7 ms·

YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

155 points by ZachSaucier 11y ago

tn13 11y ago
I dont login into YouTube since google started forcing G+ accounts on the users!
- amelius 11y ago
  Good for you, but you are missing out on a lot of interesting material, including online courses and presentations.
  - Implicated 11y ago
    Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but he said he _doesn't log in_, not that he doesn't actually visit youtube.
    - amelius 11y ago
      Well in that case, just view the videos in an anonymous window, and login when you want to place a comment. Also minimizes tracking.
      - beedogs 11y ago
        I've never felt the need to comment on a video on Youtube. The 4chan phrase "pissing into an ocean of piss" springs to mind.
        tn13 11y ago
        Exactly. I always liked to "Like" a video so I could revisit in future but now I simply bookmark it in the browser.
  - tn13 11y ago
    I meant I do not sign-in into youtube as you have suggested I do visit in incognito windows or with adblockers.
AndyKelley 11y ago
Pasting YouTube URLs into VLC still works.
- dublinben 11y ago
  As does youtube-dl.[0] [0]https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Doesn't work here.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Same for mpv!
yarou 11y ago
Let the games begin! The endless arms race for ad blocking and ad blocking detection has officially started.
- fabulist 11y ago
  We are already engaged in so many of these that I fear opening a new front will cause integer overflow. Perhaps it would be better for publishers and consumers to find a way to transact in cash rather than eyeball time.
marcosdumay 11y ago
Why? Does Adblock Plus block the on video ads?
- ryanmonroe 11y ago
  Yes
- trungaczne 11y ago
  uBlock can also do this. I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video is supposed to handle it smoothly. The only ads that cannot be blocked are those that streams over the same origin server, like Twitch's new embedded ads.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    > I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video is supposed to handle it smoothly. And if this supposition is violated, one would expect an error. I wouldn't personally have assumed that would work; it's probably the case that YouTube changed something that happens to also play ill with AdBlock (since AdBlock is basically futzing around with the content the page expects to be able to load, that should be expected).
kirykl 11y ago
I'd sign up for a low tier Red. Don't watch too many videos maybe $1/$2 month for an ad free vid limit or ability to buy instant skips
- jeffgreco 11y ago
  This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how many people expect their content for free.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I guess that's a direct result of being given content for free for the better part of two decades. During the videotext/minitel days it was quite common to pay for content.
  - denim_chicken 11y ago
    I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money for them.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      As a Red subscriber, I can tell you that the opposite is probably true. When there's no longer any risk of being annoyed by unskippable ads, you tend to click on a lot more video links (and waste a lot more time.) YT Red is worth it IMHO.
      - inefficient 11y ago
        Exactly this. I got some free time with youtube red when I got a nexus 6p. In spite of already having spotify, I purchased some more google play music all access (which includes Red) simply to keep the ad-free youtube.
      - rdl 11y ago
        There are ways to get it for $5/mo. I can't believe people don't do that if they watch more than a few hours/month of youtube.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days, even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox without any ads.
- B-Con 11y ago
  > it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. I've seen at least two other popular video sites over the years that had this symptom. (Can't remember them, maybe Hulu 6+ years ago?) One of them would occasionally have a weird overlap of the end of a commercial and the video. My guess was that the video was was queued to start playing after the length of the ad by some ad-independent logic.
  - Implicated 11y ago
    CBS has had this issue in the past as well with their player.
- spriggan3 11y ago
  > assuming a bug rather than intentional malice lol, no malice here, it's their websites they can do whatever they want and they are far from stupid, they test all these things. I'll still block ads and if Google prevents me from seeing Youtube content so be it. I'm not going to disable my ad blocker anyway. The fight against ads is getting interesting. Let's see who gets the "last word".
  - skybrian 11y ago
    Testing every combination in advance isn't possible even for large corporations, because browsers in the wild vary so much, as do the computers they run on. It should show up in production monitoring, though.
  - 11y ago
TheWiseOne 11y ago
Do no evil, right? /s People seem to have this romanticized view of Google but this is a company that makes almost the entirety of its revenue from tracking users. Between Google, Chrome, Android, Gmail and Google Maps they have an astonishing amount of access to people's lives and most people seem none the wise to it. And yet, if another company does anything even remotely close (Microsoft with Windows 10, for example), they would be crucified. Google seems to escape the same level of criticism for some reason.
- ardit33 11y ago
  They are business at the end of the day. How much are you paying monthly for the youtube/search/gmail, whatever else you are using from google? Probably, $0.00. Then how are they going to keep those services up without any ads? Also, form my understanding the Youtube Red service has no ads. If ads bother you so much, you can sing up for it, for 9.99/mo.
  - retrogradeorbit 11y ago
    If you pay nothing, you are not the customer. You are the product.
  - jackvalentine 11y ago
