YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users
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.
Well, I'd rather see blankness than another ad.
it's nuts that no one likes ads yet advertising wouldn't be a billions of dollars industry if they didn't work
well, as long as the companies buying the ads think they work, we have an industry
i am also immune to ads lol
Until they subtly inject them into other social media platforms, whereupon they’ll trickle into Lemmy like so much piss from an overflowing toilet. Mark my words, we’ll be up to our eyes in piss by 2026.
I've noticed an increase in posts on reddit that follow the format of:
It's very sus, especially considering the amount of blatant repost/comment-stealing karma farm bots.
Those’ve been fairly common for the last like… 8 years on Reddit. Interestingly, they started as mug and trinket sale ads and have since launched into every facet. Some major marketing firms use that method now, and I blame spammers for that blight.
It's definitely gotten a lot worse within the past year or two.
Luckily for me, I have the new AntiAdAssAdapter™, so I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff at all. Finally! I have the time to do what I want like take my grandkids to their school performance, or sit and nod at my clearly pregnant daughter while we look over a baby crib catalogue! Thanks Quadruple A!
Does that adapter come in MadeForAppleProducts™?
Rumor has it Apple is planning to announce one that works with their products. But for some reason, instead of concatenating their own brand name to it (AAAAA would sell so well) they've instead decided to name it "MarketMask"... typical apple
I’ll wait for MM Pro Max edition ;)
Can you think of something you may have bought which you saw an advert for it years ago? Does or doesn't have to be the first time you became aware of it.
lol i was mostly being facetious, in reply to the number of people in this thread expressing extreme skepticism about whether ads work at all
for myself, i'm sure they have worked and probably do work, but i can tell you that i make every effort to avoid even seeing them, because i fucking hate them. i use ublock origin. i don't watch tv. i torrent movies. i pay for tidal. that still doesn't eliminate billboards and other forcibly shoved bullshit into daily life
I have enjoyed the content of creators on YouTube, content that perhaps wouldn't have come to exist without adverts, but if I could press a magic button to make it so anyone could easily prevent adverts then I would.
A simple reduction in copyright term (say 10 years) would allow authors to be creative with existing works - newbies need not start from scratch. After 10 years users could choose a copyrighted work from who they'd prefer created it, rather than who currently owns the "IP" trading card to for the next ~150 years.
I can't think of a time I've seen an ad and thought, ya that's exactly what I need in my life.
I think you're giving companies too much credit. Freakonomics did a series called "Does Advertising Actually Work?" and the tl;dr was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-1-tv-ep-440/
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/
What I've found is that advertising only works if I already wanted that product. That advertisement doesn't have to be these huge ad campaigns that they currently do. It could be as simple as showing a still image of a twix bar, and saying "Hey! Go buy a twix!" Yeah, ok.
But if I wasn't already planning on buying that product? Well that ad time may as well have been some archival footage showing the inside of a 1940s concentration camp in use.
That is to say, both are things that you find offensive to have to be watching, and neither are going to entice you to buy the product.
munches on a twix bar
.....what?
The main purpose of ads isn't to sell you a specific product immediately, their real purpose is to expose you to their brand to make the brand more familiar (and therefore more trustworthy) to you.
For example, recently, I needed a new insurance. So of course I went to the websites of the 5 insurance companies that I knew from advertising and compared their offers. Then I went to a comparison portal, which again I knew from the ads. The best offer was from a brand I didn't know so I went with the second one which was from a well known brand. I trusted the second offer more, simply because the brand felt more familiar to me.
Here's another story: there is this big online clothing store. I always hated their ads, they were really annoying, and at that time I didn't understand why anyone would buy clothes online. So guess where I went, 5 years later, after a disappointing offline shopping tour, in desparate need for new clothes?
Beat me to this.
Advertisers tend to be strongly opposed to measuring advertising effectiveness, because if they're not effective, then they're out of a job.
Costco further supports this
i think human psychology is too nebulous and qualitative with way too many factors to definitively "measure" how effective ads are. all they really know is (most of the time) buy ads, revenue goes up.
but there's a reason your personal data is so coveted by advertisers. if they can parse that you're an avid hiker from the millions of data points they collect from you (websites visited, geolocation data, other purchases, etc), then they can sell ads for $400 hiking boots specifically for you, that people who never leave their couch and order delivery from hungry howies every day would just ignore
I suspect that's why Facebook makes so much money, they have a lot of information on you like that.
In a weird way, this is actually quite handy, as you get ads for things that are actually relevant to you.
dude, ads are bullshit. you should never buy anything based on the seller's ads. and i used to say a good way to research products was go to the niche subreddit, or even amazon reviews, but those are so full of bullshit shills anymore it's hard to know.
A lot of people don't mind ads, they even say they don't see them anymore, that their brain just tunes them out. Then you look at their spending habits and it's quite clear they are seeing them.
