YouTube has been spotted testing server-side ads, which could pose a problem to ad blockers.
This must consume a tremendous amount of processing to do since they would have to transcode copies for every ad region/campaign and every resolution on demand. I am interested in how they made this financially viable.
They don’t need to do any extra transcoding. It’s not that costly to stitch videos together. If done at specific strategic locations, it’s like copying a text file into another.
If they only do it for very popular videos, the additional cost will be trivial.
Since AI has caused them to complete abandoned any illusions about their carbon zero footprint I think they just stopped caring.
I’d guess its a solution similar to DASH that dynamically streams different content.
Not necessarily. They could split the video in advance, assuming the ads will always be at the same point. Even if not, they could still use the direct, unaltered source with a range. The big challenge would be keeping it all synced, which I think is safe to say that they will get right.
But even if it did need to be transcoded, YouTube automatically transcodes every single video uploaded, multiple times. They are clearly not afraid of it.
If you’ve ever used yt-dl, you’ll know that YT vids are all split into multiple files. Presumably, this is where the ads get injected.
No, they’re not split. Each one of those results you get from yt-dlp is a different version of the same video. I.e. different resolutions, different codecs. Some of them are the audio, some of them are the video, but they’re not split.
They are also that. But when you watch YouTube-dl download a video, it downloads several parts, then ffmpeg recombines them into a single output file.
That may be to speed up the download using multiple connections. Other downloaders do it on other sites as well, doesn’t mean the files are split on the server.
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I will pay for an adblocker before I pay for an ad provider to stop harassing me
Chad uBlock Plus dev doesn’t even want our money.
Chad Raymond Hill who refuses to accept donatoins or sponsorships of any kind.
That being said the people that maintain the filter lists I believe, don’t quoute me on this, you can donate to a few of them. Really depends if they mention it on their githubs though and you pretty much have to go about finding them on your own as there’s no real centralized list of all the people that contribue to the filter lists.
That’s correct. uBlock Plus’ Github says he won’t accept donations but give instead to the unsung heroes maintaining the lists on which his software depends.
YouTube shell company running highly effective subscription based ad blocker! Hahaha I could see it.
If anything, adblock taught me about pi-hole, which brought me into the raspberry pi world.
And id rather spend money on that.
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I’m not so sure. Once they are embedded in the video they become hard to block. Twitch is like this now.
I’m holding out some hope, since twitch is live but YouTube is pre-buffered, but they could still block loading past the ad on a timer or a key computed from hashing the decoded frames of the ad, idk
And yet there are userscripts you can use to block out twitch ads. I haven’t seen one for months now despite not being a subscriber.
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Let’s develop an AI that can detect where ads in videos start and end. And cut them out client side. Anti corporate advertising AI :D
Won’t this totally break deep linking to time codes?
I got the server-side ads a few weeks ago. Switched to another account and was ad-free again. I’d be happy to pay for Premium as it supports the creators I watch, but for ad-free alone it’s not worth the £13/mo. The other features jacking up the price aren’t much use to me.
If they make it shitty enough I just wont use it.
Have a sneaking suspicion that google is doing the classic spend 100 dollars to save 1 cent type scenario, cause all the money they’ve dumped into this anti-adblock shit? theres no way its less than what they’ve not made from adblockers.
Especially when all this money could have been spent on improving their ad service so people don’t have to view 2 hour ads, or malware laden bullshit, or just blatant pornographic advertising.
but why spend money moderating their own service, when they can spend 10x the money trying to force their open septic tank of a service on everyone.
I’ve been a premium user for a while now and the platform has never been shittier than now. I pay for premium but I see integrated ads in videos and nowadays YouTube sneakily includes actual product videos in your home feed as if that’s not an ad. Recommendations have sucked for so long that I don’t remember the last time I watched something good on it. Inclusion of yt music was the thing that kept me on the subscription but shit man
Do you use Android? Stop paying for premium, just install ReVanced and “fix” the official YouTube apk. It also works with YouTube Music.
