Google uses tax avoidance schemes and I use ad avoidance schemes.
you’re actually helping by lowering the amount of revenue they have to shuffle offshore and hide from the feds.
My gut reaction is that this won’t work long-term. Users on youtube often point to specific timestamps in a video in comments or link to specific timestamps when sharing videos, meaning there needs to be some way to identify the timestamp excluding ads. And if there’s a way to do that there’s a way to detect ads.
Of course, there’s always the chance they just scrap these features despite how useful they are and how commonly they’re used; they’ve done similar before.
I’m prette sure they have to send the metadata to the client where an ad starts and ends. Just to make the ad clickable.
Timestamps can be calculated on the server, but maybe there will be an api endpoint that can be abused to search for the ads.
Feedback across the Firefox and YouTube subreddits highlighted that it could break timestamped video links and chapter markers. However, YouTube knows the length of the ads it would inject, and can offset subsequent timestamps suitably.
The move also adds a layer of unnecessary complexity in saving Premium viewers from these ads. If they are added server-side, the YouTube client would have to auto-skip them for Premium members, but that also means ad segment info will be relayed to the client, opening up a window of opportunity for ad blockers to use the same information meant for Premium subscribers and skip injected ads automatically.
It sounds like there’s a silver lining after all.
The ads won’t be baked in beforehand, they’ll be injected into the stream in real time. Videos are broken into chunks and sent over HTTP, they’ll just put ad chunks in during playback. There is no need to re-encode anything. If you deep link to a timestamp, the video just starts from that timestamp as normal. If you are a Premium user, the server just never injects the ads.
But you are correct that the client needs to be aware that ads are happening, so they can be indicated on screen, and so click-throughs are activated.
This is why Chrome went to Manifest v3 - so you can’t have any code looking for ad signals running on the page to try to counter it.
But you are correct
That’s what the article says, not me! lol
Surely at the server side it knows the premium status or the user it is supplying the video to, so just wouldn’t insert the ads? I don’t see why that would need to be client side.
YT already scrapped (or broke) setting the start/end timestamps for embedded videos. That hasn’t worked for at least the last few weeks. Embed videos now always start at 0
I embedded a video yesterday with a start timestamp and it worked
Did they change the params or something?
I have YT embed support in Tesseract, and videos with timestamps broke a few weeks ago (they all start at 0 now). I’ve tried both
t=andstart=formats: neither worked.You can still link to the YT video directly with those, though, but I’ve been unable to get embeds to honor them.
‘t=’ works for me, but I’m just right clicking and getting it manually to put in docs.
Hmm. Like a Word doc? Maybe it’s just embeds (with timestamps) on other websites that are broken?
I tried using the embed URLs directly in a browser tab, and those refuse to play at all (they still work embedded, though).
Definitely something that changed in the last few weeks. The test posts I had are from months ago and worked then.
Ya on second thought, I don’t think I’m using embedding in the best way and what I’m saying isn’t really related to that. I’m not actually embedding anything.
there is a plugin I bought, it’s community driven where you can tag sections of the video as ad, sponsored, etc, and auto skip it. it’s really nice, was like $5. will post when I find the link, but even if ads are server side, this plugin will skip. someone has to bite the bullet though and tag time stamps unfortunately.
found it, called dearrow, also changed clikcbait thumbnails and titles are editable by community.
Doubt. Never underestimate the hate and motivation against ads.
Youtube is aware that serving ads to people who hate them is going to reduce brand value, right? I thought that was the reason they were ok with adblockers before…
If the amount of people that just put up with ads currently instead of switching to Firefox is anything to go by, I think the number of people who truly care is less that you might think. Especially when YouTube is such a monopoly.
They have decided that the damage is worth less than the cost of serving videos to users with add blocks. Only time will tell if they are right.
The people that hate YT ads hate Google already anyways.
I already barely watch YouTube. It’s mostly for music videos. Google can fuck itself to death.
I sort of spent a decade uploading and streaming to it, started before it was even bought by Google, so I’ve really dug myself a pit at this point.
What do you propose Google do instead? Run YouTube at a loss?
Yes. Google bought YouTube. Alphabet is worth $2 trillion. The social control and data mining is value to Google enough.
Youtube doesn’t pay attention to what ads get approved, or where they get served. Ive heard stories of people getting served two hours full amateur movies as ads, Ive heard of people getting soft core porn served as an ad, to actual scams and crypto pitches. It’s like Facebooks new AI enabled algorithm. There is actual danger, considering children and the elderly get sucked in to youtubes black hole?
