YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers
9to5google.com
- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
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I’ll just write a greasemonkey script that detects unskippable time and mute audio. Let’s play this game google, fuckin I dare ya.
this one? https://gist.github.com/BrockA/2625891
what a time to be alive...
Ha, nope. But i see I’m not alone. There is hope dear people.
Youtube 2026: you are no longer allowed to skip ahead in videos in order to blend the video and ad "experience" together.
Can you have it replace the video screen portion with cat videos from another source during the unskippable part?
Sure, popover video of cute cats and turtles eating strawberries
Instant millions of installs
Only other thing I need is a button to click to pause the video once the ad is over because I'm going to the bathroom.
At this point you can just replace the video with the same video using a timestamped link from just before the ad started. Under IPv4 they can't tell if it is the same person/device requesting the same video. So unless they put the ad at exactly the same timestamp (which they won't) you can just blank out the video when an ad starts and replace the stream with the same video using the timestamp to start the video where you left off.
But think of the cats!!!!
I'm pretty sure ads will likely be different audio level or light level that would be detectable. If there is no option to detect the ad via API that would be one way to know when the ads begin and end.
The idea here is that ads will be unskippable, aka, you skip ahead 10-20 seconds but can’t. They’re will be controls that appear to catch this. If they incorporate ads and I can just fast forward, then who cares. This is google, they want to watch ads.
Even if it becomes impossible to block the ads out I will cover my ears, close my eyes and shout 'lalala' to avoid them.
If it becomes impossible to block ads I'm blocking the site, because at that point it's unbearable
An appropriate response to this nonsense.
Or use it to implement a script that just downloads the video and cuts the ads out entirely for later watching.
Or, failing any of those, a script that pops up a reminder that YouTube has unskippable ads so you can back out and just do something else with your time.