A big part of the population doesn't mind being constantly manipulated.
The sad thing is: ads dont need to be liked to work. Making enjoyable ads is expensive, making annoying ads that still work is cheaper
That's because they are psychological warfare. They don't need to be liked because the goal isn't to create a positive association with the product, it's to brainwash people into thinking they need the product
Or sometimes just remind you the product exists. They don't have to make you like , but when you see it you end up thinking "man it's been a while since I've had ". Next then you know, you're grabbing at the grocery store because you've been thinking about it lately.
Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!
That was certainly memorable but also I did not buy any.
Yum Yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee Tuna!!
Bumblebee Tuna Song
best rendition ever
My wife worked for a company that was heavily reliant on generating leads from ads. They had lots of real time monitoring of conversion rates to make sure they were actually making more money than they were spending on the ads. They would have to turn ad channels off all the time because the return on ad spend went negative.
So my conclusion is that ads can be somewhat effective for companies, but if they don't actively monitor and control the performance of their ads, they're probably just burning money. A lot of companies seem to advertise because they think that's the only way to grow.
Was it a niche company/product?
No, the company is publically listed with around 1 Bil market cap.
I've seen a few ads recently that are just random as hell, don't say a product name and don't even have a website or link to find out what it is even advertising. They always make me wonder how they're working, if they're working. They seem like just a waste of money and time for everyone involved, including the advertiser themselves.
The people that do spend the time trying to find out what it is for will remember the eNgAgEmEnT from needing to find out what it is and that correlates with future sales. Just like "rewards" programs that are designed to mentally lock someone into the store/product while harvesting their data.
I use adblockers but my parents don't. Visiting my folks and seeing the ads they get served is just bizarre. They get served ads in Spanish even though there's nothing about the account, device or geolocation that would indicate the audience is Spanish speaking, they get very long ads for medicines, which...you know how they always list an increasingly long and concerning bunch of side effects? Well the last one I saw ended with a full reading of the drug's MSDS. They get ads from car dealers half a continent away, campaign ads for a different state's legislature...Why was there ever a television advertisement even made for General Electric power plant turbines? Who's watching Zeltik, gets a mid-roll ad for gigawatt generator components and makes any kind of decision based on what they saw?
I also get ads in Spanish often when watching on my TV (no adblocker)... Dunno if that's just because I am in California or if my phone or other devices picked up my Spanish speaking neighbors and assumes I also speak Spanish. I mean, I do, but not well or often.
This is on a Smart TV specifically. I haven't seen this behavior on a PC or phone...again because it's my parents' house, they watch videos on their smart TV. So I don't know if it makes system language available the way a web browser does...? I will say Spanish is the second-best guess in this area.
Apparently there are some people that like ads, and a larger amount who may not like them but are willing to tolerate them.
Those of us who will make proactive choices to not engage with advertising are the minority.
My mom (mid 70s) says "Oh I don't mind the commercials. It gives me a break to go pee."
And when I say "or you could just get a dvr, and pause for as long as you want, any time you want."
Her response was "Yeah....but who wants to do all that???"
Um......boomers are weird.
Lemmy users typically vastly overestimate the amount of hassle people are willing to put up with to deal with technology.
It's why we have so many Linux evangelicals.
Granted I agree with the overall spirit of your reply, I don't agree with it in terms of hitting the pause button on a remote. She's had VCRs before. And DVD players. She knows how this works. Hitting the pause button and hitting the play button has to be THE easiest form of technology I can think of.
But for Linux? Yeah. The platform has been around something like 30 years, and STILL only has 4% of the overall userbase, despite the fact that only the rich can afford a Mac, and Windows is so trouble ridden these days, that it's actively like living in the book 1984. Yet, nobody is switching to Linux, because it's Linux.
But if you try to point out the problems that average people have with Linux, you get told "Then YOU create your own fork. It's open source!"
Like, c'mon. I don't even know how to USE Linux. You think I know how to program???
Because overall, I think Linux COULD BE superior to windows.....if it were easy to figure out what the hell I'm doing. I tried to unmute my speakers. On windows, down in the task bar is a speaker icon. Right click it and get some options, or double click it and get a slider bar.
Took me 3 days to figure out how to get audio. I should not need to go into terminal and mess around with 30 paragraphs of copy/paste/troubleshoot to figure out why my speakers aren't getting audio. This is just one example, but I'm sure SOMEONE is going to chime in, and tell me that I'm wrong, and that Linux is the best, and I'm an idiot.
Ok, I'm an idiot. Sure. Guess what. So are 80% of the userbase. Linux has 4% of the userbase. The reason it's so small is because Linux doesn't cater to the idiot. You got people a month ago before Biden dropped out of the race who were undecided voters. Its not like either of the choices are some unknown. I would venture to guess that 1 month ago trump and Biden were two of the most well known people on earth. Their policies and what they stand for are and were well documented. There were still undecided voters.
