So... whats stopping something like sponsorblock from nixing this potentially bankrupting choice?
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
58424 readers
4670 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I mean, I'll just continue to not use Youtube...
I will see you on peertube ;)
I really wish this would gain some traction. As it is, there is just not enough content there to compete with YouTube in any reasonable way.
Well the problem here is that youtubers need some type of monetization too for compensation. Idk Peertube can solve this without ads.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is new to me; are there any decent android apps for it?
They’re working on creating an official android app that’s all I know.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Begun the arms race have .
Just wait until someone trains an AI to recognize and skip ads.
That poor AI.
This particular arms race began a couple of decades ago at least...
I'll be curious to see where this ends up going, as I doubt the community will take this lying down.
The few times I've had to go without an Ad blocker, I've seen just how bad the Ads have gotten - they're almost the same as regular TV Ad breaks now! ... And then YouTube Premium is just not a good deal in my eyes, £12.99 a month is an awful lot to pay just to not see Ads.
The majority of of people using it will most definitely take it lying down as they're most likely not tech savvy enough to install a browser extension on a laptop if the only thing on the page was a large red install button.
That's why I specified the community, as in the more tech savy folks that would care about this, because I know that the wider public is surprisingly tech illiterate
Ads will probably stop me from watching YouTube completely. The huge surge of ads at some point was what stopped me from using Instagram.
load more comments
(2 replies)
You're not paying to not see ads. You're paying for the content on the platform. You can pay either by watching ads or by paying for premium.
Content creators get nothing from a subscription To YouTube premium.
You’re not paying for the content, you’re paying for and-free access to the content.
They get money from premium views. I believe they get significantly more per premium views than an add view.
This is true, no matter what ElevethHour and their downvote brigade want you to believe.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(8 replies)
Oh well. Youtube is useful as a podcast/streamer host now; no ads with sponsor block/ublock. Once that isn't the case they (Google) will get network blocked.
No real loss to me. I tend to prefer local download/host for convenience. Most channels are chaff anyway.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I saw someone say Twitch does this, but there are many Twitch ad blockers that work
load more comments
(2 replies)
This must cost YouTube a fortune doing additional processing and reduced flexibility. They are going to hurt themselves and blockers will find a way.
There's already extensions that somehow skip sponsorship sections, so it won't even take that long.
That's "crowdsourced", i.e. manually done by volunteers on per-video basis.
I see a good use case for AI, can also be crowd sourced.
load more comments
(1 replies)
That's actually hurt by this because it uses timestamps supplied by users to work. But now they are off because the ads are of variable length. We can just hope that YouTube keeps the ability to link to a specific timestamp because then it has to calculate the difference and that can be used by Sponsorblock and adblockers alike.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Not really. They can precompute those and inject it in an MP4 file so long as the settings match and it's inserted right before an i-frame so that it doesn't corrupt b-frames. They already reencode everything with their preferred settings, so they only need to encode the ads for those same settings they already do. Just needs to be spliced seamlessly.
But YouTube uses DASH anyway, it's like HLS, the stream is served in individual small chunks so it's even easier because they just need to add chunks of ads where they can add mismatched video formats, for the same reason it's able to seamlessly adjust the quality without any audio glitches.
Ad blockers will find a way.
Re-encoding is one thing, but ads are more or less supposed to be dynamic based on user location and likely some other data to target them.
Offloading that to the client made a lot of sense but now they have to do this server-side, they have very smart people working on making this as efficient as possible using tricks you've mentioned and more but it is still more effort than before. All for something that will likely be circumvented eventually.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sample the color of a specified pixel (or something recognizable in the streaming format) every 30 frames from the original video.
Store collection of pixels in a database and share in a peer to peer network or stored on invidious instances. Because the sample size is small, and the database can be split up by youtube channel, the overall size and traffic should remain low.
When streaming a youtube video, if the plugin detects that the pixel in the video doesn't match the one in the database, automatically skip until where the pixel matches the data in the database.
That is prone to error, just a pixel can be too small of a sample. I would prefer something with hashes, just a sha1sum every 5 seconds of the current frame. It can be computed while buffering videos and wait until the ad is over to splice the correct region
The problem with (good) hashes is that when you change the input even slightly (maybe a different compression algorithm is used), the hash changes drastically
Yes, that's why I'm proposing it as opposed to just one pixel to differentiate between ad and video. Youtube videos are already separated in sections, just add some metadata with a hash to every one.
I think that downsizing the scene to like 8x8 pixels (so basically taking the average color of multiple sections of the scene) would mostly work. In order to be undetected, the ad would have to match (at least be close to) the average color of each section, which would be difficult in my opinion: you would need to alter each ad for each video timestamp individually.
Yes, that could be an alternative to computing hashes, I don't know what option would be less resource intensive
load more comments
(2 replies)
My gut reaction is that this won't work long-term. Users on youtube often point to specific timestamps in a video in comments or link to specific timestamps when sharing videos, meaning there needs to be some way to identify the timestamp excluding ads. And if there's a way to do that there's a way to detect ads.
Of course, there's always the chance they just scrap these features despite how useful they are and how commonly they're used; they've done similar before.
YT already scrapped (or broke) setting the start/end timestamps for embedded videos. That hasn't worked for at least the last few weeks. Embed videos now always start at 0
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
The whole point of having ads be separate from the video is for youtube to easily distance itself from malicious ads. If an ad is malicious it can easily be reported and taken out of commission. But if ads are now part of the video, what stops an ad from being an ISIS beheading clip in the middle of a video made for children? If there is still a way to still report it, then there is a way to recognize the ad.
Also how will this interfere with creators? Editing a video and giving it a proper pace is already a huge challenge. But now ads can just be automaticaly cut into it without the creators control? That's gonna fuck up so many quality channels. That's already a big problem with the current system, bit at least you can skip or block them.
load more comments
(2 replies)
some people still recommend using a VPN and IP address from a country where YouTube ads are prohibited, such as Myanmar, Albania, or Uzbekistan.
Wait, you can just prohibit YouTube ads at a national level? That's somehow awesome and terrifying at the same time.
That's somehow awesome and terrifying at the same time.
The people of this country would find it just the normal thing.
load more comments
(13 replies)
I am excited. This will break my YouTube addiction.
It'll only affect me when I need to fix something I'm unfamiliar with, and it'llead creators to using other platforms for that kind of material, and lower the barrier to entry.
I don't know why Google is shooting themselves in the foot like this. I mean, it'll be profitable in the short run, yes, but this will almost certainly be devastating to their bottom line in the long run if it works as planned.
load more comments
(4 replies)
How it works is that once you start getting them, the video will create a sort of queue with ads before each video that can't be skipped and have a red bar (not yellow). They are not literally part of the video stream, it's a separate stream that tries to act as the legitimate ad. It's called SSAP and I've been experiencing it from the last weekend.
Ublock Origin has released a temporary fix yesterday here
Alternatively, you can use this extension to redirect from YouTube videos to piped.video I used it, it works very well, can't guarantee for much more.
Anything that makes it distinct gives a blocking opportunity, I assume?
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
What impossible? There's sponsorblock. Just add a new category.
Humanity accepts your challenge! See y'all on the battlefield ;-)
lights molotov cocktail
...
"are we not going to do that, or....? asking for a friend, of course"
That comes later but I like the energy.
load more comments
(5 replies)
view more: next ›