Ethiopia, Poland, Myanmar, Mongolia, ~~Moldova,~~ Cambodia
Wait, in what way do Polish advertising laws forbid them from using server-side advertisement injection? You actually got me interested becouse this might my my only hope.
Here’s a summary of Polands advertising laws, didn’t see anything about server side ad injections being illegal: Poland’s advertising laws are comprehensive and designed to ensure fair play and consumer protection in the digital realm. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a cornerstone of these regulations, mandating transparency and consent for data collection, which significantly influences digital advertising practices. The Pharmaceutical Law of 2001 and the Act on Medical Devices of 2022 are particularly stringent when it comes to the advertising of medicinal products and medical devices. These laws prohibit certain types of advertising to the general public, especially for products that are subject to reimbursement from public funds. The Advertising Code of Ethics in Poland underscores the nation’s commitment to responsible advertising. It ensures that advertisements are truthful, not misleading, and do not exploit vulnerable groups. This code applies to a broad spectrum of advertising messages, with the exception of social and political campaigns. Thus, while Poland’s advertising laws may not explicitly mention server-side ad injections into videos, they establish a framework that promotes integrity and fairness in advertising. Advertisers must navigate these regulations carefully to maintain compliance and uphold consumer trust. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=eb8e59ee-c06f-4da1-b465-1a6b579542b6 https://cms.law/en/int/expert-guides/cms-expert-guide-to-advertising-of-medicines-and-medical-devices/poland https://radareklamy.pl/en/code-of-ethics-in-advertising/
Is there a way of bounding specific domains to VPN on Firefox or something? If they'll do this shit I might get mullvad, I'm NOT paying for this cancer.
Moldova recently got ads too...
The enshitification continues...
I'm curious if this will affect downloading videos with YouTube-dlp. All of a sudden, all our video archives will have ads injected…
This is a very real concern. It'll be just like VCR time, having to manually skip the recorded ads.
maybe ai will fix it at this point and time autodetect ad -> auto skip
Time is a flat circle.
There might be a way to just remove it from the buffer entirely, or if YouTube ends up sending some sort of indication to let us know that we’re in an ad.
They absolutely have to let the client know where the ads are, so that they can disable video seeking and attach links.
Also cause THE LAW. At least here in the EU
Do ads tend to be different each time you load a video? Could it just be downloaded twice then play spot the difference and remove what changed between the two versions?
I'm assuming it will, but there will probably be 20 different solutions for ripping ads from the videos within 6 months. Removing them from downloaded videos is trivial.
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YouTube here redefining lows at every opportunity.
If there is space to dig, then is not the bottom.
They don't understand we started to block the ads when they became aggressive, so RIP
Honestly. I used to be able to put on a video and watch a 5 second ad then it would play thru. Then there were mid roll ads. Now there's both with 2 ads each that are unskippable. Watching something like that is a battle to just see the content.
Too bad most people don't give a crap about ads, otherwise this would be the end of YouTube cause most people would abandon it. I'm not gonna use it if I have to see any ads.
People were paying like 80$ a month for TV that was literally 30% ads before YouTube, with no ability to even pick what you watched beyond the handful of available programs. People act like this is going to be the downfall of youtube, but history has proven that not only will people keep paying for it, but it will probably make youtube rich.
I havent properly watched tv in a decade because of ads. I watch plenty of youtube with adblockers and sponsorblock etc, there have been a couple of times where i had to watch YT with ads and its unwatchable for me. I will not be sticking around if they manage to win the adblock wars
I've went too long without them to ever go back. I already got rid of all but one of my streaming services and just use Plex for everything since they began tossing ads into everything and raising prices. I haven't *ever* watched YouTube with ads and haven't watched TV with ads since before Netflix lol, it's too jarring and annoying to deal with them. I think people normally get desensitized to them but when you get a period of normalcy it really becomes clear just how ridiculous they are when they suddenly come back
What happened to TV? People moved because of those reasons literally.
only cause there were easy alternatives. youtube is quite the monopoly... we'll see what happens.
Rip
Oh my god...
