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Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 125 points 2 years ago (2 children)

However bad they may make it, it can't possibly be worse than it is for non-adblock users.

But hey, if they want to torpedo their own services, have at it. It's not like they have a reputation for it or anything....

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    i am more worried about the old videos wipe thats coming soon

    Sooo many peoples uploaded memories and documentaries are going to becone lost forever

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

    I wonder why they would kill old videos instead of just removing those 10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches. You'd think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space

    Someone above posted an article saying they aren't actually. But you'd be surprised at how little space those 10 hour videos can actually take. They're highly compressible since they're just the same still image and the same audio on repeat. A good compression algorithm (which Google certainly is using) would basically compress it into one instance of the song and how many times to repeat it (more complex than that, but that's the idea)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Sometimes they are, if it's just audio and a static image. Some of them definitely are not that though. The ones with visualizers or full music videos or the like are not nearly as compressible.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

    I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

    I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

    Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

    Definately not the same. Also, what "nobody watches" is in the eye of the beholder.

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

    So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

    Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

    The first two minutes are an ad, and having a loud voice talking to you all of a sudden in your bedroom while you are asleep tends to wake you up.

    Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

    With compression techniques being as they are today, I truly don't even worry about the bandwidth.

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

    But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn't use an ad blocker on YouTube? All of those problems that you listed have incredibly easy solutions that you can execute with zero training.

    And realistically if they are looking for profit (and they absolutely are) I still see no reason why they would keep these up. The benefits are absolutely minimal at best and the drawbacks are quite large.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn’t use an ad blocker on YouTube?

    My YouTube app on my phone, which doesn't have an ad blocker. And as far as I know, there's no way to restart a video at a certain timestamp, it just restarts from the very beginning. I'd be glad to hear otherwise though?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ah! A few ways to do things:

    1. Go into the YouTube "three dots" options and you can "Create Clip" which will allow you to shave out or repeat any length of video you want. If you shave it out, you can make it private and just repeat the single video. and / or
    2. Use any YouTube download site (say like this one) and just get the MP3 or video which you can play over and over using any media player. and / or
    3. If you're on a phone, use a third-party YouTube app like GrayJay and it'll block ads.

    If you have questions, ask away!

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Who's going to wipe the old videos?

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

    Google’s going to delete inactive google accounts. So if you see a channel whose last upload was six years ago, there’s a good chance it’s about to be deleted

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

    Oh I suppose my diseased father's small channel with a few of his live music performances will be deleted. Lovely.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Goddamnit, I didn't even think about this when I saw they were doing the mass delete. Here's to hoping that they'll at least keep the videos up. Waaaay too much stuff on YT to lose it all. Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

    At this point you got to imagine that archives hardware infrastructure has to be as big or bigger than Google's.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    About a week ago YouTube rolled out a new interface for ads. I cannot skip 90% of ads now. Many are around a minute in length. Always 2 ads at the beginning of every video, even if it's only 10 seconds in length. Always 2 ads at the end of every video.

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