- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
This wouldn’t be a problem IF content creators were paid a fair share. I wouldn’t actually mind ads nearly as much knowing that the channels I enjoy watching were getting paid reasonably for every ad that I watched. Google has the technology to make it possible.
Also if the ads were actually curated and we didn’t have crypto scams running amok
nothing to see here :)
Now here’s a thought - what if the real workaround Google are using here is targeting only non manifest V3 users?
That would reduce the cost of doing this, since chrome users are already forced to swallow ads and could just be served as normal.
If it’s built into the video I watch in mpv can’t I just skip?
Yep, can I play it at 2x speed or skip ahead? If not, then it’s the ad. At the very least blank the video and mute the sound. I’ll enjoy a moment to breath and consider if there’s something better I should be doing.
Forced quite breaks of nothing instead of adpocalyps Is such an unironic wholesome idea. Our brains really need that more.
Time to switch to odysee fully I guess
I don’t know why you’d go with a crypto scheme if what you actually need is video.
Peertube is federated just like lemmy, so it doesn’t have to cook the planet to achieve decentralisation.
Fair enough. I completely forgot about peertube. Been using newpipe predominantly and odysee was the first alternative that came to mind.
Thanks for reminding me about peer tube. A client recommendation would be great. I’ve used p2play.
I’ve heard that some versions of the Blockchain are not based on computing power and therefore are not nearly as awful re: emissions. But I don’t really know much about it so I decided to look into Odysee.
Instead I found out all about how the company that created the protocol was blasted out of existence by the SEC for selling unregistered securities & the website is full of Nazis because they don’t do anything about fucking Nazis.
Never did reach a conclusion about the blockchain thing. Kinda stopped caring. Sounds like a clusterfuck.
Proof of stake is what it’s called, but then it’s even more of a ponzi scheme because you have to buy in. Like they’re literally recreating coconut island.
Also nobody seems to actually be doing it, possibly for exactly that reason. It’s just a green-washing promise of an idea.
Federation and crypto are two completely opposite philosophies of decentralisation.
Crypto is based on zero-trust, which sounds cool and edgy if you’re 15, but in practice it turns out that the people drawn to a zero trust system are untrustworthy. It’s not surprising that it’s full of Nazis.
Federation is designed around trust, which is the way our meatspace social networks actually work, and I think it’s the only reasonable way forward.
It seems that Youtube’s IT department has decided to utilize the budget and show investors that they are not getting paid for nothing. After all, Youtube is only testing a new type of advertising, and there are already a dozen solutions to the problem in the comments.
If only I had a client with support for fast forward… Oh right. I do. Neat.
Some people said that skipping is blocked during the ad. But if that is the case I am sure either the timestamp is predictable or somewhere on the client side you could find the information about the timestamp.
My client pre-downloads videos, so I can fast forward and rewind at will.
That’s neat, it’d be identifiable in a fashion similar to missile logic. You know where ads are based on where they aren’t. Actually skipping it would be difficult but muting and doing something else for a predetermined period has been a workaround since radio.
Reloading usually works, but gets old.
Mobile Firefox seems to still work
This is really putting a dent in my enjoyment of YouTube
Damn, this could stop Invidious, Piped and Newpipe from being able to block ads.
That could also make them okay with those existing, since they’ll now play ads. Third party clients wouldn’t be such a threat anymore to their bottomline, and people can get the privacy benefits of going through those proxies.
people can get the privacy benefits of going through those proxies.
Exactly. This is why it will still be a threat to data hungry Google.
It might take a lot more effort, but I don’t think this will be the end. Google is required by law to label ads as such, giving these tools an opportunity to detect and skip them.
What law (and jurisdiction) are you thinking of?
My understanding is that this would be covered with a blanket note on the page if it detects you aren’t running Premium.
In Germany, you can’t just show advertisement in a YouTube video without marking it. Same rules for sponsorship…
At the very least I’d say that UK/Germany would be a good bet. Though the idea of just plastering the note over the whole video might do the trick, considering that’s what some German channels already do if they are sponsored to stay on the safe side.
You still aren’t referencing a law. You are just saying you don’t like it.
I ANAL and am not a lawyer but: There ARE laws about saying if a video contains paid advertisement. That is why basically every single video on youtube has the “contains sponsored content” tag.