Those are the people Linux needs to cater to. The people who forget how to tie their shoes. The people who don't have a thought running through their heads, and then get distracted by a butterfly.
I've used an Android phone for 10+ years at this point. Android is written in Linux. Android doesn't have this problem. Any idiot can use Android. I would venture to say that 100% of Android users have no idea what Terminal is. If you asked them to use terminal, they'd say "Terminal? Are you dying?"
So, I see Linux as this potentially great thing.....that's utterly useless because it's developed by elitists who hold the mentality that if they had to suffer, so should all of you. Problem is, instead of advancing Linux, they're just holding it back from what should be a much bigger userbase. Just so they can say "Ha ha, I know how to use it. It's easy for me! Now YOU learn."
Not taking into account that people like me will still keep using a Windows 7 PC that's not been updated in about a decade. And I genuinely don't know if the firewall is even on. Or even how I'd access that.
I like to read a catalog when I'm interested in discovering something I may want. An advert on the internet is like a door-to-door salesperson staring through my window.
This is my impression.
My partner doesn't care about ads at all. I installed newpipe on her phone but she prefers the yt app, with ads.
Usually in these threads someone starts espousing the virtues of "responsible" or "appropriate" ads.
A common argument is that its the most efficient way to pay for online content. I strongly disagree.
Suffice to say, I think ads are so normalised that most people don't see them as intrusive.
No one likes being manipulated. I like ads that promote healthy living for example, if they don't secretly promote any brand or product. They are pretty rare though, almost only in some public health care facilities.
People accepted unobtrusive ads, it's once they started taking over the actual content that they became a big no-no. The ad companies and ad-reliant websites fucked themselves.
The problem started when they went from a basic preroll ad, to unskippable and then the large amount of mid-roll ads to push people into buying premium just as they increased the price.
the real problem is that people will complain about it for a minute, then buy it anyway
I legit strongly suspect they don't work, at least not as well as it's implied. Like, everyone thinks they work because they used to work really well or something.
Or they work somewhat, resp. in some cases and the rest is make believe in execeutives, a waste of money. Let's say 50/50?
This reprieve from modern life brought to you by the colour Black
6 seconds of black screen VS 11 mins of the epoch times telling me how trans people are the devil?
I’ll take the black screen.
If I hqve to watch a black screen, so be it. Better a moment of peace than an ad.
This wasn't a joke.
It's indeed not a joke.
How about when the ad blockers insert a joke, when a blank screen is shown on YouTube?
I'd prefer a blank screen
No joke.
Wait so there was a brief black screen, then the video? That sounds like the ad blocker is doing a great job…
That sounds like a feature, not a bug.
It’s honestly really weird that the journalist ever thought that would be a joke. Like how is it funny? Unless the whole thing is written by a bot that doesn’t understand emotions…
This isn't a joke. I would literally rather see a black screen than an ad.
Fully agree, I YouTube a lot for white noise as I fall asleep, and while I've had premium for a few years now the advertisements that I had before premium were much higher volume then anything else and I would much rather have no audio than a random advertisement blasting
Also before the better twitch adblock that let you bypass adtime with a lower quality video, people do literally use the plugin that replaced the ads with purple screen.
I can't be fucked to set up a pi hole so YouTube on my Roku in the living room had ads. I unironically mute the tv and check my phone during ads. I'd take a black screen any day
Yeah I know. Youtube tested them on me for only a day and yes of course I would rather see a black screen than an ad. I am not that needy for background noise that I would want to listen to an ad of the millionth MLM scam this month.
This is my book case and I love to read. Don't mind the lambo, focus on the books!
Thank you for reminding me of this!
It's wasn't that long ago that I was in a little lamborghini, and sleeping on bookshelves.
I can understand, I would feel better watching a black screen than an ad trying to psychologically manipulate you in a personalized way.
The day adblocks/yt-dlp finally loose to google forever is the day I kiss youtube bye-bye. No youtube premium, no 2 minute long unskippable commerical breaks. I am strong enough to break the addiction and go back to the before-fore times when we bashed rocks together and stacked CDs in towers.
Peertube, odysee, bittorrenting, IPTV. Ill throw my favorite content creators a buck or two on patreon to watch their stuff there if needed. We've got options, its a matter of how hot you need to boil the water before the lowest common denominator consumer finally has enough.
Nebula has some of the better creators anyway.
Same. I do enjoy sitting back and skimming trough the sub content every now and then, but I have gotten to a point recently, where I might as well save my time by not watching them. Definitely not watching 10+ sec ads before I can see the video.
It isn't fair to expect free hosting from platforms where creators are expecting revenue for original content.
Hoping for piracy means you expect someone else to pay.
Google should be pressured into changing their policies so user experience feels less disruptive and provide a healthy monetization
don't bother, Lemmings have this weird entitlement that should be able to watch any video anywhere in the world for completely free, no ads and definitely won't pay for it, because storage and bandwidth don't cost anything and Google should be glad, they are blessed by their eyeballs.
