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YouTube looks to be testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers (9to5google.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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  • 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.
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[–] 99 points 2 years ago (16 children)

I’ll just write a greasemonkey script that detects unskippable time and mute audio. Let’s play this game google, fuckin I dare ya.

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  • [–] 51 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    Can you have it replace the video screen portion with cat videos from another source during the unskippable part?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Sure, popover video of cute cats and turtles eating strawberries

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    At this point you can just replace the video with the same video using a timestamped link from just before the ad started. Under IPv4 they can't tell if it is the same person/device requesting the same video. So unless they put the ad at exactly the same timestamp (which they won't) you can just blank out the video when an ad starts and replace the stream with the same video using the timestamp to start the video where you left off.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I'm pretty sure ads will likely be different audio level or light level that would be detectable. If there is no option to detect the ad via API that would be one way to know when the ads begin and end.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    The idea here is that ads will be unskippable, aka, you skip ahead 10-20 seconds but can’t. They’re will be controls that appear to catch this. If they incorporate ads and I can just fast forward, then who cares. This is google, they want to watch ads.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Or use it to implement a script that just downloads the video and cuts the ads out entirely for later watching.

    Or, failing any of those, a script that pops up a reminder that YouTube has unskippable ads so you can back out and just do something else with your time.

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