There is no law saying that the specific seconds of the video need to be tagged. Which makes sense. It has been a minute since I watched network TV but I don’t recall giant “AD” on my screen any time Hikaru Shida wasn’t.
Germany has the “Medienstaatsvertrag” §8.3, which requires advertisements to be easily recognizable as such and also adequately separated through audio or visual cues.
Is there a loophole where they could delay the ad marking like 5 seconds into a longer ad so you’d have to watch at least 5 seconds before an extension can detect it? Is the law specific about it having to be marked as an ad for the entire duration?
It will be after the inevitable lawsuit happens about 0.0002 seconds after they fully roll this out.
That would mean running an unmarked ad for five seconds, which would create an interesting legal question. But YouTube also buffers content a good chunk of upcoming content, so there’s enough upcoming video material to check.
Lol this would mean that every website running a looped video in the bg will now haved ads play. Nice.
I honestly wondered why they haven’t done this yet for years
It’s quite likely that the cost actually outweighs the gains. Adblocking really isn’t all that prevalent across Internet users as a whole. I think the stats are something like 10% or lower.
But it’s always been their server. It’s not like Geico provided that video snippet
Yes, but server-side injection, if I understand it correctly, means you have to actually remux the videos into a single stream. That’s additional processing load, which is basically their main cost of business.
And yet Google is investing all this time and money into trying to block the blockers. It’s really quite stupid.
Well, most of their efforts have been relatively low cost on their end. Stuff like manifest v3 isn’t actually particularly expensive to do. Just requires you to have near total capture of the web browser market.
Stuff like manifest v3 isn’t actually particularly expensive to do.
Oh yes, a complete overhaul of the way their browser engine works is absolute child’s play and doesn’t cost a thing. 🙄😒
That’s ok, I don’t need to visit YouTube at all!
Besides the rare DIY video I’m never on there at all
How likely we can defeat it with something similar to YT’s own ContentID system? We download a tons of ads, process it with feature extraction, and match it on the fly to carve out those ads. A similar system to SB can be used to let people mark where the ads is, process, and share.
I always wondered why they haven’t been doing it from the start, seams like it is not as simple as I imagine.
People will take it, there is no other option and G is working hard not to allow another video platform.
Problem is ads they are playing are awful and loud. We will make way to silent them and black them out, it is not hard.
Bigger problem is content they are pushing is getting bad and is pushing creators into burnout. And I don’t want to see videos companies are creating, but want individual contributions.
They probably had thos ready to go a long time ago. It is just heavier on their servers so it costs more. Likely they had a number in mind about how many users would have to be using ad-blockers before rolling this out, to balance costs.
As is, I can’t make it through a 30 sec ad. I will peace out 100% of the time.
OK, can I be real about this for a second?
I’m torn about Youtube ad stuff. Genuinely.
On the one hand the ads suck, we have a good way to bypass them and I certainly don’t want to watch Youtube videos if the ads are unskippable.
On the other hand, if I’m being honest I watch more Youtube than Netflix or Amazon Prime and I sure give those guys money for a subscription. If I counted the cost per watched minute, Youtube Premium would make way more sense than a bunch of subs I do pay.
But I also don’t want to watch a Youtube that is a paid service. That was never the point. The reason I engage with it so much is it’s supposed to be UGC, not TV.
So yeah, torn. Youtube is very weird and the relationship we all have with it is super dysfunctional, creators and viewers alike. We made a very strange future and now we have to deal with it.
I think Google created a model that is unsustainable from the get go, because they have infinite money glitches and used this to monopolize the market and lure in creators.
It could be sustainable for non-premium users if the amount of ads was similar to what it was, idk, 10 years ago, 14 years ago. However back then they were not making nearly enough to cover their costs and pay creators handsomely.
I like to support creators but I also liked youtube better when it was mostly common people doing their thing however the fuck they wanted, instead of this hyper-profissionalized tv-wannabe corporate channels that grow to be mammoths.
Problem is, we accepted the weird assumption that successful content creators on the internet are entitled to be millionaires, or to make a lot more money per month than say, a successful person in a common profession. If content creators got into youtube with the mindset that at best they’d live a life that is middle class instead of trying to become rich, then youtube would need a lot less money than it needs today, and content would go back to being more relaxed not mega professional and extremely polished videos from channels that employ dozens of people.
