I am not for ads but what is so difficult about adding them to the video stream. This should make adblockers useless since they can’t differentiate between the video and the ad. I could just imagine it would be difficult to track the view time of the user and this could make the view useless since they can’t prove it to the ad customer. I have no in depth knowledge about hls but as I know it’s an index file with urls to small fragments of the streamed file. The index file could be regenerated with inserted ad parts and randomized times to make blocking specific video segments useless.
I worked at a video ad server that offered a stream stitched solution going back to 2013. It comes down to development work/cost that the companies need to take on. Ultimately they would benefit from the cost required, but they wanted to be cheap and do a client side solution instead.
Ah yes that makes a lot of sense. Googles war on adblockers seems really expensive but we don’t know the numbers maybe it’s still cheaper.
The HLS integration we offered definitely had a premium attached to it as well as an additional cost to the CDN that required the integration to live on. So it’s not cheap.
It is weird that Google, with it’s infinite pockets, hasn’t pushed a stream stitched solution all these years until recently.
It already happens, videos contain sponsored segments added by the creator.
But even those have a solution in the form of Sponsorblock, which crowdfunds the location in the video containing sponsored segments in order to skip them.
Google should face the fact that they won’t ever be able to win.
Sponsorblock works with static timestamps provided by users. This would not work if the ads are inserted at randomized times.
Cause you need to insert it every time for every viewer. People get different ads and those ads obviously change over time. So embedding one ad into the video permanently makes no sense. I’m pretty sure YouTube does it the way they do cause the alternative is not feasible.
You can still do dynamic ad serving in a stream stitched integration. It’s just that the content and the ads are being served by the same CDN, hence why you can’t block the ads without also blocking the content. In the manifest file there are m3u8 chucks, the file is essentially broken up into 5/10 second chunks, and when the video segment chunk is coming to an ad break, it stitches in dynamically an ad m3u8 chunk that the ad server dynamically selects based on the ads they currently have trafficked in their system.
Exactly
That wouldn’t make sense in the case of hls since the stream consists of multiple fragments of a video and you would just insert the ad fragments. This would only require changing the index file which could be done again and again with no effort and needs no reencoding of the video file.
The mom should be Firefox and the kids the plugins.
It’s so weird that YouTube is their second most profitable venture after adsense. It’s like they thought, we have a virtual monopoly on internet ads, Internet video, and web browsers. Let’s combine their power to make people watch non stop ads while tracking them worse than the CIA. Then, let’s be very surprised when people don’t like us and we get hit with antitrust lawsuits. Fuck Google.
Then, let’s be very surprised
They’re not the least bit surprised. They did the math. The profit is more than the penalty.
Those fines are just the cost of doing business.
Guess we should switch to incarcerating members of the board if we want them to really feel it.
Google went from don’t be evil to fuck you all.
To put it shortly: “Went public”.
They have been evil for far longer than that
There is a whole topic in wasm called server side rendered DOM.
I hardly think there is a chance to block adds when they achieve it to render all the content on their side.
Web devs busy at work making the internet more and more unusable each day. And they wonder why I despise them.
I don’t like to say this, but:
AI
There are twitch adblockers, it’s just ublock origin that doesn’t work on it anymore, people did find a way.
What’s funny to me is how they are in a fight for their company with the FTC, and they want to continue provoking people by increasing their revenue on the back of their users on a service they might have a technical monopoly on? Hmmmm…
Line must go up…
Provoking people and in dispute with FTC don’t relate but if the FTC broke them up then you would really regret not cashing in while you could
Insofar as the FTC is in a legal case with google, American users do not have individual standing. But the court of public opinion is another venue without the need for such logic. As this is a political decision to enforce and proceed eight the case as much as an economic one, I would beg to disagree that provocation is in their best interest.
Perhaps some would like to file a complaint? https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/submit-merger-antitrust-comment
Is mom stabbing herself?