Inclusion of yt music was the thing that kept me on the subscription
Same here. I was struggling to get the ad blockers to work consistently, so I said fuck it and canceled Spotify and subscribed to Youtube. FWIW YT music does a much better job of choosing random music that I like; Spotify just plays the same shit over and over again.
I feel like YT music plays the same things over and over again, so good to know that switching to Spotify won’t be any better.
I’ve tried every music streaming service out there with their premium subscriptions and they’re really not that different. After a month of usage they all loop the same songs over and over again. It seems YouTube also adopted this because it’s been recommending me the same things over and over and over.
Tidal has new music playlists straight from Tidal and they’re genre specific, which is quite different from Spotify. They’re in a set place within Tidal, so you don’t have to search for the new playlists either.
The sad thing is that it appears a lot of people only like listening to music that they already know. Out of the people I know, I’m the only one that hates listening to the same songs over and over again. I wonder if that’s why many people only seem to like music from their teenage/young adult days 🤔
I miss GPM. YouTube music is full of community-made playlist that are actually YouTube video playlists, so you’ll start one up and have all the music video intros, interrupts, and extra sound effects and shit that get thrown in.
I started a Disney playlist for my nephew in the car, and you could hear all the sound effects from the movie over the actual soundtrack.
I haven’t seen any of that. For me, Youtube music is almost exactly like Spotify experience-wise.
How is this bundling even legal. YouTube ist pretty much a Monopoly and they are using this fact to push YouTube Music. If that’s Not anti competitive behaviour what ist?
On mobile, which is where I primarily use YT, the official app with premium doesn’t even have sponsorblock or dearrow or blocking shorts. It’s genuinely a worse experience than revanced which is free.
If I was to pay for premium, I’d want the above features at the very least.
YouTube tests server-side ads to make
your coveted blockerYouTube obsoleteftfy
If only there were hundreds of other sites on the Internet that stream video. If porn sites can make it work, anyone can make it work.
Ive had no issues with Brave Browser on my Desktop, but NewPipe on Mobile has been all over the place the past few weeks.
NewPipe had to deal with some thing YouTube did to break things. And they fixed them super quick. Last time I had a video not work, I visited the GitHub site and saw there was a new release from 11 minutes ago. Installed it and the video worked perfectly.
Every other post about Ad blocking has someone pitching Brave.
Brave has experienced some controversies over time, including the CEO having problematic political views; alleged sales of copyrighted data for AI model training; auto-completing typed-in URLs to affiliate links that generate revenue for Brave; content creators receiving unsolicited donations they couldn’t collect; and automatically installing their VPN service without the user’s consent.
Brave is also, you know, run by probably one of the worlds most evil people.
Peter Thiel.
The guy who is part of a group of people (including JD Vance) who wants to hook you up (using bff elon’s neuralink) and use your body as a biofuel source instead of just killing you. As a “more humane alternative to genocide”
PS. This isn’t a joke.
https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas
Pipepipe on f-droid is kept much more up to date in my experience. It’s a fork so basically the same
Rumble and PeerTube
EDIT: I’m already paying YouTube with personal data and privacy.
I mean I’ll settle for the ad being blacked out and muted while I wait for the content. Or have it play elevator music while I wait.
or do some back end trickery where they can buffer the video for longer than youtube allows, then selectively clip out the ad parts so you can continue to seemlessly watch.
I wonder if the server throttles that ads so you can’t 2x the playback speed. Sounds like a good way to detect when the ads are being served.
Watch how quickly I drop your fucking platform lmao. Please give me a reason
Yeah they risk making their platform obsolete to many users.
And where will users go? There are no alternatives. Other platforms don’t have as much content, require you to pay, or both.
I can’t vouch for others but I’d rather just stop using the service all together if I can’t do it ad free. I’m not inclined to pay for YouTube either, already pay for too many services. People existed just fine without Youtube. They can again.
Pornhub, or touching grass. Either order really.
I’d been paying for premium YouTube for a few years, the family plan had a massive spike in price and I’d had enough from there. Been using Grayjay for the past few months only watching a couple of channels, but if this goes live it will kill the platform for me.