But alas, I guess successful video creators on youtube are supposed to be rich and deserve to earn more money than a doctor, and youtube is supposed to be a viable source of income for mega corporations that used to be mainly TV and other traditional media but then freaked out about losing people to the internet.
That’s what I thought at first but who am I kidding, if content creators got paid less youtube would still be very popular and google would still do whatever the fuck they want and shove more ads in it anyways. And also, paying top creators so much money is another way to prevent competition, creators won’t choose another platform if they can’t match the pay.
The deciding factor for me is how little of the money goes to creators, and how arbitrarily Google twiddles the content guidelines. If I’m going to pay a subscription for the category of content on YouTube, I’ll pay for Nebula and Dropout so that I know my money is actually making it to the people I like.
The problem is that user generated content still takes time. Which means money. Also, people don’t want vlogs with a drywall background anymore and the number of creators who can get away with simple prop free skits are double digit, at best. So making the videos also cost money.
People make up this fantaasy land where art should be done with no compensation to be pure. Which ignores that the vast majority of art in human history was either made by the independently wealthy or as a “patron” system where… an independently wealthy person paid an artist to make them look good.
And that even extends to the modern day. People get angry about “nepo babies” but… it takes a lot of time and money to refine your music to a meaningful degree. The garage bands that get discovered playing at a local bar are VERY much the exception and almost everyone universally considers their best albums to be the first couple after they got signed by a label and could drill down and refine it.
Youtube and the like are basically the first time that “the everyperson” could make art for a living. Unfortunately… that means they need to get paid. Ads are of very questionable use. Youtube Premium is almost universally praised by any creator who is willing to talk about it. But we need some way of paying those mid tier creators who are popular enough to do it for a living but not popular enough to get 120 bucks a year from their fans to upload MAYBE one video (looking at you Michael Reeves).
Early youtube with the drywall backgrounds in skits or just random bits of life were what made it fun. The fact that the majority of the content now means it is just another streaming service with an expected income for someone instead of being something they did in their spare time. The switch from amateur to professional content ruined youtube.
The problem is that user generated content still takes time. Which means money. Also, people don’t want vlogs with a drywall background anymore and the number of creators who can get away with simple prop free skits are double digit, at best. So making the videos also cost money.
That’s why I don’t use Sponsorblock: it hurts the wrong people.
But I’ll still block the ads because to hell with Google and their monopoly. I’m only interested in supporting the artists directly, Google can get fucked.
I pay for YouTube Premium. I get a lot of value from it, and streaming video isn’t cheap. I don’t think it’s reasonable for anyone to think they should provide it for free.
Yeeeah, but my issue with that is they generated the expectation that it’d be free by using their investment money to muscle out smaller competitors. There was a time where Youtube was the biggest of a set of UGC video sites and some of the others were competitive. Now it’s the only real alternative.
So from that perspective they made their bed, now they sleep in it.
Yeeeah, but my issue with that is they generated the expectation that it’d be free by using their investment money to muscle out smaller competitors.
All of YouTube’s competitors were doing the same thing, use ads to subsidize free video hosting. It just happened to be that YouTube was the survivor. If there was competition, it would likely have the same business model that YouTube has. Spotify may be building a YouTube competitor based on the same model.
Yep, that’s also fair. Google is the leftovers from the “let them fight” approach to venture capital. Now we have a monopoly on many areas and nobody’s left to do anything when Godzilla comes to visit.
I don’t give a shit if it’s reasonable anymore.
Google has done enough shit over the years, ruined enough services, some of them paid services, and continually harmed content creators with their trash algorithm, all the while hosting hate on their platform, that I don’t give a damn what’s fair to them anymore.
They won’t get a penny from me ever again. I’ll continue to find every way of accessing any content on that platform that I choose, without ads, and without paying them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or reason. It is entirely, 100%, because fuck Google.
If you’re not actively blocking connections to their servers (by any number of means) it doesn’t matter whether you consciously give them money or not.
There is so much third party tracking in apps and websites that it’s really got to be at the network level. They make bank by tracking you and selling that data for profit.
I’ve been Google-free for months now and so far the only inconvenience has been ReCAPTCHAs not loading, but that’s limited to just a handful of websites that I don’t care enough to use in the first place.