    Two things that come to mind. 1) it's impossible to compete with ad-supported "free" services in a large-scale way. Any competitor to YouTube that tried to pay their bills only with paying customers can't succeed. This makes me think that we need some kind of anti-trust like law if it doesn't already exist to cover situations like this. 2) No YouTube red in most countries. I have been hit by this "delay" because I use an adblocker, but when I try to give YouTube my $9.99US a month I'm refused. Of course, I have no implicit right to use YouTube in the way of my choosing but I would like to see them act in good faith towards me when I try to with them.
- jamiequint 11y ago
  How is blocking free/ad-blocked access to their ad supported content evil in any definition of the word? What entitles you to access their site if they don't want you to?
martinald 11y ago
It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business. They have virtually no business apart from ads. AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv. Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials? Staggering.
- wpietri 11y ago
  Google has two importantly different kinds of ads. One is where you are searching something and they show you relevant offerings. Here, people are often happy to see the results, as they can move them toward their goal. The other is where you are trying to do something (read a blog post, watch a video) and they want you to do something else (read about somebody's product, watch a video advertisement). Here many people are resistant, as it takes them away from their chosen activity. My understanding is that Google makes most of their money from the first kind of ad, and that ad blockers mainly block the second. So I don't think this is a very big deal for them. In Google's shoes, I'd happily let people run ad blockers if they wanted. One, those people were unlikely to click on ads anyhow. And two, it's dangerous money. For their long-term success, they're much better off if they're doing things that customers actually like. It's dangerous when companies get hooked on money that requires them to work against their users. Look at how much trouble TV networks have had adapting, for example; they just aren't clear on how to make great TV in the same way that places like HBO are. Or look at the sad, slow fall of Yahoo, which has always thought of itself as a media company. They were never able to do much with customer-focused acquisitions like Flickr because they never could quite understand them.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    I don't care for either type of ad. I've never intentionally clicked an ad that came up in a search result.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      My last cofounder had done a ton of user testing on shopping-related behaviors, and it turns out you (and me, generally) are atypical. He had one session where he told a guy to shop for something he was likely to buy soon. The guy opened up Google, searched for something, and said, as if sharing a secret, "Ignore the stuff in the middle. The really good stuff is here on the side." That guy was odd in how excited he was, but most people are pretty happy to see relevant advertising when they are seeking something. E.g., Computer Shopper magazine was popular for years with the nerd set, and I have fashion-oriented friends who love getting the big seasonal magazines that are mostly ads. My dad hasn't bought a car or a house for years, but he still likes looking through newspaper ads occasionally just to see what's on offer. It's definitely not my style, though.
greenisland 11y ago
What about the notion of something like some of us did with Flash content? I symlinked .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null and was able to watch Flash content without the LSOs/SuperCookies being downloaded to my drive -- they were written to the bit bucket. Does anyone think it's possible to write a Perl/Python/Bash program to basically achieve the same thing? To "convince" the site the ads are coming down but they never get seen? This could be browser independent/act as a sort of proxy. I realize Privoxy does something like this, but gets detected. Thoughts?
- Pharaoh2 11y ago
  uBlock is working on creating neutered version of ad/tracking scripts so that the js think that they are loaded fine and are working but they don't do anything. They are called surrogate script and noscript already uses them. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/experimental.txt https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/...
deadcast 11y ago
I use uBlock Origin and youtube appears to still be fine for me. Maybe Google is targeting AdBlock first and then they'll start trying to detect others maybe? I guess this all depends if they're actually indeed penalizing people for blocking ads in the first place.
- lamethrowaway 11y ago
  huh, interesting. i am using ublock origin (on chrome) and was getting this error earlier. shift+f5 didn't fix it. turned off ublock origin as a test and the video played. perhaps i'm flagged some other way on the backend and it then tries a test for ad block?
- sergers 11y ago
  i use uBlock Origin. and eff's privacy badger and tampermonkey w/ anti-adblock killer reek script. zero issues playing youtube all day long
RKoutnik 11y ago
I got this earlier this week (uBlock user). Everything worked fine under the same account with uBlock turned off (good Lord, didn't realize how many ads they've added since I last disabled adblock), so I don't think this is an account-level flag but rather some new way of serving ads that fails into "An error has occurred" rather than serving the video immediately. Interesting development in the ads vs blockers war but I doubt there's any account flagging going on right now.
MichaelBurge 11y ago
I've been amazed that adblockers work on videos since I started using them. It seems like it wouldn't be much trouble at all to simply embed the ad in the video stream. It does let people skip past the ad, but I'm not sure how important that is. If they start doing that, you could do the heavy-handed approach of re-encoding the video to show the ad(or a spot for the ad to be filled in by the server) side-by-side and allow them to 'opt in' to the old Javascript solution by disabling their ad blocker.
