This is where we could use a browser plug in that uses AI to learn what an ad is and skip it for us. Now we just need someone to start working on it.
Plugins can add controls and it can download videos, but plugins can’t interact with videos directly I think.
Maybe use the Youtube API closed captions and figure out the patterns for ads that way?
Of course they can interact with it just fine, look at “sponsorblock” plug-in. It would also solve this problem completely. It already exists and works well, it just isn’t “AI” nonsense.
Yes, that is adding controls and using a database from the SponsorBlock server.
What I mean is a plugin cannot see the video. Like you can’t write
if(screen == adScreen) { then skipToNextSegment(); }The plugin isn’t reading the video, it is getting info from a database. For AI or machine learning to work ad injection, which might change for every user, doing what SponsorBlock is doing is not enough.
You are missing the point that sponsorblock only works without AI because everyone gets the same video delivered. Once they have targeted ads of variable length and amount you need someone to watch your specific version of the video and do the tagging where the ads ans sponsors are. You could pay someone to do it for you but that is expensive and very slow. Or you can train a ML model to recognize the patterns and tag it for you hopefully pretty fast.
That move would finally rid me of my addiction to YouTube. So much time, so many possibilities…
Anyone know if and how this might affect Grayjay or revanced?
I noticed some lagging lately on ReVanced, but nothing more, ATM. If the server side ads are the cause it’s nothing major for now.
If it ain’t Foss it is a toss
I’m surprised it took them this long.
Removed by mod
We’ll see.At the moment I see any ads, nor nags in YT, using userscripts instead of extensions, but anyway I’m going to keep an eye on what’s happening in Greasyfork and OpenuserJS regarding YT in the future, this in any case offers many more options than the castrated extensions that will be in the stores to be able to stay there.
Don’t be too optimistic, you probably haven’t seen it because it’s not being rolled out universally just yet; they like to A/B test their massive feature changes.
Removed by mod
I’m not so pessimistic, as the proverb says, where there is a law, there is also a way around it. There are many very capable devs who are screwed by YT and Google as well like us and in the script repositories they have a free hand, which as devs for extensions they do not have. YT is the only problem for adblockers, even the inbuild blocker in Vivaldi works flawles, even cutting off cookie advices and some paywalls, only in YT it fails. But the userscript I use instead in YT work there even better than uBO, at least until now. Extensions are all limited by the imposed norms in the stores, more in the near future, it’s this because I trust more in scripts, at least for certain tasks… As said, we’ll see.
I’d just drag the time seeker though…
What are the YT alternatives? I use it by default and I’m to exhausted to look for another landing place
That is a good question
Odysee ! I use a extention even so if I click a video on YouTube and it is also on odysee it opened odysee instead.
Youtube is testing my fucking patience.
Stay away from Odysee unless you are a neonazi
Certainly there are also neonazis, like in all other streaming platforms too, including YT, where I already blocked some channels because of this. Worst is removedute respect nazies.
Idk, Maybe instead of avoiding nazi spaces, people should take a page from their book and just invade them and overwhelm them. Idk about you, I have to put up with hearing and seeing bullshit daily, so my tolerance is high. A lot of these fascist can’t even handle a picture of a catboy lol
Odysee is designed to support Nazis
Crap I just opened youtube today and it looks like I was chosen. The ads load like normal videos and it sucks. My brain actually glitched for a couple of seconds when I opened a video because I wasn’t used to seeing an ad. I dunno if there’s any chance uBO can even counter this.
Try to watch the video embedded, simply edit it’s URL, using instead of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxthis URL
https://www.youtube.com/embed/xxxxxxxxWelp, restarted my laptop and I’m off the testing list so can’t replicate (unless I turn off uBO of course). But thanks, this will be handy if it happens again.
Honestly no idea why they didn’t just do that to begin with.
It’s easier and less resource hungry to deliver targeted ads like that.
Because it’s actually really hard to achieve technically. When ads are served outside the stream you can easily serve different ads to different viewers based on their profiles. When the ads are baked into the stream you can either
A) Create a whole bunch of different copies of the video asset with different ads baked in and then rotate these on a regular basis. Which would be expensive to update and store and limit the range of adverts that could be served to a particular user.
B) Dynamically create a stream on the users request, which while possible means standard CDN caching isn’t going to work so there’s a distribution challenge.
Or some other alternative they’ve come up with. I’d be really interest to know what their approach is here.
Look up how HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) works. They just need to generate a personalized playlist for each person which points at things already hosted on CDN, and insert the ads where they want in the literal text file that your video player reads from to serve you the video.
I don’t know much about it, but it looks like there’s specific tags designed for dynamic ad insertion. Idk if YouTube plans to use them in this case though, if they want it to be undetectable to the client.
They’re probably inserting the ads “on the fly”. It can be finicky depending on codec, but doable.
Looks like I’m testing not using YouTube.
It’s past due that we need a new platform.
We don’t need a new platform. We need 20 new platforms, and authors can post on whichever ones are best for them. Have real competition and real incentive to be better.
PeerTube?
