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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

(github.com)
810 points bertman | 3 comments | 12 Nov 25 10:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.454s | source
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bilekas ◴[12 Nov 25 13:08 UTC] No.45899689[source]▶
More and more recently with youtube, they seem to be more and more confrontational with their users, from outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service, to automatically scraping creators content for AI training and now anything API related. They're very much aware that there is no real competition and so they're taking full advantage of it. At the expense of the 'users experience' but these days, large companies simply don't suffer from a bad customer experience anymore.
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Arainach ◴[12 Nov 25 13:14 UTC] No.45899733[source]▶
>outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service

The scale of data storage, transcoding compute, and bandwidth to run YouTube is staggering. I'm open to the idea that adblocking doesn't have much effect on a server just providing HTML and a few images, but YouTube's operating costs are (presumably, I haven't looked into it) staggering and absolutely incompatible with adblocking.

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bitmasher9 ◴[12 Nov 25 13:33 UTC] No.45899921[source]▶
That’s fine, but YouTube has an obligation to make sure the ads they serve aren’t scams. They are falling short of that obligation.
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ethmarks ◴[12 Nov 25 14:22 UTC] No.45900550[source]▶
Could you elaborate on why? It seems to me that YouTube's implicit contract with the user is "these people paid us to show you this advert", not "we vouch for the integrity and veracity of this advert". I obviously agree that it'd be nice if YouTube would put more effort into screening adverts, but I don't see why they're _obligated_ to. I'm happy to be corrected, though.
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ndriscoll ◴[12 Nov 25 15:58 UTC] No.45901736[source]▶
Because taking money from a con artist to deliver marks based on profiles you've collected on everyone to see who's most likely to be taken in makes you an accessory if not accomplice to fraud.

Businesses (in particular the literal biggest ad agency in the world) should know who they are partnering with. Not vetting the people they're allowing to place ads is at best negligent. The fact that the FBI warns people to use ad blockers to protect themselves from fraud (instead of anyone doing anything about it) is shameful. Someone either approved the scams or the system which allows these unvetted partners to operate. There should be a criminal investigation into how this came to be. Especially considering people have anecdotally said online that they've reported scam ads and received a reply that the ad was reviewed and determined to not violate policy (that may be Facebook, or both. In any case this applies to anyone). At that point they unambiguously have actual knowledge of and are a participant in the fraud. People at these ad companies should be looking at prison time if that is indeed happening.

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1. ethmarks ◴[12 Nov 25 16:53 UTC] No.45902459[source]▶
That's a fair point. Thanks for the detailed response.

I'm curious as to what the scam ads you mention actually are. I use an adblocker most of the time, and most of the adverts that I do see are annoying but fairly innocuous. Furniture, insurance, charter schools, social media apps, shitty mobile games, et cetera. I've seen plenty of slightly scummy adverts, but I can't recall seeing many that are really harmful or blatantly fraudulent. I'm curious to hear what adverts other people are seeing that are so outrageous.

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2. sodality2 ◴[12 Nov 25 17:15 UTC] No.45902761[source]▶
Tons of blatant phishing, rug-pull crypto coins, illegal medications, or just fraudulent websites. Very content-dependent though
3. ndriscoll ◴[12 Nov 25 17:35 UTC] No.45903054[source]▶
I also use a malware blocker at all times (to not have one on all computers would be like running an open telnet server: insane), so can't say I have personal experience with it, but there is plenty of anecdotal discussion about blatant financial scams, e.g. [0][1]. That first one OP claims Youtube acknowledged receiving their report, investigated it, and determined that the ad was acceptable. If true, they are admitting they are specifically aware of these ads and that users are raising complaints about them (they don't exist now, but a court could subpoena information about whether OP's story is true).

Additionally, Google has a well known policy of allowing people to take out ads (which look exactly like a search result) for someone else's trademark (defeating the entire purpose of a trademark), and the FBI has a frequently referenced notice[2] to US citizens to be aware of fraud where scammers take out impersonating ads on "Internet search results" to e.g. lead people to the wrong site for financial institutions. It absolutely blows my mind that no one is prosecuted for participating in this.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/18gjiqy/youtube_do...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1h6rdtj/massive_incr...

[2] https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221