- keehun 11y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. It was weird to watch HBO's new edition of the Godfather (7.5hr one) with ads embedded in the video—but it felt much more like TV.
  - BEEdwards 11y ago
    Maybe the wrong thread for the question, but what is the appeal of an 8hr recut of the movies? What is being added?
    - keehun 11y ago
      There is a myriad of new clips that have been added. I found that it really added to the story--but did lengthen the film quite a bit. I think it was really smart to have edited those out because they ultimately did not change the meanings in the movie while making it quite a bit longer. However, having watched the trilogy a few times already, I found these new clips to add a lot of depth to the characters and the progression of the movie. You have to understand that the 7 and half hours do not include the 3rd film. The 2 films and new clips account for the entire length. Also, this recut is in chronological order--and does not use flashbacks. I found this to work really well for me because I had already seen the film many times. However, I do agree with the decision to use flashbacks for first-time viewers as the parallelism Coppola draws is amazing. The chronological recut did add a new perspective on the film that I enjoyed.
- randomflavor 11y ago
akkartik 11y ago
And there I was, blaming my browser for those "an error occurred" messages..
pygy_ 11y ago
You can practice mindfulness in the mean time, and your brain still isn't polluted with crappy ideas. That's still a win in my book. I used to visit a site that mandated turning off the ad blocker and paused the ad if you left the page. Thankfully, there was a countdown, and the page was large enough to scroll past the video while the ad was running. I became remarkably good at estimating how long wait down there (with the sound off) before scrolling back up...
tdub311 11y ago
Going to Google Ads setting[0] and turning off "Ads based on your interests" stopped the delay for me. [0] https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en
tdub311 11y ago
Going to Google Ads setting[0] and turning off "Ads based on your interests" stopped the delay for me. [0] https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en
milankragujevic 11y ago
If anyone is interested, I'm working on a free online YouTube client website that doesn't show ads, has a separate login system that allows you to subscribe to users, without YouTube knowing anything about that. I need help with building the website, so anyone doing design / PHP is welcome to contact me. edit: Forgot to add, the website uses no JavaScript and doesn't track you at all. It also tries to implement most of YouTube's functionality, so you don't loose anything by using the website instead of YouTube.
- cloudwalking 11y ago
  How are you going to play YouTube videos without ads?
  - milankragujevic 11y ago
    The server fetches the video page from YouTube, and embeds the VP8+Opus video URL into my site's page with a <video> tag.
    - amadeusw 11y ago
      Your server will probably get blacklisted for heavy usage or some arbitrary API violation. Do you have a plan to remedy or circumvent it?
      - k33n 11y ago
        Does he really need to lay out a plan for that? Getting a new IP is absolutely trivial these days, and if you need to move around between subnets, that's easy too.
    - milankragujevic 11y ago
      @amadeusw: I'm just planning to rebuild the VPS any time it gets blocked, if it gets blocked. Given that YouTube downloader websites have worked for so long without going down, I don't think that would be an issue.
    - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kentonv 11y ago
Presumably if you subscribe to YouTube Red -- which removes all ads on YouTube -- then you won't get delays. So, what's the problem?
- notdang 11y ago
  YouTube Red is not available in all the countries
  - kentonv 11y ago
    Fair enough (for people in those countries)
    - fwn 11y ago
      jfyi: It's only available in the US. So about noone can use it.
- eva1984 11y ago
  Ad blocker for now is free. Disclaimer: I have Youtube Red
  - kentonv 11y ago
    Yes but presumably no one sane thinks Google is morally obliged to serve us videos for free?
    - eva1984 11y ago
      No Google should adapt and move on, ad blockers are here to stay forever, says some people.
      - kentonv 11y ago
        What adaption to you suggest other than giving people the opportunity to pay directly, as YouTube Red does?
meritt 11y ago
YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  I agree. I adblock but I fully expect web businesses to do everything in their power to stop me; if they think that's in their best interests. We're all looking out for number one.
- zobzu 11y ago
  its probably whats going to happen. Wait, its already happening. http://zeronet.io/ http://zeronet.io/ for example. served by users for users. all you pay is your ISP, thats IT.
  - kyrra 11y ago
    "Works everywhere" except on mobile devices which is a major consumer of video today. It's definitely an interesting ideas but a long ways away from being somethings the masses can use easily.
- decasteve 11y ago
  If Google/YouTube doesn't like the autonomy we have over the http protocol, then it should launch its own proprietary medium/protocol/platform for its ad-driven business. The web is built in a way that allows me to choose how I render content.
- BEEdwards 11y ago
  OTA TV is free. It's free because the network pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content.
- Retra 11y ago
SimeVidas 11y ago
Haven’t looked into it, but this looks like an unintentional technical error. Google tends to optimize their websites for Chrome, so other browsers like Firefox have to deal with issues like this, regularly.
- ZachSaucier 11y ago
  It is occurring on FF as well: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245
eva1984 11y ago
Finally
redxblood 11y ago
Use ublock, people. Adblock sells out.
redxblood 11y ago
Use ublock, people. Adblock sells out.
derFunk 11y ago
I'm not getting flagged (obviously) using my pi-hole.net device.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