I watched a couple videos on the Diddy case, and a couple days later my whole feed was filled with the worst conspiracy theories and Christian preachers.
I watch one Youtuber talking about pyramids, YouTube fills my whole suggestions with ancient alien conspiracies.
I watched one cover of a song, I get recommended the same song for weeks.
I watch one reaction video, the whole feed turns into reaction videos within minutes.
It’s a fight against the algorhytm and it isn’t fun. It’s incredible how dumb it is after all these years, and those algprhythms are partly to blame that everyone feels more miserable than they are.
I just turn off recommendations (disable watch history) and use a third party app where I can disable recommendations (Grayjay and NewPipe). I just want my subscriptions and search, that’s all.
Why Download a 3rd party app if the mobile browser works the same?
But it doesn’t… Here are some features I like about Grayjay/NewPipe:
- adjust volume/brightness by sliding finger on screen
- download videos to watch offline
- watch videos from other sources (less of an issue in a browser)
- picture in picture
So, what’s the difference to Firefox with some add ons then?
That someone else gets my login data and view data to sell?
Also let’s you block certain elements
I mean, yeah. It did so for years.
Yes right. But what does the investor environment look like today? Profit, not users, is what everyone is counting. If Google says “we’re burning cash in all businesses but search, but hey we’re nice”, investors will take their investments to more profitable businesses.
They actually have a pretty huge net profit margin and what basically amounts to a monopoly on advertisement, so even if their ads reached less intended targets it wouldn’t hurt their bottom line much.
Didn’t you know? It’s doesn’t matter that they’re still making billions more than they ever made, numbers have to go higher.
This makes me puke.
Let me buy an API token anonymously, similar to how Mullvad works. I’m happy to pay for what I watch, but I don’t want to be tracked at all, and I don’t trust their internal settings.
Until that’s a thing, I’ll watch without an account using an ad-blocker. Give me that experience with the apps I use (Grayjay and NewPipe), and I’ll pay.
Google is operating at a 24% net profit margin. They don’t need to get their shareholders more money…
Do you actually understand how this works? It’s a beautiful statement and oh so noble, but it just flies against how the world really works.
At some point, maybe not today, but at some point, you’re going to be saving up for your retirement. Your money will be invested; either passively or actively. If active, a fund manager (or maybe even yourself) will be spending time, every single day, wondering how to maximise the invested cash. If passive, you’re letting a WHOLE lot of fund managers make the decisions for you (wisdom of the crowd). Either way, Google better fucking perform or the investors will go elsewhere.
And you’ll be an investor too, asking for Google to do better than anyone else or you’ll take your savings elsewhere.
Millennials and zoomers are not saving up for retirement, barely able to sustain themselves. They’re also expecting ecological collapse to cause global famine or their own nation to go full Reich, assuming they’re not killed by hurricanes, wildfire or war.
You aren’t an investor if you are planning to resell. Day trading and real investment are totally at odds. It’s far better (for retirement) to invest in a stable company and get a set return over time for it. We also don’t even need to do that for retirement, the fact that we do is fucking insane.
You’re arguing against the world that is. I’m just trying to explain the behaviour, not necessarily condone it.
A pension fund manager may not move in and out of stocks on a daily basis, but at some point they’re going to take a look at how their portfolio is doing and react.
If investors go elsewhere then they’re trading for a higher risk and return ratio than a massive company with rich history like Google. Plus, it frequently performs large buybacks and offers, and even offered a dividend recently. There is always going to be something attractive to investors, here.
Agreed there is a mix of things Google can do to remain attractive. But at the core, Google has to be a better investment than something else to remain invested into.
One thing I genuinely don’t get: why does a company making this much money need “investors”? (Other than participating in the make-rich-people-richer scheme)
Once you’ve gone public, unless some entity could do an offer to take you private, you have investors (aka owners).
To take Google private would be in the region of 2.5 trillion dollars. Even the Norwegian oil fund would struggle to do that.
Make a fair payment model. No classic subscription. But pay per watched minute, and when you hit a certain amount of minutes, every additional minute is free.
It’s too late now, but only if they didn’t put so many ads in the first place, less people would be blocking them. They could also make YouTube premium affordable by removing all the features except “no ads”.
