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YouTube testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers
(9to5google.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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It should be reasonably trivial to programmatically watch the frames; original programming will have mastered audio levels and set video compression; any shift to an ad should stand out like a sore thumb.
So as long as things aren’t locked down to a DRM’d player, it should be possible to fingerprint the audio and video stream content and drop any inserted frames that don’t match.
If YouTube decides to mangle the original content to fight back… then maybe that’s finally the impetus people will need to switch platforms.
The main issue is more about how many FOSS devs are available to implement what you just said unfortunately...
You'd be surprised how many people would try to implement this out of spite lmao.
Whether or not it works is another thing though.
You wouldn't neccesarily need to pay attention to the master and all, probably easier to request the video twice from youtube, detect the bits that don't change, skip timestamps around to only play those bits. Might have a bit of a failure rate if the same ad is served twice, and youtube could fight back by letting creators make slightly different video versions but still better than nothing.
Switch to where? Everything that's not just a different youtube frontend is either shit or doesn't pay the creators. Federated FOSS sites aren't an option either cause once an influx of users outside the tech bubble happens, the server capacity will hit ground bottom.
Probably people would just start needing to host their own video content and share it amongst themselves, like in the old internet
for sure. necessity breeds invention. sometimes i just want enshittification to takes its course so foss adoption grows more.
The way the foss sites work is basically like torrents though so it has the whole "the more people that watch a video, the faster it becomes for everyone" effect. The primary upside is that each site serves as a guaranteed seeder.