If needed, I would spend 40 times the time and effort to watch one of their videos without a single ad than it would take to just watch their ads with the video I want to see sprinkled in.
I used to whitelist yt on my ad block because a I know portion of it goes to the creators. Then yt took advantage of me by adding more and more intrusive ads. Now I support creators directly whenever I can.
100% agree. I follow a few content creators who include a Cash App or Paypal information in the description box. They don’t demand cash** because they do it for the love of what they do, and don’t demand subscriptions or anything else. If I have an extra dollar, I send it. I’m guessing this either isn’t their only revenue stream or do well enough that it is. If everyone who is appreciative would do a dollar or few donations, maybe it is a livble wage, with or without youtube’s payment?
The problem is that the patreon model inherently only supports the big creators. Many of whom only BECAME big because they had alternative funding sources for so long.
For example: Giant Bomb more or less imploded a few years back. Nextlander (Alex, Brad, and Vinny), Remap (Formerly Waypoint but Patrick Klepek, Rob Zachny, Cado Contreras) , and Jeff Gerstmann (hmmm? I wonder who that could be) and even Giant Bomb (Fandom) are doing great. But people like Abby Russel or Renata Price very much immediately fell into that “Well, I like her but she is one person and I am already blowing 20 or 30 bucks a month on patreons…” hole.
And we see that on youtube/twitch. Creators will mostly not care and then suddenly do a year long subathon because they understand… they are in that threshold where they make just enough off of ad and sponsor revenue that they can just keep their resume updated but are fucked if Youtube/twitch change ANYTHING. They need to get to that threshold where people will subscribe to a patreon.
And the “Well, I will just subscribe to the creators I think are worth it” inherently fucks them over.
I’ll add on that, for all his many flaws, Ludwig Ahlgren (?) has done a lot of good discussion on this topic. Because as twitch and youtube stop giving streamers giant signing bonuses, it gets harder and harder for the next crop of big streamers to come into existence. Because if there isn’t money to get people out of that O(100) concurrents mid-tier… yeah.
That’s a fair point, I do pay for subs in some smaller sites. A lot of the time I still watch the Youtube version because… well, that way the creators get paid twice and I’m probably already on YT, but still.
I do try to block ads, but tbh it’s impossible to be mad at Google for pushing them. YouTube is a modern miracle of engineering – no other platform on the planet hosts the scale of video it does, indefinitely, with instant access, for free. It is more than fair for them to recoup the massive cost. Personally, if they had a cheaper version of Premium without the music features, I’d pay for it in a heartbeat.
Even if it’s a good product, you shouldn’t support the monopolist.
YouTube is a modern miracle of engineering – no other platform on the planet hosts the scale of video it does, indefinitely, with instant access, for free
Because Google chokes the market. There could be plenty of other competitors if Google charged for it like other companies would. Google subsidized YouTube with the rest of their company’s profits, not to provide us a free platform because they’re so nice, but to prevent competition. As long as YouTube was free, no other companies would be able to keep up with the costs, therefore no one else would enter the market.
If this shit is so expensive, and they want money, they can gate the content like every other streaming service, and then deal with the competition that would swell up.
If google “charged for it like other companies would” then youtube would not exist. The ONLY companies that can handle that volume of data are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft: The three big cloud service providers. And Microsoft noped the fuck out and Amazon have some strong purges on most streams.
And… there were other sites that tried to compete with youtube. Those of us who are old enough will remember subscribing to Rooster Teeth or Giant Bomb but watching the videos on youtube because “the site player is shit”. Let alone all the general purpose video sites that either became dirtier than a truck stop lizard who barebacks constantly or became liveleak and was all about Faces of Death and revenge porn… and then went out of business.
Videos is INCREDIBLY expensive. That is why the current rise of sites like Nebula and Gun Jesus’s site and Corridor Crew’s site all paywall watching anything. Because free video would cost way too much.
If this shit is so expensive, and they want money, they can gate the content like every other streaming service, and then deal with the competition that would swell up.
So… you actively dislike a model where you can choose to watch videos in exchange for watching an ad and instead insist upon paying to watch anything. AND still don’t want to pay to watch anything because Youtube Premium lets you do that anyway.