Some time ago I would’ve bought YouTube premium, but it had so many features I didn’t want driving up the price that I just didn’t. I instead switched to Firefox and ads were gone again. Good job google, drove me off YouTube premium and Google chrome at the same time.
They could use their monopolies to force advertisers to pay a fair amount for a decent ad instead of taking pennies to ruin the Internet. I never even considered using an ad blocker back when it was just banner ads. Or maybe they could stop being a full decade behind the times and add donations to YouTubers for a cut. If they add value to premium instead of trying to remove value from the base experience they could even triple dip on these ideas.
First, individually targeted advertisement should be illegal. Instead of trying to figure out who I am and serving me ads based on that, they should only be able to look at server side facts. What is the video? This is how television and radio ads have worked for ages. You have a video about SomePopBand, you advertise concert tickets. You have a video about bikes, you advertise bike stuff. You don’t know who I am. Suddenly, the motivation for most of the privacy invading, stalking, nonsense is gutted.
Some people would still block those static ads. If they showed some restraint, I think more people would accept them. But that’s a sad joke- no profit driven org is going to show restraint.
Secondly, if they can’t ethically run the business at a profit, the business probably doesn’t deserve to exist. That or it’s a loss leader to get people into the ecosystem.
You do know you can enter into your Google settings and disable all tracking and targeting, right? And you can ask them to delete all information they already hold on you.
Yes. However, it’s an assumption they honor those requests and don’t try to track you anyway.
Plus Google isn’t the only company trying to do individualized targeted advertising.
Shut down operations immediately
The internet was a mistake. We had a good run. Lot of fun was had, but it hasn’t made anyone’s life better. I say we roll things back to the ARPANET days. The internet should exclusively be used for disseminating post-graduate level academic research and DOD projects. Everyone else can read the newspaper on their train ride in their full 3 piece suits to their union job at the business factory.
No, FAANG is killing the internet
We kill them, internet good again
Or else, I laser off the optics from soviet early launch satellites and … well. … you know
I’m surprised at this point that people are still trying to circumvent Terrible. Just stop using YT altogether.
Just stop using YT altogether
YT spent the last 15 years stopping out all competition, so now that they have accomplished that, they jack up the rates… (or in this case jack up the ads)
classic capitaism
This is such a weird take. There is 20 years of content on youtube and not just like, unboxing videos or AI generated kid stuff or whatever. Theres family recordings and DIY vids for literally everything, to college courses from like, Yale and Harvard, to vocational videos I use for my job. All of the videos that radicalized me into an Ancom on are youtube. Every song ever recorded, including rare songs like second hand accounts of slave field hymns. Old, obscure movies, especially where the copyright holder doesnt give a fuck, are available for free. Small indie projects, like small groups producing shorts, and small bands making their own music, are on youtube. And yes, millions of hours of people playing video games, or sports high lights, or wrestling high lights, or video essays or whatever, are all on youtube.
The world is the way it is. Do I wish the web was more diversified? I do. Do I wish Alphabet didnt have us over a barrel like this? Of course. But youtube is almost a utility at this point; its like saying dont use the roads bro, eventually they will listen to us and put in light rail tracks. I would love for that to happen but you gotta get to work in the mean time.
Just stop using YT altogether.
And use what? I’m not on YouTube for YouTube. I’m on YouTube for the content that is often unavailable elsewhere.
Just stop using YT altogether.
They should but easy to say than done. In the end they will return back to it if no better or at least equal alternatives are out there to fill the vacuum.
Yup, I’m investigating alternatives like Nebula and generally reducing my YouTube use, but that’s not going to work for a lot of people. The Grayjay app helps a lot.
People will find a way to get around it, I could see buffering a video for 5 mins or even downloading the entire video ala locally playing podcasts, then using AI or some type of frame analyzation technique t to skip ads. Or just skip them like good old fashion Tivo from your player.
TBH I don’t expect AI to be able to solve this.
Freetube has a sponsor skip feature, skips sponsored sections of videos automatically, so it looks like this has already been solved
server side video ad injection means they could vary the placement of the ad, so things like sponsorblock which relies on the segment being in the exact same place all the time would not be very effective
Read the article
YouTubes past moves have been to make it impossible to block adds. What else is new in the world?
Is water still wet?
And once everybody is watching ads and nobody is skipping them, YouTube will start making the commercials shorter and less invasive, right Anakin?
I get it, no one likes ads on youtube. But, you realize that they have to pay the people that are producing content as well as pay for the storage space to gold all of this content. Why does everyone think that can just be free?