Yeah, that’ll be hard. I’m trying to use Peertube but network effect is big on YT (not sure if that’s the right expression here, noone is using Peertube, everyone is on YT).
I’m sending my videos on my Peertube and Youtube. I send the link for Peertube a few days before Youtube, so people following me would have more interest on looking at it on PT earlier but the numbers can’t be beaten : between 5 and 20 views on PT against 1K / 2K on Youtube.
Whats the link? I though peer tube comments where compatible with lemmy.
Yeah, that’ll be hard. I’m trying to use Peertube but network effect is big on YT (not sure if that’s the right expression here, noone is using Peertube, everyone is on YT).
There was a time “noone” was on YouTube.
I watch at most 1 video a week. It’s not hard.
try odysee, some creators mirror their yt vids there
I like Odysee, but there’s a lot of right-wing bullshit on there that give me a major case of cringe.
So don’t watch it? I would rather the platform all all legal content then trying to be the morality police.
I would also prefer to use third party recommendation engines (like people posting on Lemmy) then one run by any particular platform.
Sure, but it’s literally every other thumbnail and it pisses me off as I do not tolerate intolerance.
Odysee takes a lot of curation to even be usable. You can block whole channels easily and they won’t show up for you anywhere, but once you’ve blocked all the RWB you’re left with mostly tech, gaming, and reactions. And this is despite Odysee/LBRY having been around for years.
be the change you want to see in the world
That’s not unlike youtube really
Been using Nebula for a while now. Going to miss some YouTube creators, but I’ll expect to get over it.
Oh dear lord no.
Would sponsorblock be a solution for this?
From what I read, this also breaks sponsorblock - as the ads are part of the video, it moves the time stamps of the video so it makes it not correct. The ads will also change I imagine so idk if sponsorblock will be a solution.
So videos that reference timestamps in their own video won’t work? And comments that reference a timestamp won’t work?
They could on the fly change them.
Wouldn’t that need to be done via some kind of API for cross-platform compatibility? An API which could be exploited to detect ad segments?
No, they would just do that internally in their own code, why would they need an API for that?
So that the timestamp adjustment can be propagated via uploader or user comments across YouTube clients on all platforms… i.e. to avoid having to hardcode each adjustment for each ad on each video on every client
No, not in it’s actual form, nor the front-ends can’t not longer cutting the ads with their current form. Or they change their script, or you have the alternative to use YT or using another streaming service. But I think that there will be other solution in the future to show the middle finger to YT.
With a little adoption yes it could. We could pass around check some of known good blocks, or check somes of known advertisements. Or the audio signature of known good blocks or the audio signature of known advertisements.
So a service is like sponsor block would now just be a curated list of either good or bad signatures be them checksums or audio signatures or video signatures. There would be some engineering work to account for different compression ratios etc but it’s totally doable
That’ll make youtube disappear for me.
Over the years I watched less and less. I only seldomly have to look into youtube for things that are easier in video than in text.
Teens and many people don’t know that there is a world without ads. They have to be educated that there are alternatives - not watching youtube is a real option. You do not depend on it.
But the point is there’s always been a way to avoid ads, even while browsing sites with ads and browsing YT. Personally, if that ability entirely disappears, i hate ads, ad-voice, and the concept of advertising so much that I will stop and close a whole tab if an ad plays. I’m in the minority though. Because, I think you’re right, a lot of people just don’t even think about it and mindlessly consume. I can’t. When Reddit fucked us and showed us our opinions and feelings didn’t matter, I left. I will do the same to YT.
I think I hate ads just as much. But I might cave in and start subscribing to premium again. I just stopped because they don’t allow a family plan here in Korea.
I will just start downloading videos and watching them at my leisure. Anything to not give this corp my money. Funny thing is I use to have no problem watching ads on youtube until they increased the amount and started spamming ads for gambling. There is an option to select on your google account that limits the amount of gambling ads you see. I had that enabled and it felt like it increased the amount of gambling ads it was serving me.
I think many people see it as normal/expected.
A coworker showed me a video yesterday on their phone, I said ‘holy hell what is this shit? This is what it looks like for you?’ And opened it in Tubular. They had no idea such a thing existed.
I rarely watch videos because I prefer to read. The people I work with spend a vast amount of their free time watching YouTube and TikTok. They just seem to zone out, or be really interested when an ad comes on.
I think many people see it as normal/expected.
Yes, that’s it. People born in the early part of last century (my grandparent’s era) only knew over-the-air TV which in the US included commercials. It was just part of reality, like billboards by the highway.
The county I live in banned billboards and most outdoor advertising long ago, and it’s NICE
Thats fine. This just fuels developers to make more efficient ad blockers. Youtube wont win the long game and the more they try stuff like this, the more people find out about ublock and other adblockers.
uBO and other traditional adblockers can do nothing against embedded ads in YT vids, at least not those in the extension stores. YT won’t permit extensions in the official stores to make useless it’s new policy. The solution can only be in independent sources, that is the problem. In the stores you’ll find only descaffeinated adblockers which blocks only traditional ads on websites. Install, Greasymonkey or Violentmonkey, maybe Tampermonkey and keep an eye on the script repositories.
