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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
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
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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So if the ad is injected directly into the stream does that mean users don't need an ad blocker and can just fast forward through the ads? I'm fine with that.
I wish....
If it's impossible to fast forward the ads, that means the timestamps of the ads have to be send to the browser, so adblock should be able to use that data.
My guess on how they will handle it. The ad segment will get tagged as an ad and operations as fast forwarding(etc) will be disabled as long as an ad is playing.
That would be easy for an add-on to detect and if nothing else mute the tab and cover the video until operational control is restored. A button I could click to "pause video once ad is finished" would make this a convenient time for me to step away.
That was just my first instinct on how YpuTube may solve their issue with adblocking. I don't know how they will do it, but they won't allow you to skip the ad by fast forwarding.
YouTube has two options:
Inject the ad into the stream making it indistinguishable from the video. This allows users to skip it if they don't want to watch it. (I would prefer this honestly)
Try to force users to watch ads by making them unskippable, this makes them easy for add-ons to detect.
That, luckily, is completely illegal over here.
I meant indistinguishable to the software. If the ad comes from the same source, and doesn't inhibit playback controls (such as fast forward), then it is significantly more difficult for an add-on to block it. Of course that would mean users can just fast forward if they don't want to watch it.