YouTube’s next move might make it virtually impossible to watch YouTube
When I have to wade through sixteen different “Would you like to join YouTube Plus!?!?!?!” pop-ups every time I whisper the words “online video” in the direction of my phone, I’m rarely inclined to use YouTube to begin with. Its a bad fucking service.
My TV doesn’t pull this shit on me. I get Show -> Ads -> Show -> Ads in regularly spaced intervals, like I’m a civilized human being. I don’t get WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET SLIGHTLY FEWER ADS!!! GIVE ME
$8$12$15$20!!! every time the fucking thing turns on.Oh well. Youtube is useful as a podcast/streamer host now; no ads with sponsor block/ublock. Once that isn’t the case they (Google) will get network blocked.
No real loss to me. I tend to prefer local download/host for convenience. Most channels are chaff anyway.
100% The only reason I even allow google on the network is for YouTube.
I don’t see any technical specification i the article, but if they inject the ad at the start of the video, making it part of the video itself, would make possible to just skip it using video controls. To avoid user skippin ad thru video controls there should be client-side script blocking it, so an ad-blocker can use this to tell apart an ad from the video itself.
Can anyone correct me on this?
Also, would this affect piped and invidious too?
That sounds correct for me. It is possible for them to switch to a system where everyone can manually skip past the ad in the video stream but adblockers are useless (by not sending and indication of the ad to the client), but I don’t see that happening since most people don’t use adblockers and letting all of them easily skip past every ad is probably bad for profits.
There’s already addons that can recognize in-video sponsored content and skip, if youtube splices in ads into the video stream these addons will still work (although depending on how strict server side logic is, they may have to pause when the buffer runs out until the time of the ad length has passed)
It doesn’t recognize the sponsor sections. The community does that. I don’t believe there is any tool right now that can automatically detect the sponsor sections.
It’s not literally part of the video, exactly because of what you describe. They are separate streams that get injected into the player before the normal video. You can’t skip them or interact with them in any way (pretty sure it also breaks any purchase links etc). Piped or Invidious don’t have them, ytdl also doesn’t download them.
As of now, afaik, you won’t see them if your account wasn’t selected for the experiment, if you are in incognito mode (with uBO on) or if you have uBlock Origin (and other adblockers) off (you’ll see the normal ads and then the video).
How does this actually works? Can you point me to technical documentation about this?
I’ve only found info about SSAI, not about SSAP. Is it the same?
Honestly it would be trivial for them to make the video controls server side too and simply not accept fast forward commands from the client during the ad.
We might be in a “Download and edit to watch ad-free” world with this change.
Seems too much, really. Even if they do such a terrible thing, would they not expose a “report ad” or “see the product” buttons? Video buffer is still locally downloaded.
I accept having to wait until the video downloads past the ad. Certainly not going to watch the ad.
It’s probably going to be like twitch. I’m sure they’ll eventually succeed in making it so you can stream videos without watching ads but they’ll never be able to stop people from downloading the video and skipping the ad in vlc.
Can’t you block ads on twitch?
I believe this describes them altering the ad host at load time for the page. DNS blocking of ad serving hosts only work if the hostname stays predictable, so just having dynamically named hosts that change in the loading of the page would make blocking more difficult.
Example: 1234.youtube-ads.com is blocked by AdBlockerX. 5678.youtube-ads-xyz.com is not on the blocklist, so is let through. All they have to do is cycle host or domain names to beat DNS blocking for the most part.
Previously, injecting hostnames live for EACH page load had two big issues:
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DNS propagation is SLOW. Creating a new host or domain and having it live globally on multiple root servers can take hours, sometimes days.
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Live form injection of something like this takes compute, and is normally set as part of a static template.
They’re just banking on making more money from increased ad revenue to offset the technical challenges of doing this, and offsetting the extra cost of compute. They’re also betting that the free adblocking tools will not spend the extra effort to constantly update and ship blocklist changes with updated hosts. I guarantee some simple logic will be able to beat this with client-side blocklist updating though (ie: tool to read the page code and block ad hosts). It’ll be tricky, probably have some false positives here and there, but effective.
As long as the naming pattern is distinct from important domains you can still block it based on pattern matching. They need to obfuscate ad domains and other hosting domains the same way.
Creating subdomains is quite fast because the request goes right through when it’s unknown to caches, it’s updates when you reuse existing ones that causes trouble with lag.
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