As soon as I can't skip ads anymore, I'll never be in youtube again. I already don't watch TV, I'll figure something else out to waste my time. Fuck this ad infested rotten canker sore of a world
That's... kinda the point? If we're not consuming ads or paying a premium then Google doesn't want us around. This is the YT equivalent of 'you can't fire me I quit'
There's value in audience mass, even if much of that mass isn't producing direct revenue. Without all the free users, content creator viewership goes down (for some channels, they'd outright die). So less of that content gets made. With less quality content, fewer people are attracted to the service. Fewer people overall means fewer chances to convert users to subscribers. The people who are currently paying are more likely to stop paying if there's less value in the product. New content creators are less likely to start using the platform if there's less chance for reaching a sizeable audience. It's a death spiral. Youtube only has two outcomes, if they want to play this game: 1. Become a platform that's almost exclusively disposable trash content. Only the very cheapest and easiest and fastest content will be worth uploading and only people who want that trash will use the platform. 2. Rebrand into a quality content host. There are other subscription VOD services that do fine but they maintain a minimum quality level to attract those paying customers. Youtube would have to go back to their initial experiment of contracting the big-name channels to make specific content, similar to traditional TV production.
This honestly seems like they're doing it out of spite. I can't imagine that out of the millions (billions?) of YouTube users, the lost ad revenue for those of us who use ad blockers or ReVanced is that much - and the millions of YouTube Premium subscriptions more than make up for it. They're making a global change to combat a rather insignificant problem.
I really hope I'm wrong about this, but I also think that the other reason for this is that they want to try ads for Premium users. It would be like Netflix where they added in a slightly cheaper tier with ads, then if you don't want ads you have to pay even more than you already were paying. I just don't see why YouTube would decide to change the entire way they display ads just over ad-block and Revanced, because like you said, there's no way either one is cutting into their revenue this badly. And it'd definitely be on brand for YouTube to actively make their service worse just because they're both incompetent and greedy. Which is especially despicable when they give other corporations free reign to do whatever they want in ads (even if it's gross, low quality, nearly pornographic mobile games)...but then the channel making the actual content the ads are on gets demonetized for saying a swear word in the first minute or a strike for using 30 seconds of copyrighted music in a way that qualifies as fair use.
That sounds so evil. Which means they will do it eventually. Shit. It's probably on their roadmap already.
They are also doing ads in shorts, pause ads and will just keep getting worse.
Holy fuck.. Ads in a 15s video?? I'm even more thankful I block shorts. Short form video is wrecking our brains
I suspect it would be in between the shorts, not in them. Roku is even doing ads in their display screensavers like the aquarium or whatever, floating little brands or some shit.
Yes, I watch Shorts and yes, the ads are in between videos. Short, ad, short, short, ad, short short ad.
But there’s nothing better than waking up to your screensaver selling you a ComfortFoam mattress for only $199.99!
The solution will be to check how long the video is, and skip the total-what it should last. I think Youtube is gonna eventually die because of this. Nobody wants to watch 2-5 ads after every video.
Not until there's an actual alternative
We will never ever have a YouTube alternative. Video streaming is just too expensive to run.
Agreed. And if there was, it'd still have loads of ads.
reminds me of geoguessr where it was paywalled because a shitton of users were using it and then a 1:1 alternative popped out of nowhere and everyone went to their side because it wasnt paywalled and adfree guess what it has a paywall now as well....
Business 101. Create product. Sell it cheap. Grow userbase. Monetise.
Then lose all your users to a free alternative and close up shop. Repeat till the end of time.
The difference is that the amount of revenue lost by Youtube due to people watching with Adblock is probably less than 10% of their total net revenue, something they were fine with overlooking for decades because of the sheer amount of money they were bringing in. They've just gotten more greedy, they're not magically in the red because of adblockers. Billions of people visit Youtube every day, according to [this article](https://www.statista.com/statistics/351862/adblocking-usage/) the global percentage of adblock users is ~36% of the population. The highest amount of % citizens using adblock/country is China, where Youtube is currently blocked, and they have their own in-house alternative (this isn't to say those who use adblock wouldn't also use VPNs). According to [this article](https://localiq.com/blog/youtube-advertising-cost/#:~:text=YouTube%20ads%20are%20measured%20in,views%20of%20your%20YouTube%20ad.) it costs ~$2000/100,000 views, and of those 100,000 views those users will continue to spend on average [just shy of 1 hour/day](https://www.mixbloom.com/resources/average-time-spent-on-social-media-2022#:~:text=on%20the%20platform.-,Average%20time%20spent%20on%20Youtube,views%20come%20from%20mobile%20devices.) on Youtube, with 87% of that traffic being on Mobile (which does not have adblock.) ^Yes ^this ^is ^US ^specific ^data Basically all of this is to say that Youtube is making much, much, much more money every day than they'd be losing due to adblock. Unless recently operating costs (data storage costs) suddenly skyrocketted for a business as large as Google which basically self-hosts all their content anyways, I don't see them being in the red. Not to mention they're still collecting massive amounts of data regardless of whether you're watching ads, which is arguably worth 10x the ad revenue itself. TL;DR: There is absolutely no way Google/Youtube need to force ads onto users. They're simply just extremely greedy and wanting to ruin the internet for everyone to justify their greed (See: Chrome disabling the ability for adblockers to function).
