Technology

So... whats stopping something like sponsorblock from nixing this potentially bankrupting choice?

I mean, I'll just continue to not use Youtube...

Begun the arms race have .

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.

I saw someone say Twitch does this, but there are many Twitch ad blockers that work

This must cost YouTube a fortune doing additional processing and reduced flexibility. They are going to hurt themselves and blockers will find a way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What impossible? There's sponsorblock. Just add a new category.

We used to just get up and do the dishes while whatever injected nonsense interupted what we were watching on TV. And when it became too much we turned to DVDs or piracy. Then streaming was the "savior" until whoever funded it realized that more users do not equal more money. And now we are almost back to square one. This is just played out at this point. Google/Yt/TIktok etc are just betting on the addictive nature of instant gratification to survive.

At some point, I think, all the effords of adblocking (grayjay, newpipe, sponsorblock, ublock) will seem impractical when a download (and maybe now scan to cut out ads and sponsor segments) will achive the same. And then peer to peer is the most practical way to share that instead of redoing all the work.

Until downloading is hindered too much and someone somewhere just has OBS with some adhoc script on top running 24/7 to capture youtube videos. The conversation of when is adblocking piracy etc seems to me to be coming to a natural end (at least as far as legalilties go).

One saving grace the internet has bestowed on media is that it is easier to follow creators and fund their work (if you can afford it).

Humanity accepts your challenge! See y'all on the battlefield ;-)