YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 770 points –
YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users - gHacks Tech News
ghacks.net

Mashable reports that users ran into a black screen on YouTube, and that it stayed for about 6 seconds before the video began playing. The reports indicate it affected several browsers including Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi.

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad. While that's certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time. A simple workaround for the black screen on YouTube is to just refresh the page, hit F5 as soon as the page starts loading. uBlock Origin's filters were updated with a patch to resolve the problem, the add-on updates its filters automatically. If you are still experiencing the black screen issue, just open the extension's dashboard and manually update the filters. This tug-of-war is getting annoying, but it appears to me that Google's efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers, instead of attracting new subscribers.

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A few years ago I‘ve been traveling in Morocco. And as long as I was there, YouTube didn’t show me any ads! Neither in the web player nor in the app (on iOS). Does anybody have a VPN with a server in Morocco to test if this is still working?

Not Morocco, but I've experienced this before. Been to a country where YouTube didn't display any ads.