YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users::undefined

  • Aux@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    They can easily embed ads into the main stream, so ad blockers will have nothing to block. Not sure why they haven’t done so already.

    • Azzu@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Because those can also be skipped. They are required by law to label sections of ads. This labeling can be read to figure out how long the ads are and thus be skipped. That’s how twitch ads are blocked.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The label can be a part of the stream as well. There are no issues to stream everything and make it non-blockable.

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Then how hard would it be to use some pattern-based image recognition to detect this label? Not very hard, I have a friend that does something similar at work.

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              You’re doubting the ease of implementation, but it’s really not hard. It’ll have to be a fairly predictable pattern from YouTube’s side, which is one of the easiest to accurately detect.

              Nevermind that though, it’ll never be embebbed in the video stream, because it has to be accessible as well as readable. It’s impossible to guarantee it to be readable without actually rendering the text in whatever client it’s being viewed in. Imagine a 240p video, the text would have to take up half the screen to be readable with that low resolution.

              • Aux@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                There’s literally no problem to render a text in a video stream.

    • virtualbriefcase@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      If they did that then they’d have to re-encode videos for each veiwer (which would require an insane amount of processing power), or give up on tracking and have contextual only ads.

      Their only real option is to have ads as separate files and then use the magic JavaScript to tell your computer to play one file then the next, which is where adblock comes in like “naw, let’s not do that”.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Not really. That’s not how modern streaming works. No one sends plain files like it’s 2000.