155 points by ZachSaucier 11y ago

tn13 11y ago

I dont login into YouTube since google started forcing G+ accounts on the users!

amelius 11y ago
Good for you, but you are missing out on a lot of interesting material, including online courses and presentations.
- Implicated 11y ago
  Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but he said he _doesn't log in_, not that he doesn't actually visit youtube.
  - amelius 11y ago
    Well in that case, just view the videos in an anonymous window, and login when you want to place a comment. Also minimizes tracking.
    - beedogs 11y ago
      I've never felt the need to comment on a video on Youtube. The 4chan phrase "pissing into an ocean of piss" springs to mind.
      - tn13 11y ago
        Exactly. I always liked to "Like" a video so I could revisit in future but now I simply bookmark it in the browser.
- tn13 11y ago
  I meant I do not sign-in into youtube as you have suggested I do visit in incognito windows or with adblockers.

AndyKelley 11y ago

Pasting YouTube URLs into VLC still works.

dublinben 11y ago
As does youtube-dl.[0] [0]https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
fiatjaf 11y ago
Doesn't work here.
sotojuan 11y ago
Same for mpv!

yarou 11y ago

Let the games begin! The endless arms race for ad blocking and ad blocking detection has officially started.

fabulist 11y ago
We are already engaged in so many of these that I fear opening a new front will cause integer overflow. Perhaps it would be better for publishers and consumers to find a way to transact in cash rather than eyeball time.

marcosdumay 11y ago

Why? Does Adblock Plus block the on video ads?

ryanmonroe 11y ago
Yes
trungaczne 11y ago
uBlock can also do this. I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video is supposed to handle it smoothly. The only ads that cannot be blocked are those that streams over the same origin server, like Twitch's new embedded ads.
- fixermark 11y ago
  > I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video is supposed to handle it smoothly. And if this supposition is violated, one would expect an error. I wouldn't personally have assumed that would work; it's probably the case that YouTube changed something that happens to also play ill with AdBlock (since AdBlock is basically futzing around with the content the page expects to be able to load, that should be expected).

kirykl 11y ago

I'd sign up for a low tier Red. Don't watch too many videos maybe $1/$2 month for an ad free vid limit or ability to buy instant skips

jeffgreco 11y ago
This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how many people expect their content for free.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I guess that's a direct result of being given content for free for the better part of two decades. During the videotext/minitel days it was quite common to pay for content.
- denim_chicken 11y ago
  I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money for them.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    As a Red subscriber, I can tell you that the opposite is probably true. When there's no longer any risk of being annoyed by unskippable ads, you tend to click on a lot more video links (and waste a lot more time.) YT Red is worth it IMHO.
    - inefficient 11y ago
      Exactly this. I got some free time with youtube red when I got a nexus 6p. In spite of already having spotify, I purchased some more google play music all access (which includes Red) simply to keep the ad-free youtube.
    - rdl 11y ago
      There are ways to get it for $5/mo. I can't believe people don't do that if they watch more than a few hours/month of youtube.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days, even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox without any ads.