The problem is when they start doing in stream ads, that will require something new. That said, people have been doing that with cable for a while, it’ll be real interesting to see what clever stuff comes out to detect them in stream
This is something that would be a surprisingly good use case for machine learning. Fingerprint the ads by watching ahead in the stream, then skip that section.
Actually, I think older algorithmic methods will work. I think that’s how TiVo worked. The annoying part is you’ll have to wait a bit at the start of the video.
It’ll require a new mother fucking video platform. We need to just collectively let YouTube die and move on.
There’s Rumble
I fuckin hate Nazis.
Then drown them out with enough non-Nazis, that’s what youtube does
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Not today
This is just wrong. None of those will prevent server side ads.
Peertube is holding the folded chair ready for action
I have serious doubt’s but it seems to be the best option right now
I love how people will complain about ads on YouTube and then go on to complain that PeerTube sucks because “who’s going to pay the hosting fees?” 🙄 For the record I like PeerTube but Android clients are ass right now
That’s not my biggest complaint. The problem is it isn’t being pushed forward. It needs some serious work to even be remotely compared to YouTube.
It is getting better but I don’t think the current leadership is agrees I’ve enough. I’d like to see it move to its own legal entity with dedicated budgeting. They need to raise some serious money to get competitive. Developers are expensive but they do much better work than a few French guys.
not pictured: the pihole just out of frame, holding a shotgun
??? Pihole never blocked YouTube ads.
It blocked YouTube ads when ads where served from other domains or subdomains. Now that they’re served from the same subdomains as videos, it’s not blocking anymore.
How do you use Pihole to block YouTube ads?
Block youtube.com. Quite effective, if you ask me.
all these people missing the part where I said “holding a shotgun” – I guarantee you’ll never see a YouTube ad on your network again if no data from their servers ever gets past your router. It’s not a subtle or precise option, but it is highly effective. Much like a shotgun.
Then you can just use peertube, piped, or invidious when that gets fixed
Your comment was misleading though, as you can see from the replies.
Invidious is currently out of order. Not sure if they would be able to cut out the ads.
never underestimate the tenacity and ingenuity of spiteful pirates. It’s been a while since I last used invidious, but I can’t imagine it being permanently broken. in the meantime – Piped, then?
If things get real stupid, we might have to employ AI to identify and strip ads from videos before mirroring. edit: Someone has, in fact, already trained an AI to identify ads in a video, with apparently 97.4% accuracy. So, the hard part’s already been done.
There has been some back and forth between Goolag’s countermeasures and Invidious’ countermeasures before arriving at the current situation, Invidious seemingly having lost the battle.
From their git issue tracker:
Hello,
Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.
Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore. (Some datacenter IPs may still work, but that’s a matter of time until they don’t anymore.) … This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.
Newpipe works on Android and Freetube works on Linux. I guess a local invidious instance works, too. But then, you’d lose pooling.
Piped wasn’t working earlier.
You can’t. I have no idea what this person is talking about.
tbh if they do server side ads I’d be glad knowing that it costs them too much that they should be glad they’re not losing money by ads, which I think they will.
I want the context of the original photo
Until Google demanded from its vassal (Mozilla) the removal of support for extensions. Mozilla doesn’t have enough resources to do without Google
So open themselves up for more antitrust lawsuits? Telling another browser what to do.
When did this happen?
I have no idea why you’re getting down voted. It’s essentially true.
The arrangement is vital for Mozilla. According to the Mozilla Foundation’s 2021–2022 financial statement, which is the most recent one published, $510 million out of its $593 million in revenue came courtesy of Google’s search payments. https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-potential-loser-google-antitrust-search-ruling/
Unfortunately it happens more frequently than I’d like
If they put the ads in the stream, you can just fast-forward. I don’t think it’ll work out well for Google.
Oh, turns out each ad is 15 seconds long per an agreement to standardize playback.
Oh, turns out you can’t skip the first 30 seconds of a video.
Oh, turns out if the first 15 seconds doesn’t play, the playback disables entirely.
~Solutions a lowly forklift repair technician came up with in five seconds.
Imagine what a Google developer might think of.
