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YouTube is experimenting with server-side ads
(lemmy.world)
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
You can fast forward on yt though :p, so unless they remove that for the duration of the ad (in which case an addon could possibly use that to determine if an ad is being played) you could at least skip it manually. And maybe there'd be a crowd sourced solution to somehow determine the actual videos beginning (like detecting the first frame of the actual video or something, idk).
What’s to stop them from timestamping the time they sent you the ad and wait until like 90% of that time has gone by until they send you the video? It’s all server-side, nothing a plugin can do.
Plugins could have lengthy buffers and a start-up delay, not ideal obviously, but some people and for some videos, people might be willing to wait. Alternatively as many others have mentioned in this post, a plugin could mute the audio and/or black out the video if it detects an ad playing. There are trade offs, but it's a workable approach as well.
Honestly that’s not much better than muting and doing something else like we used to do with cable. If it gets to this point, I’ll be long gone, probably to curiositystream or nebula.