After yet another crackdown on ad-blockers, YouTube users are noticing videos that load slowly and direct them to a support page about turning off ad-blocking extensions.
It’s a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked “no vids for u” message, you’d get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being “buggy” and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no “smoking gun” blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.
The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.
I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?
Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you’re visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you’re adblocking.
I’ve been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?
In the ultimate, you’d need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.
In worst case, you can’t start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.
And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.
Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.
AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn’t line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn’t line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.
I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like “I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure” that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.
No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don’t want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn’t exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.
The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You’ll have to watch out for that one on your own.
I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.
If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day
Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.
I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.
Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.
Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.
Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.
i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).
Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.
If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.
If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.
If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.
If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?
It’s a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked “no vids for u” message, you’d get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being “buggy” and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no “smoking gun” blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.
The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.
I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?
Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you’re visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you’re adblocking.
Relevent Username: If you went to Tau Zero, you can finish watching every youtube video in mere moments from your point of view
Because the “Why is the video being slow?” pop-up now sends you to the page blaming adblockers instead of the ISP shaming thing it used to do.
I’ve been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?
In the ultimate, you’d need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.
In worst case, you can’t start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.
And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.
Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.
AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn’t line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn’t line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.
I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like “I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure” that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.
No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don’t want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn’t exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.
The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You’ll have to watch out for that one on your own.
I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.
If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day
They are probably trying to find that spot where it’s just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.
Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.
I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.
I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can’t be skipped
Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.
Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.
Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.
i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).
Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.
If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.
If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.
If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).
So you don’t find something else to do.
i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.
That’s probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.