I'll take a black screen over an ad any day of the week. Screw ads.
Or better, use FreeTube and NewPipe.
I get a feeling their time will be up soon. I hope I'm wrong.
This is the same cat and mouse game hackers have been doing with game-/anticheat developers since multiplayer games became a thing
Are people still cheating? Yes
So unless google manages to pull of their device certification fuckery for PCs it will never work out in their favor
NewPipe had to update a couple of times in the past month because YouTube made changes that broke the 3rd party playback. First time it took a few days, but so far it seems they've been able to keep up with YouTube's bs.
I worry for a day when YouTube figures out how to make ads an unskippable part of the video itself so that they're present with or without adblock, while also maintaining the ability to update them as needed.
Even if they fully render them into the video with absolutely no way for an extension to tell where it is something like Sponsorblock where people manually enter time codes could still get around it.
Piped apps have been broken at least 6 - 8 times in the past couple of weeks.
It's the biggest Google effort I've seen to crack down on 3rd party YT clients.
I actually used to pay for YT premium, then they removed my discount AND raised the price to over $12/mo.
Sometimes I do miss my algorithm feed, just not enough to watch YT ads, or pay $12 - 15/mo.
I remember a time when ads weren’t crazy intrusive. They weren’t being shoved into every os and app and website.
There wasn’t 20 of them on every page, and advertisers weren’t trying to harvest my data to the point where they knew every last detail of my personal life.
And I didn’t mind having them in order to have “free” content. But they got greedy and now I’ll block them in every chance I get.
Maybe forcing ads into everything isn’t the answer.
you're misremembering the time. ad blockers aren't new and they were invented for a reason. people forget pop up ads could literally cover your entire screen and they were so bad that blocking them was a browser feature. popups are blocked by default even today.
They block pop-up windows but now website designers have discovered they can just do soft pop-ups. The worst websites have at least 3, the cookie wall, the newsletter and some pay wall or offer, often overlapping.
yeah, not my point though. my point is there's never been a time for unintrusive, respectful ads.
Not to mention that ads are a prime vector for malware and spyware (well, more spyware on top of the ad vendor itself).
I went to my banking account page, where I can make transfers and look at my money. My ad blocker had blocked a GIANT ad in the center of the screen.
I find myself watching less and less youtube. Till is no longer part of my daily routine.
I backed up a few videos that I loved using tubearchivists and move on to other platforms.
I'm into small web and the fediverse now.
I remeber when it was all about the YOU part of tubin'. Real people making real content because they wanted to show it to you.
When they first started getting paid they just made more of that same stuff, heck plenty of reviewers could even be trusted as they made the reviews on their own accord.
It was my go to place for entertainment, information and to help me decide to get brand x or y for the product i need.
Nowadays i just have it on as it's less annoying than cable but nothing is actually interesting anymore. Mature youtubers who have turned into adhd 9yo olds just to try and stay relevant, people messing with annoying sounds effects just because they read it catches the viewers attention...video's nowadays are an attack on my home space, constantly triggering me with noise or ads just to be annoying. It's become exhausting to consume content.
Same goes for instagram which i very much liked, it's on constant mute for me and the only reason i'm still around is because it's become a habit and titties.
This is what I and many others on these forums have been trying to bring back and spread. People should exchange ideas based on logic and good humour, not money.
Ironically I'm enjoying it for the first time ever at the moment.
We were going away on holidays and would have patchy internet and I needed to make sure my iPad addicted kids has plenty of content for the the road. I decided I was too old and too busy to spend hours stealing YouTube content with shitty apps and just bit the bullet, got a VPN and signed up for a family plan of YouTube plus through Nepal for like $4 / month.
And now without ads and the bullshit I have for the first time found creators that I like, and I put on videos throughout the day. Also because it comes with music I actually use my google speaker for more than just alarms and timers because I refuse to buy Spotify.
The $4 is actually good value. I'm as surprised as the next person.
I’ve seen videos mentioning they have started cancelling plans opened on a different region to save money using VPN software, so be careful how much you rely on it.
If that's what it comes to then so be it. I'd rather stare at the void than an ad.
Or my ugly mug when the sun is up
I'm seeing a lot of comments about Youtube frontends. Don't get me wrong. They're nice and all, but we need some alternatives. At this point in time. We have two of them Odysee & Rumble. If you're tried of Youtube's bullshit. Alternatives are the way to go.
I think its important to highlight that Odysee and Rumble are both "free speech" platforms that neo-nazis love to use to platform their calls for violence.
New platforms get the fringe content first, because the vanilla content can happily use the old incumbents.
Here's a few more in a reddit thread.
I thought Odyssey was just gun nuts? When did the shitters get there?
