612
  • 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.
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A solution would be for an extension to download the entire video 2x and delete the difference. But if you want to watch on 4k you'd need a connection that is pretty fast (although still in the range of what many people already have). However if they find a way to throttle the max speed on the server side for each client based on the quality they are watching, that would kill this possibility. You could block their cookies and throttling by IP on IPv4 would not be a possibility for them, but when everyone is on IPv6 idk.

But also processing the video on the fly to delete the difference in real time would be heavy, though at least I think it is possible to access the GPU with browser extensions via webGL but I am not sure if for HD and 4k that would be realistic for most people.

[-] morpheus17pro@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 months ago

Usually ads have a significant volume above the content they sorround (which, by the way, is the thing annoys me the most), so you would only need to check audio for that, which is lot less load than processing the video.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 9 months ago

Guessing you'd get a lot of false positives that way, but I like the ingenuity.

[-] snooggums@midwest.social 2 points 9 months ago

My kiddo watches stuff on youtube where the person on screen gets suddenly loud which could really mess with detecting ads by changes in volume. Apprently that is a widespread thing too.

[-] aport@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This assumes the exact same ads will be injected in the same time markers for every viewer, every time. I doubt any of these will be true.

Edit: I got this backwards...

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago

A less expensive method could be to retrieve the subtitle twice, or the subtitle from a premium account and check where the time offsets are.

this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
612 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

66067 readers
4300 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS