YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers

Talos@lemmy.world to Technology@beehaw.org – 507 points –
YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
bleepingcomputer.com
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> some clever checks on if you received (and therefore likely seen) the section of the video with the ads

Adblock would just evolve to politely answer "yes" when asked if the content had been received and played.

The server knows how long the ad was. It wouldn't ask the client, it would simply "wait".

That's a description of this:

> The best they could do is have you wait the ad-time even if the ad is blocked but that would just mess with their analytics - they want to be sure the ad is being watched.

People will easily catch up with Youtube as there are thousands of people working on Youtube programming.

I was more answering to the last part

People will easily catch up with Youtube as there are thousands of people working on Youtube programming.

You can't circumvent something clientside that is done one the server. When I grab a stream from Twitch, the first 10 seconds or so are always a "placeholder" image instead of the stream. There is nothing I can do while watching. I can of course remove it later, but not while watching.

I am not saying that Youtube has any chance of forcing you to watch ads. But there are technical means to prevent you from skipping ads as if they were never there. The question is simply when this becomes feasible to do. At the moment it's apparently not feasible. But this could change.