Lemmy is also a "free speech" platform. Yet, we're all still here.
Neo-Nazis use Lemmy as a platform for their calls to violence?
I know they use Mastodon to do it. Truth Social runs on the Mastodon software.
Pretty sure the fediverse is VERY left-leaning lmao
It is. Which makes it even weirder that black people have a horrible experience on Fedi with loads of racist harassment.
Horseshoe theory
Yeah, which is why !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works exists.
This right here is the community that made the lemmy developers themselves write code to specifically censor this community.
There's a big difference between a protocol (what you refer to as Lemmy is actually a protocol called ActivityPub) and a centralized organization (Odyssee). Many / most Lemmy instances will ban Nazi posts, many also defederating from instances which allow them. However, the fact that it's a protocol means it's still free speech. This is IMO a very good system to have, and emulates real world free speech dynamics.
Odyssee, however, allowing Nazi stuff is not okay since they are not a protocol. They're the equivalent of a Lemmy instance. Lots of people are against Hexbear, for example, myself included.
Odysee is a platform built upon LBRY, a protocol for content distribution. So your statement is incorrect.
although to be fair, that is just what's going to happen.
What does neo-nazi mean to you?
The reason I ask. I see that word get thrown around on social media (twitter) all the time. The way I see that used 99% of the time. Some Left Winger sees a Right Winger say something they don't like. The Left Winger can't counter it or they just don't like that Right Winger said. So the Left Winger calls the Right Winger the worst thing they can think of.
They always say “says something they don’t like” but in reality what they are saying is trans people are pedos and should die, that’s not an opinion, that’s a call for violence dude. Go fuck yourself and fuck your feelings
While I largely agree with your point, as an Odysee user myself I know there is a visible amount of actual Neo-Nazi content there. That said, such channels are not difficult to block on the user end on the platform so you don't see them after the first time, there's not so much that it's a constant annoyance, and there is still plenty of worthwhile content on Odysee to watch, including various YouTubers who mirror their content to the platform. While the Neo-Nazi content is harder to find on Rumble, it's more politically focused and feels like it's more meant to be "right-wing YouTube" whereas you can actually find more of a variety of viewpoints on Odysee.
What does neo-nazi mean to you?
Actual anti-semitic, fascist, racist people and groups who support the ideology of Nazi Germany and use Nazi symbols and iconography to support their cause. Actual white supremacists. Not every conservative or even most conservatives or MAGA Trump supporters. The real right-wing loons.
Thank you for answering my question.
Many right wing positions are very easy to counter with scientific evidence– climate change, crime rates, public health policy, social programs...
So if you think the "Left Winger" can't counter it.. do you not consider evidence-based arguments to be legitimate?
There are a number of examples I can give but the immediately most obvious that springs to mind is Mark Collett, who can be seen in this picture with his ex-girlfriend who has a large visible swastika tattoo.
The British Movement, formerly known as the British National Socialist Movement also have a presence on both sites. One of their primary catch phrases is, "No more brother wars." which refers to WW2 as a war between different sects of the "Aryan race". It means that those sects should not be fighting each other but instead non-white people and Jewish people.
As I say, I can point to more but I think those give you the picture. I should probably also add that its a common quippy clap-back for these types to say "so... huh... everyone you disagree with is a Nazi" themselves. The function of this is to muddy the waters and propagandise the questioning of whether or not their ideology is as bad as those who directly oppose them state. It means that they get to spread their ideas by a proxy to onlookers.
Do you have an example of this ?
there is also peertube which is fedirated
Sadly, too large to die. 99% of content creators willl stick to what the majority use. I'm just using Grayjay (Android) & Invidious (desktop) to watch all my content.
fuck rumble
lack of content and engagement are the main issue and Youtube reign top because of that
yt-dlp is also a great alternative, since you can just stuff it into the backend of something like jellyfin and have it work.
yt-dlp is a frontend.
No? It downloads the videos. Your video player is the "frontend".
it's a backend, the front end would be something like jellyfin, obviously the shitpost here being that this was a topic about frontends, if you want my opinion though, all frontends are dead, and backends are where it's at. You can even integrate yt-dlp as a backend to something like VLC so that it operates as a real frontend.
not technically a fronted. however, if you use it mainly for downloading YT content, it will run into the same problem as many frontends.
it will, theoretically, but it's singular backend, and development efforts can be focused on it specifically, rather than something like vanced, which is integrating more heavily with the yt UI itself, whereas yt-dlp doesn't care at all, and just rips the content spit out.
I would hope most front ends are using yt-dlp as the backend, but i suspect they're just tacking shit on top of the youtube web ui instead, unfortunately.
How are they supposed to attract new customers when they are already a monopoly?
From the beginning of the article:
Which is still ludicrous of them, considering how much you pay for how little it offers
Yep on desktop it offers basically nothing if you have an adblock and on mobile you can get everything you want by patching
Just use the website with Firefox mobile, as blocks.