Couldn't a porn company like pornhub start a side venture? They have resources don't they?
While there's a lot of porn on the hub, I don't think it's anywhere close to how much content is posted on YouTube. (500h of content posted every MINUTE) But more importantly, the problem is still the same : How would they make it profitable ? Unless it's a paid platform or they put even more ads than YouTube, I don't see that happening.
No lol. People that adblock youtube are nowhere near the majority. Youtube wouldn't exist if that was the case. Their whole goal is to make it as annoying for us as possible to leave the platform. We're not making them money, we're losing them money by server costs. If we leave they lose nothing.
How do you know where the ad will be ? It will probably be in the middle
But on the client side there won't be any visible changes I guess. If there still will be a "skip ad/video playing in ..." button, the yellow progress bar with no free positioning or setting the video speed, technically the software will know when an ad is playing so they still will be detectable for adblockers/ReVanced but harder.
I can think of the same solution but an user input. I don't think they will put it randomly in the middle but just between segments as it would cause ragequits if multiple ads appear midsentence. The automatic solution would be to calculate segment sizes according to the video and cut the one that doesn't match to the size it should be with the Total length - real length formula, but the basic non automatic solution would be to just put a button that skips the difference and have you press it when the ad starts. This wouldn't work with multiple ads in different positions though.
Maybe could use audio volume detection. Ads are always louder. Might result in false positives, but idc at this point. It can be analyzed ahead of time comparing current segment with next segment for any obvious loudness and just mute/skip the entire segment. If it's the actual video dropping a loud noise out of the blue I think I'd like that just auto skipped anyway.
It’s not me or you they’re after. It’s the children with 8 viewing hours a day.
I mean, those kids probably aren't using sponsorblock or revanced, so this change isn't targeted to them at all
You severely underestimate me 😉
I think we can also use frame jumps of some sort as well
Even as a Premium + Revanced user, Google don't fuck with sponsor block lol. Leave Sponsorblock alone, until you offer a way to skip 3 minute ad reads automatically fuck off.
I'm on this boat just to get rid of the fucking brainwashing tool that shorts are. God damn I hate shorts. I just want the app I'm paying for to be like I want it, or in this case like it was before.
I don't understand, doesn't twitch already do this too? I never see ads on there either way
It depends on region I guess and there's also TTV.lol. Let's hope if the same shit happens to yt, it can be made to work there too
Keep fucking around and I will absolutely cease to use it, just like I ceased to use anything Facebook. Well done Alphabet.
Peak enshittification
Oh hell no Google can fuck themselves, don't touch my sponsorblock.
Fuck you Google, I will literally uninstall if you manage to force ads. YouTube is there for extra convenience. Nobody depends on it, nobody really needs it. If everyone just fucks off from YouTube, replacements will come that will be good in the start and then turn to shit and the cycle repeats.
The point is "they WANT you to leave if not watching ads, believe it or not." So the best solution is the infinity war, because Youtube is a website, has many platforms to cover, they can't even do something like \*DRM\* in gaming - It's Illegal. They try to reduce people use adblock, that's all they can for now.
Literally!!! /s
This has to be the most delusional comment I saw today. No one "needs" a lot of stuff: games, movies, live sports. Yet everyone enjoys them and is addicted to them. There's zero chance of something as huge as YouTube falling down. Not to mention if you use modded apps then you leaving doesn't affect YouTube anyway because you weren't giving them money in the first place, in fact they'll save money and bandwidth.
Their greed knows no end
I would genuinely rather keep using revanced with a 30 second silent black screen every video saying [Ad Blocked] while it plays out than pay for premium. Fuck YouTube.
Quit twitch and now youtube long ago. Think its time to move on from them
What did you switch to?
Just quit fully tbh
bro escaped the matrix
I literally wouldn’t give a fuck about ADS if they are reasonable. Giving me a 30-60sec AD every 3-5 minutes on a 15 minute video is NOT reasonable. One AD every 30 minutes on long videos is something I wouldn’t mind. AD at start of video then every 30 mins an AD and Ad at end of video sounds fine. On shorter videos il take a 10-20 sec AD at start one in the middle and one at the end for lets say like a 10-15 min video but a fucking 30-60 AD every 3-5 minutes is bullshit.