The bundled YouTube music sub really doesn’t sell it for me either, sure it’s got some more niche music compared to other platforms but it’s not a drop-in replacement (especially for the better half).
All and all I’m probably one of the few that will tap out of the platform, will be interesting to see the fallout.
Have you considered paying for their ad free service?
Premium also has lots of ads in your feed (disguised as product videos) and videos include sponsorships ads.
YouTube: creates the problem
This guy: have you considered paying them for the solution?
Like many other business they offer an ad funded service and a paid service. I understand this is Lemmy, and people love getting things for free. But if you don’t like ads, have you thought about paying for the service?
They had a service I paid for. I paid for youtube without ads. Just that. And then they changed prices and made me pay for something that I did not need, YouTube Music. So I canceled.
They had me as a subscriber, they just wanted more money and lost me.
And I block ads. Not specifically for youtube, but for all sites and apps that I can. I use Blockada and most days the number of blocked tracking cookies goes over 1000. Laat 24 hours it is 3426 trackers blocked. Is it really necessary that I am being tracked that much?
I don’t think so, and I am not even talking about malware, or crypto ming scripts that will be loaded as ads. Most ads are not checked properly so I have no idea what malicious bullshit I can get on my systems without even asking for it.
If I find something that I use a lot and adds value, I will donate some money. For example, I support some creators on Patreon.
And ads always do their best to be loud and intrusive. And if I have a guest at my house that is loud and intrusive, they don’t get invited back. The same with ads.
Remember when ads were just a small rectangle on youtube? You clicked it away and that is it? That was the way. Serve ads in a normal, non intrusive way and I can handle them just fine.
they offer an ad funded service and a paid service
Just because they offer a paid service doesn’t mean it’s reasonable for me to pay for it. For example: if the cost was $1000 a month it would not be reasonable to respond with “why don’t you pay for it?” Because that’s not a reasonable price.
If a person doesn’t find the price reasonable then it is reasonable for them not to pay.Watching ads is also a cost. It costs time. Each person has a threshold of how many ads they are willing to watch before the cost is too high, at which point it is reasonable for them to no longer pay that cost.
YouTube is constantly increasing the ad time trying to find that point just before people get sick of it.
if you don’t like ads, have you thought about paying for the service?
I remind you that the person you originally replied to said they were done watching YouTube. Not that they were insisting on getting it for free. They find the ad cost too high, and the paid service cost too high, so they will not use the service. That is a perfectly reasonable response and a response of “why don’t you pay for it” is not helpful, irrelevant, and shows you aren’t listening to what is being said.
For the record: If I believed there was even a chance that my watching YouTube with an ad blocker caused the tiniest noticeable amount of loss to YouTube’s finances, I would set up a tab streaming YouTube 24 hours a day on mute. So no, I also will not be paying them for premium either.
I agree with all your points, not using the service is absolutely an option. I suggested paying for premium because that was the option that made the most sense to me. I hate ads and love YouTube. For me, the value I get from a subscription is much higher than other services I pay for. I’m subscribed to probably 500 YouTube channels and probably watch between 50-100 hours of content per month.
What’s the Lemmy equivalent of /r/hailcorporate?
That’s funny, but I love content created by individuals and small teams, especially the maker/engineering channels. I’ll take that over corporate produced media any day, even if it means paying a corporation to serve that content to me.
They also have one of the best business models for creators, meaning people producing content can do it full time and make a good living off of it, instead of doing it as a charity and producing mediocre quality videos.
If you pay me MORE money, I won’t shit on your lawn
If you pay me more money I’ll shit on your lawn less often
Yes, and it took less than a minute of googling to find “I’m paying, why do I still see ads?”. There’s also someone in this thread complaining of the same.
The problem with that is they will eventually introduce ads to the paid service as well.
Or just one more thing to add to the open seas of piracy. Or start supporting nebula?
Although this would be the case for piracy, as a better means to support artist, because I pirate my music. I do attend more live music venues which gives more revenue directly to the artist
When the YT apps stopped working a few days ago, I just continued watching on Nebula until the apps were fixed. Only went back onto YT to read discussions in video comments