Which I've been saying into the void for a while. Ideally in capitalism demand drives supply. If their demand is lack luster (for people upgrading to premium), rather than trying to cajole people through force into buying their product, they should drop the fucking price. Instead, they want to keep it bundled with music, and thus make it prohibitively expensive, while simultaneously competing in two seperate markets simultaneously. Give the people a video only tier, at a truly reasonable price, and begin (read: continue) to rake in cash. It's very frustrating.
Im honestly waiting for Google to sue for blocking ads in a last ditch effort.
Adblocking has been ruled a constitutional right in Germany. Let them try.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43838308
Axel Springer tried again recently, arguing that ad blockers "infringe copyright by altering HTML elements on their sites", and Germany waits, because a similar lawsuit happened in Luxembourg which will be settled on the European level.
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bundesgerichtshof-will-entscheidung-auf-europaeischer-ebene-abwarten-104.html (in German)
Another article, where they tried the exact same thing two years ago: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/landgericht-hamburg-ueber-adblock-plus-springer-verlag-verliert-erneut-a-5e058ee7-e0fa-4f0e-aa10-d95d9cfad654 (also in German)
(Also it's not a constutional right (Verfassungsrecht), since it wasn't the BVerfG that ruled in the first case (they tried to get them to rule, but no response was given), but a civil case ruled in the first instance by the BGH, after the local courts told Axel Springer to get bent)
(Edited: Added more context)
LOL that's like saying you're infringing copyright if you rip a page out of a book or magazine, or scribble some notes in it.
More like putting a post-it on the ads in magazines. You are not altering anything for the next person, or even for yourself after reloading a page.
Ah nice, thanks for the update and correction! Hope Axel Springer will get shafted for good. Nothing of value comes from their publications.
Agreed. Even though I dislike Eyeo's practices as well (letting the ad companies pay for whitelisting their ads), it's a better outcome than outright banning ad blockers (or if Axel Springer had gotten their ways, "light" web-browsing via reader modes would have been turned illegal as well)
It could also go the other way and someone could sue Google or other companies. Web browsers and ad blockers run on the client not the server, generally with the authorisation of the owner of said client system. It is a technical measure to prevent unauthorised code (i.e. unwanted ads) from running on the system, imposed by the owner of the system. Anti ad blocker tech is really an attempt to run software on someone's computer by circumventing measures the owner of said computer has deployed to prevent that software from running, and has not authorised it to run. That sounds very similar to the definition of computer fraud / abuse / unauthorised access to a computer system / illegal hacking in many jurisdictions.
Then google could be sued everutime it distributes malware.
I can't wait for the day that saying "youtube" makes people say "what's this? a peertube instance?".
i can't wait for the day content is there. I always look there first but too often I can't find anything close to what I want.
Ditto. I want to use PeerTube, but network effect is a pain.
We probably need a few more years of network and storage improvements to make open video platforms properly viable. Video data is big and bandwidth is expensive, which makes keeping servers running over a certain size difficult.
What's the endgame here for users?
Do we just want a reasonable subscription price? Something we can genuinely afford?
If youtube doesn't play ads then they cant remain a service. At least not as it is today. Hosting costs money.
Im not shilling for them, i dont want ads either. And google are a terrible company. But im trying to be realistic.
Do we want cheap subscription?
Or a reduced service that can be maintained without so many ads
Do we just want 5 second skippable ads back?
Im just seeing this fight progressing to the point were youtube becomes subscription only and the ad blocker users have to pay or lose the service they obviously want to access.
I remember the days of tasteful ad banners on the internet. Those are long gone. Now everything has to be an obtrusive unskippable autoplay 30 second ad or cover half the screen.
It is not reasonable to browse the internet without an adblocker anymore, regardless of privacy concerns...
I remember when banners weren't tasteful and the internet was the wild west
Email spam ads in 1999...
They're already harvesting my data. The greedy fuckers can fuck right off if they think I'm going to pay a subscription for that. It's not as if Google isn't profitable as it is. They just want more, and it will never be enough.
I think the baseline of what I would want is:
I genuinely think Youtube premium is alrightish as it is. I wouldn't pay for it; though, since I do not want to give my money to Google. They are getting enough out of me that I don't want to give them.
I honestly just want the alternatives, like PeerTube, to have a funding model, which allows creators to get paid. Donations? Sure. Optionally ads? Sure. I think peertube having opt-in ads that go to the creator would go a long way.
FYI ad placement and type is decided by the creator not youtube. If you see a video full of ads in the middle it's because the creator of that video chose it to be so.
That's not necessarily true (though I'm sure in most cases it is). I remember cases where creators had to specifically ask Youtube support to disable mid-roll ads since they were disabled on the creators side but viewers still saw them. Also happened with non-monetized videos/channels. But it's been at least a year since I saw the last case of that, so maybe Youtube has fixed it in the meantime.
