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Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers
(www.engadget.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Technology
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I think this will only end up with YouTube winning. Google has been caution for years, but they can bring the big guns if they see there are no more options. Google is clearly desperate to bring those numbers up and they don't care if user experience suffers.
First, they can decide to deploy a restrictive CSP that prevents external scripts from running in the page. This would break lots of extension that work on YouTube.
And then they can just enforce DRM like Netflix. This will be horrible for users, cost them more to serve, and potentially break Youtube for older clients. But then ads will be impossible to skip, and downloading videos will because almost impossible.
But if they decide the numbers are worth it, they will do it. But honestly at this point I really don't care. Will I miss YouTube? Sure. But I rather watch less content on nebula than support this horrible user experience.
Enforcing DRM has a big downside: it paints a massive target on the DRM implementation, and it will likely end up getting broken.
At this point the majority of channels that I like are on Nebula. You’re right, it won’t be a huge loss.
Indeed. It could be a huge win for Nebula, in fact. At least I hope if the users on YouTube lose that a different platform wins and it won't just be a net loss for users and YT-competitors.
Nebula is a walled garden though. They don't even have a formal process for applying to be on it. I hear it's invite only basically
Yeah that is unfortunate. They will probably never fully replace Youtube until they change drastically. They also serve a niche of interests only. It happens to align with my interests really well but it's definitely not for everyone.
I don't think they really have a goal of replacing youtube. I think the end goal is becoming an old school style media production organization, one that is collectively owned and bridges the Gap between social media and Hollywood.
Well, I'm not that pessimist, at least not on those 2 points. I hardly see how CSP would prevent addon to do their stuff, as CSP is protection against cross site attacks, and extension aren't sites (thought I actually remember having an issue like that once making an extension, but correcting the extensio's permissions solved it).
And DRMs only apply on the video stream. It won't protect the webpage or the javascript. Plus there are content on youtube that they are contractually required to not put behind DRMs.
What I'm worried youtube will do is simply that their server will refuse to send the video until a certain time after the user load the page, thid time corresponding to a bit less than the time the user would wait by playing ads.
It won't force the user to watch ads. But it'll deincensitive it by a certain amount.