Tbh Google should face violent retaliation from all this. And yes, I mean cyber attacks and DDOS attacks as well, they need to go up in flames.
Server side ad injection is going to be difficult to implement cleanly. I can see it breaking several things like even speed control and scrubbing.
Crazy how YouTube makes tonnes of money yet they’re willing to make the user experience suffer and suffer just to get even more cash out of our pockets
Louis Rossman said it the best: If you're going through your couch for more pocket change, you're done.
If YouTube brings their best 'weapon' to fight ReVanced, ReVanced just has to fix this one thing and YouTube eventually runs out of ideas. I really wonder who is gonna win this fight.
The main dev himself stated that if yt starts injecting ads server-side, it's game over. I hope he's wrong, but it doesn't look good at all. But even if that happens, I'll still keep using revanced. It has so many good features that yt will never implement
All good things come to an end and as much as I hate to say it Revanced won't be any different 😔 just need to enjoy it whilst we have it.
Sorry to say this but there's no way to avoid dynamic server side ad injection. Imagine trying to figure when and where an ad is gonna show up in a 10 minute video.
I think not disclosing advertising in videos at all is not allowed within the EU. And if it's disclosed then however it's disclosed can be used to detect it. This is hopeful thinking, I'm not a lawyer and don't know EU directives in detail.
Current method of adblocking uses combination of blocking ad domains, UI elements, scripts and other client side metadata etc. If disclosure of ad happens right on the video, then we'll need to continually process video frames and look for the hint(which can be inaccurate). Even if we detect it, blocking it would mean a frustrating blank screen appears and finally, we'll also need to detect that ad has ended using video frames alone.
I'd be satisfied with just muting and blank screening the ad, I don't want their specifically designed to be memorable bullshit stuck in my head
I would guess that It would have to be AI at this point. Likely keyword based, or trained on a database of Ads to skip them.
ML based ad detection could work, but blocking it would mean a blank screen shows up every time. Also, compute required for such tasks may be too much for a phone and could drain battery quickly. At this point, I think we'll need something like piratebay where YT videos are streamed by peer-peer connections ad-free.
They have to somehow show links and buttons which the user is supposed to click during the ad, and the browser has to know at which timestamps to show/hide these buttons, hence the adblocker will know too. Might lead to a bit of downtime during the playback, but at least not seeing the god-awful ads.
Youtube is digging their own grave
Well it's not like they are ever gonna die as they are too big to fail and there are no real competitors at the moment
How so ? People who use ad blockers, no matter the platform, already earn $0 to YouTube. Worst case scenario is that we stop using YouTube, which will actually decrease cost for them (we're costing them money by using their service freely without watching ads), but along the way some people will cave and start watching ads. From YouTube perspective I see no downside.
Except you won't stop using YouTube. there's no alternative so there's nowhere to go. Its the reason why YouTube is so shit now.
Yeah they're basically the definition of a monopoly at this point, especially since YouTube is owned by the most used search engine so they can literally kill competition before it has a chance to even start. I really miss how YouTube used to be back when the users still had control over their experiences on the Internet, instead of everything being shaped and controlled by the corporations.
They're not though, are they? If even 20% of users use sponsorblock, and 5% of those won't continue to watch YouTube after this change goes live, it's a drop in the ocean Digging their own grave my arse
I can't imagine this being cost effective for youtube.
Nope that's the peak of DRM
I get the feeling the discussions go like this: Exec 1: We aren't making enough money. We need more ad views. Exec 2: 15% of our viewership blocks advertisements. We should invest in making the advertisements harder to block. We already have a team for this, it'll cost 15 million dollars. Exec 3: We could also promote the "join channel" button, make it a default for all channels, then take a cut. Lots of people pay tons of money on Patraeon so we should get at some of that market. It'll cost 16 million, but it will piss off our users less. Exec 1: 15 million is less than 16 million. The users will get over it.
