YouTube has been cracking down on people using ad blockers. Now, a spokesperson says that using ad blockers could lead to "suboptimal viewing."

YouTube warns it might make your viewing experience worse if you don’t turn off your ad-blocker::YouTube has been cracking down on people using ad blockers. Now, a spokesperson says that using ad blockers could lead to “suboptimal viewing.”

  • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    271·
    1 year ago

    There’s already a sponsor blocker extension that skips when a sponsor is even mentioned, it would be trivial to add other embedded ads to it.

    • n0xew@lemmy.worldEnglish
      82·
      1 year ago

      They would just be able to create and stream 2 or more ad-encoded versions where ads are encoded in differently positions. Then no sponsorblock could save us since it would skip the wrong segments for some people…

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.oneEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        Those ads would need to be unskippable, otherwise we could just pull the timestamps that the Skip button uses and sponsorblock will be all complete again 👌

        • n0xew@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Fair point! I wasn’t thinking they would be skippable, but boy do I hope that I was wrong…

          • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            Even if they’re not natively skippable, ads have to be indicated as such by law. Whatever indication they use can be detected and used to create blockers.

      • space@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Just build a database of ads. Then use some kind of image hash to compare against the displayed content.

        • pirat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I like your way of thinking. This isn’t even limited to image. Comparing just a short snippet of the audio from a playing ad to a db could work very well too, thinking of how quickly Shazam etc. are able to identify a song if it’s in the db.

          App/plugin idea for the sad future right there: Shazadblock, tuneBlock Origin. Succesful ID leads to skip/mute/ragequit or whatever will kill the noise. Though, the downside of this method would be if an ad in the db uses licensed music that regular content creators use in their videos too, it will eventually lead to blocking some segments wrongly, unless the db excludes this, making it less effective at its purpose… Maybe image is better.

    • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      That’s not quite how it works. It’s crowdsourced, someone has to manually add every sponsored segment from a video into Sponsorblock. It can’t detect them on its own.