Yeah, just like Twitch, it seems that YouTube has a way of conveniently "forgetting" these directives every now and then
Yep. Sadly, in both companies management seems to be kinda inept when it comes to building proper user support
Not inept, malicious.
Me personally? I just want to watch them burn. Google I mean. This is my endgame
I love this
Yeah if we applied modern politics to corporations I think a lot of solid bbq could come out of it.
We need to start to shit on exxon like we shit on republicans
My problem is that paying for premium doesn’t actually remove the ads. YouTube fucked creators so hard that they started running their own sponsorship segments and product placements. So with premium I’m still paying to watch ads.
Well thankfully SponsorBlock still works whether or not you're a Premium subscriber. There's also always YouTube ReVanced for mobile (which has SponsorBlock built-in). There's no reason to ever have to put up with an online ad, no matter the source.
Sure but I’m not gonna pay for something I still have to actively fight with is the point.
That's not an issue with SponsorBlock because all it does it automatically skip parts of the video you specify. Google isn't going to war with SponsorBlock, and even if they did, I doubt there's much they can do, given the nature of how the addon works. So there's nothing to "actively fight with". Just set and forget.
Yay, basically. I paid for premium when I could afford it because I want the platform to keep working and I hate ads.
Premium prices went up without a lot of value for me so I quit paying. Technically premium offers a lot but the core feature that I actually cared about (YouTube without ads) never changed in value. If I had the option of only paying for that, I'd do it. To me, YT is a higher priority than any other streaming service. But they don't provide a way for me to only pay for the stuff I care about
Let creators choose: normal ads or sponsors. Not both. YouTube getting part of the sponsorship deal.
If they choose ads, YouTube goes back to 1 shippable ad after 1 second.
OR
A subscription which is just "no ads". No YouTube music, not Google drive, no nothing. Just a cheap "no ads" subscription.
That being said, even if option 1 happens, I'm probably not uninstalling ublock. Once YouTube forced me to install it, it's impossible to use the internet without it. Actions have consequences.
I'd seriously consider a sub that just removed ads if the price is fair. I don't give a shit about premium, red or whatever it's called.
Remember when good ads used to be unobtrusive? Return to that.
They were?
There already is a subscription service, it's called YouTube Red or Premium or something.
Yes, i said that, that one point was more about making it cost less so its affordable.
I’m actually rediscovering YouTube right now. A few years back it seemed like too many attempts were a huge unskippable ad, for a short video. Ads were way too high a percentage. And even when a video was a bit longer, any attempt to scroll was met with more ads, and maybe getting reset to the beginning
This time around, I typically see one ad, skippable after 5 seconds, then another every 15 minutes or so. While I’d rather not have ads, it’s not bad. Even better, content has matured enough in the years since I first tried it, that there’s actually longer stuff worth watching: the percentage of ad time is much lower, so I do get entertainment value rather than just be fed constant ads. I could watch that.
I’ve been toying with a “Pay Per View” model for a bit. But it’s sort of modified.
Basically you can “pay what you want” on a per view basis. You as a user get to decide how valuable your view is and pay a creator that much each time you watch a video. Maybe this gets linked to watch time somehow to avoid people just spamming short content. YouTube presumably gets a cut to keep the lights on.
Creators making actually good content will hopefully attract viewers willing and able to pay, and viewers that have the means and really like a creator can up the amount they are paying. This could be on a per channel basis, or just a blanket setting of I pay someone ¢10 a view or something.
Idk, seems like a bit of a silly idea now I type it out
Its very socialist. So i like it.
I think this is going to continue to the point we have AI adblockers that edit the files free of ads for us in real-time. Then hopefully the technology jumps to Televisions etc.
Google's really helping it along in that direction.
Before Sponsorblock I had an idea of abusing YT's auto-generated subtitles to auto-skip sponsor spots in a very rough manner
Someone has apparently toyed with the idea of using AI to detect sponsor segments in subtitles to generate sponsorblock segments. I don't think it went anywhere though.
The community is ridiculously fast at submitting segments IME, especially on tech-oriented channels. Tubular even allows you to submit segments right from within the app which is really handy.
I feel the benefits of automatically detecting them (AI or otherwise) would be easier to realize at a larger scale - sounds really interesting though. Training such a thing probably wouldn't be too difficult seeing as we have a massive library of timestamps in Sponsorblock's database
Ever since YouTube started this nonsense I moved to invidious and haven't looked back
This nonsense is about one step away from affecting Invidious too.
I tried using invidious but its was super slow and i only ever got 720p max is this fixed?
I have a lot of love for invidious, but I love in fear of yt finding a way to nullify it with some fuckery.
Recently they started blocking ips of VPS providers... so I can't run an instance on a VPS, it has to be local.
