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Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies. (www.engadget.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube's dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there's an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

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[–] 9 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

Without talking about the resources it would require, youtube could totally only serve the ad until it has been "watched". And no amount of sponsor block or similar software would help. These software only work because youtube allow you to navigate the video. If they decide that you have to fully download a 30s ad video, and that you can't ask for the video for the first 30s, then you wouldn't be able to do anything (or at the very max, just hide the ad and wait 30s on a blank screen).

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

    then you wouldn't be able to do anything (or at the very max, just hide the ad and wait 30s on a blank screen

    i would choose the blank screen over watching an ad, every single time

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    Or the adblock could buffer the video and play it on a delay ad free. People will be fine with doing something else for a minute.

    Better yet, have it done in the background -- particularly for new videos on channels you're subscribed to.

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

    People could do that out of protest, and upload videos as proof of them doing it. Advertisers would start pulling out if they think they're being ripped off like that.

    Eventually at some point, the nuclear option would be if the government decided that sending back false information saying an ad had been viewed is computer fraud.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I don't think the relative amount of people that would do that would be high enough to really end up mattering, and it's not like, in that circumstance, advertisers can tell whether or not people are actually watching their ads anyways, which has always been the most dubious part of ads. And, is the biggest advantage of the internet and youtube, is that you can tell, you're allowed access to those metrics. I don't see a reality where youtube just goes to basically like, shittier cable advertising, forcing everyone to watch all the ads all the time, and that becomes somehow attractive to advertisers. I think, if that were the case, advertisers would probably pull out just on that basis and go where they know exactly what content they're putting their ads in front of, which has always been the disadvantage of youtube.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Even if they did that it's not impossible to find some exploits. No software is free of bugs which can be exploited, especially networked ones which are often finicky because they have many systems in place to pretend flawless execution. Just look at the TCP protocol, it's dropping packets left and right but users usually don't notice because they get spammed till one gets through

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

    How do those extensions that skip download countdown timers work then?

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

    Those are usually handled by JavaScript being run on the client side, I think, so it just speeds that up

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