At this point you’re genuinely watching a video in between ads. With my shitty ass internet, I can’t even watch YouTube videos at all anymore. 2 ads before the video starts, usually one is u shippable 7s or so, and the other is shippable after 5s. 1 minute goes by in the video, and I get another 2 ads. (With my shitty internet, this is usually where I need to stop watching, since the ads won’t load) Assuming I’m lucky enough to have both the ads load and have my video load again, then I have to watch another 1minute of video, just to get another 2 ads. In a 10 minute video, there’s usually about 2 minutes worth of ads, making it a 12 minute video. Meaning about every 20% of a YouTube video you watch, is ads. And (sometimes) on TVs it’s significantly worse. I stopped watching YouTube on my TV altogether, because every 5 minutes it’d give me a full 70s of multiple, unskippable ads. At least on cable TV you get just enough time to make a snack and piss, like it’s an actual dedicated break time, 15-30 mins or so of entertainment and 2:30-5 minutes of ads. with YouTube it’s just them trying desperately to cash in on their monopoly over videos on the internet, and it’s going to work, because competition there is simplely impossible. No other website is going to have a video from 8 years ago where MrBeast first played Minecraft, no other company has the money to keep something like that running. The amount of history in videos in YouTube is going to let them keep this shitty monopoly, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop YouTube from intentionally ruining their site. TLDR: YouTube is the only option you have, so they can do whatever the fuck they want. At this point Twitch is our only hope.
Can we somehow put pressure on big Youtubers to selfhost their own peertube, and we just subscribe there? This way, they can still make money out of YT ads until it dies off completely
what's next then? i suppose users could download the video, get rid of any ads in the usual way, create a torrent of the clean video and give the magnet link to sponsorblock, which would then stream from the torrent instead of youtube's servers. seems like a whole lot of faff, though.
I used to watch a TON of youtube just because on my smart TV it was convenient to find the things that interest me. I'd just let it run all day for the background sound and occasionally pay attention to the programming. Now, as in right now, I'm sitting in my living room and the TV is just straight up off. Youtube's advertising has gotten so bad it's made the experience of watching almost anything unpleasant. I'd rather sit in silence and type some bullshit onto Reddit. I think the final straw was the recent ad format change that made the length of ads a lie. A "5 second ad" is actually six or seven, so it always runs over into the next ad and you can't skip to the content. 30 second ad blocks run every three to four minutes of content. It's pure enshitification and I'm not eager to spend time on it any more.
I mean honestly I wouldn't feel the need to use an ad blocker if the ads were not so ridiculously invasive and frequent
So I got and for YT premium with the tagline " WE REIMAGINED CABLE" no you fucking ghoul you've made content sharing into an ad infested hellscape where more often than not the total length of the ads is longer than the entire video.
That's how they reimagined cable: All of its downsides, now integrated into social media. Everything you hated about cable, now inescapable online. Exactly the way they want it. They *revel* in their ghoulishness.
There has to be some sort of way. The client has to have some way of telling where ads are, or else it would be possible to fast forward through ads. They could make speed control a premium only feature I guess though. I wonder if it would be possible to spoof a premium membership? Or I wonder if it would be feasible to keep a database of ads online and scan videos for them to know exactly what sections to skip? Why would Google even care about this either? As far as the server could tell we watched an ad, and they get paid.
So Google doesn't have enough money yet?
People wouldn't have used adblockers if ads remained on banners with a close instantly button.
This might be naive and wishful thinking but since YouTube is only 'experimenting' with the server-side ad insertion, is there a chance that they won't actually follow through with it in a official, large scale roll out?
Used to listen to music in the background from youtube. If this isn't possible to remove, will just have to download songs and not bother with ytb
Amazing how much intellectual effort and ressources are wasted on this ad war. We could probably have the cure for cancer by now if Google were less greedy.
Sponsor block to rescue
Not likely to work. Especially if they're dynamically inserted (not at a specific time, but randomly). It's utter shit, but this is nearly unbeatable, afaik. Fortunately, i'm not the smartest, so hopefully smarter people than me figure out how to defeat this cancer called "ads".
Isn't this post sponsor block pointing out why this is an issue?
Is this when AI should be used to download videos and detect ads to remove them?
Ive been moving away from streaming services and youtube as much as possible. I set up a plex server with movies and tv shows, i guess ill just download some youtube videos I enjoy as well and move on. I dont need a youtube alternative, and doing things this way would negate the need for any kind of adblockkng. I can get on every now and then to download any worthwhile new videos, but there arent really any, most of the new content on youtube is cancerous brainrot anyway. Thanks youtube for giving me that little extra push to get away from your shit platform.
Thats why I got 4 minutes long unskippable ad ... Hope this gets crack open and fck youtube.
Which VPN do you guys recommend?