Time not having [corporation]'s advertisements shoved in my face is time well spent
I've been seeing the black screen on Firefox. Still better than an ad, but it would be nice to be gone lol
I rather see a black screen than an ad. Pretty much what I do with twitch, those corpo fuck heads can fuck off with their shitty cringy ass ads that make you loose a braincell everything it plays.
When I stream YouTube to my TV, I get 15-30 seconds of unskippable ads with the ability to skip enabling at the 15 or 30 second mark. The full length of the ad is 90+ seconds (according to the timer that never goes down). Would this implementation work similarly? 6 seconds of a silent black screen is fine; 90 or more seconds because the skip button is also missing would be more annoying (or be a nice time for a bathroom break).
I recently had to watch YouTube with ads on my tv, because smartube stopped working and needed to wait a day for a new patch.The ads are insane and i stopped watching anything on yt. I can't imagine anyone consuming content this way.
If your tv is using an Android-based OS: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
Hulu used to work this way with ad blockers back in the day
Youtube is becoming too useless. But no change in the addiction. 😐
If I'm watching YouTube I'm not too worried about my time. The black screen is worth it as long as it directly spites their greedy asses.
GrayJay has also been very quick to push updates. I haven't had any issues watching YouTube videos on there. Hopefully more content creators will continue to spread out across multiple services so that there's better competition with YouTube.
Soon we'll all be free as the enshittification snake eats its own tail.
I've been enjoying Odysee a lot. It doesn't have much content but it works great. Hopefully content creators start uploading there as well.
Nobody mentioning Grayjay for Android?
I have never used peertube or heard about it until i signed up for social medias in the fediverse I only heard of rumble and odessy
I'm actually annoyed that NewPipe stopped working again and Invidious' download speeds are glacial
Grayjay seems to fix things real fast, been using that a lot lately
Grayjay has been staying on top of it. Had several plugin updates lately.
Did it stop working again tonight? It was working earlier today on my tablet.
Been 2 days that it stopped for me. Won't play or download any videos
6 seconds?! GASP
I thought the whole point of server side ads was that they are embedded in the video, not blockable?
Just because a company makes lots of money, doesn't mean they know wtf they are doing or are smart.
Sure they know! Every level of middle managers knows exactly what the status of the graphs of goals and progress of their team!
this is true if the client itself has no knowledge of what is ads and what isn't, so like if they have no skip to time feature, no clickable links etc. Otherwise the plugin could just search for those elements and mute or skip if they are present.
with YouTube it just adds another layer of complexity for ad blockers
There's loads of information people making apps like NewPipe can save, and lots of that is fighting tracking systems, too.
Presumably the implementation is not as seamless as that, and 3rd party clients do not handle it like 1st party ones.
I wonder how this affects people that setup Pi Hole and VPN and all that.
I don't think DNS black holing was ever effective against YouTube ads. I use mullvad with a DNS filter for ads + uBO and still got served a few ad placeholders from YouTube in the past 10 days. I believe the actual ad was blocked by uBO, not the DNS filter.
You are correct. Google serves ads from the same domains as the actual legitimate content therefore sending those requests to null via DNS blackhole would simply block YouTube entirely. UBO and other browser extensions strip out or work around the problematic code itself to render a functioning page without the ads.
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?
I saw some social media post from proton recently, where they showed a lost of countries without ads (obviously with the hint "we have servers there 😉"). Not sure Morocco was among them, but there definitely seem to be countries like that.
Edit: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7zEbEDMdhd/?igsh=MXBnYW00YzNnandhdg==
Not Morocco, but I've experienced this before. Been to a country where YouTube didn't display any ads.
Wonder if someone could make a browser add-on that replaces the black screen with something else. Like plays a short song or something.
Some random no context 6s youtube videowould be funny
Or an ad
I'm a scrub that pays for YouTube Premium and I've also been running into songs and videos that just don't play recently because I'm using uBlock Origin.
Oh that's messed up! Especially if you're paying them!
the moment I see a damn grammarly ad on freetube I'm dropping $100 on real debrid
fine on firefox and ubo here
I've been seeing more and more State Farm ads sneaking past Ublock Origin in Firefox since about a month ago. Like OP, I also found that refreshing the page solves the problem. As long as F5 continues to fix the issue, I can put up with seeing 1 second of an ad or a black screen.
0 ads or hickups here with UBO check to see if you have other extensions that give YT extra functionality they mess up UBO
There really was some ads that get through last month, but UBO fixed that last week. Either you got lucky or you are not in that set - Google do A/B updates before.
I had issues prior to removing other extentions that gave premium features. After removing them I've had 0 issues
Those that make peaceful ad-blocking impossible make violent rage quiting inevitable.
Hot take for those who hate YouTube ads while still keep using it. You deserve it. The answer is right in front of us, stop using it there are alternative out there.
If your seconds were that precious you shouldn't be wasting them watching YouTube.
Hey, seconds add up fast if you're watching a lot of videos.