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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

(iter.ca)
990 points smitop | 2 comments | 20 Jun 25 17:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.423s | source
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ranger_danger ◴[20 Jun 25 17:57 UTC] No.44330199[source]▶
I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not that I want any ads personally). You could also rate-limit it to the playback speed to prevent pre-downloading the stream easily. But now that everything uses HLS/DASH, it's easy to inject different content right in the middle of the stream without re-encoding anything.
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Retr0id ◴[21 Jun 25 01:17 UTC] No.44333700[source]▶
One could splice ads out of the video on the client just as easily as they splice them in, assuming you can detect them (which could be done via crowdsourced databases a la sponsorblock).
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1. cyberax ◴[21 Jun 25 02:11 UTC] No.44333906[source]▶
They can splice the video just for you at a random location.
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2. asadotzler ◴[21 Jun 25 05:32 UTC] No.44334784[source]▶
Sure, and I can use "technology" to identify those splices, and fix them in various ways that work for me because I control the client (unlike Chrome users) and that gives me the power to make the web behave how I want it to, if I'm willing to put in the effort (or someone else does it for me.)