B-Con 11y ago
> it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. I've seen at least two other popular video sites over the years that had this symptom. (Can't remember them, maybe Hulu 6+ years ago?) One of them would occasionally have a weird overlap of the end of a commercial and the video. My guess was that the video was was queued to start playing after the length of the ad by some ad-independent logic.
- Implicated 11y ago
  CBS has had this issue in the past as well with their player.
spriggan3 11y ago
> assuming a bug rather than intentional malice lol, no malice here, it's their websites they can do whatever they want and they are far from stupid, they test all these things. I'll still block ads and if Google prevents me from seeing Youtube content so be it. I'm not going to disable my ad blocker anyway. The fight against ads is getting interesting. Let's see who gets the "last word".
- skybrian 11y ago
  Testing every combination in advance isn't possible even for large corporations, because browsers in the wild vary so much, as do the computers they run on. It should show up in production monitoring, though.
- 11y ago

TheWiseOne 11y ago

Do no evil, right? /s People seem to have this romanticized view of Google but this is a company that makes almost the entirety of its revenue from tracking users. Between Google, Chrome, Android, Gmail and Google Maps they have an astonishing amount of access to people's lives and most people seem none the wise to it. And yet, if another company does anything even remotely close (Microsoft with Windows 10, for example), they would be crucified. Google seems to escape the same level of criticism for some reason.

ardit33 11y ago
They are business at the end of the day. How much are you paying monthly for the youtube/search/gmail, whatever else you are using from google? Probably, $0.00. Then how are they going to keep those services up without any ads? Also, form my understanding the Youtube Red service has no ads. If ads bother you so much, you can sing up for it, for 9.99/mo.
- retrogradeorbit 11y ago
  If you pay nothing, you are not the customer. You are the product.
- jackvalentine 11y ago
  Two things that come to mind. 1) it's impossible to compete with ad-supported "free" services in a large-scale way. Any competitor to YouTube that tried to pay their bills only with paying customers can't succeed. This makes me think that we need some kind of anti-trust like law if it doesn't already exist to cover situations like this. 2) No YouTube red in most countries. I have been hit by this "delay" because I use an adblocker, but when I try to give YouTube my $9.99US a month I'm refused. Of course, I have no implicit right to use YouTube in the way of my choosing but I would like to see them act in good faith towards me when I try to with them.
jamiequint 11y ago
How is blocking free/ad-blocked access to their ad supported content evil in any definition of the word? What entitles you to access their site if they don't want you to?

martinald 11y ago

It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business. They have virtually no business apart from ads. AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv. Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials? Staggering.

wpietri 11y ago
Google has two importantly different kinds of ads. One is where you are searching something and they show you relevant offerings. Here, people are often happy to see the results, as they can move them toward their goal. The other is where you are trying to do something (read a blog post, watch a video) and they want you to do something else (read about somebody's product, watch a video advertisement). Here many people are resistant, as it takes them away from their chosen activity. My understanding is that Google makes most of their money from the first kind of ad, and that ad blockers mainly block the second. So I don't think this is a very big deal for them. In Google's shoes, I'd happily let people run ad blockers if they wanted. One, those people were unlikely to click on ads anyhow. And two, it's dangerous money. For their long-term success, they're much better off if they're doing things that customers actually like. It's dangerous when companies get hooked on money that requires them to work against their users. Look at how much trouble TV networks have had adapting, for example; they just aren't clear on how to make great TV in the same way that places like HBO are. Or look at the sad, slow fall of Yahoo, which has always thought of itself as a media company. They were never able to do much with customer-focused acquisitions like Flickr because they never could quite understand them.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I don't care for either type of ad. I've never intentionally clicked an ad that came up in a search result.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    My last cofounder had done a ton of user testing on shopping-related behaviors, and it turns out you (and me, generally) are atypical. He had one session where he told a guy to shop for something he was likely to buy soon. The guy opened up Google, searched for something, and said, as if sharing a secret, "Ignore the stuff in the middle. The really good stuff is here on the side." That guy was odd in how excited he was, but most people are pretty happy to see relevant advertising when they are seeking something. E.g., Computer Shopper magazine was popular for years with the nerd set, and I have fashion-oriented friends who love getting the big seasonal magazines that are mostly ads. My dad hasn't bought a car or a house for years, but he still likes looking through newspaper ads occasionally just to see what's on offer. It's definitely not my style, though.

greenisland 11y ago

What about the notion of something like some of us did with Flash content? I symlinked .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null and was able to watch Flash content without the LSOs/SuperCookies being downloaded to my drive -- they were written to the bit bucket. Does anyone think it's possible to write a Perl/Python/Bash program to basically achieve the same thing? To "convince" the site the ads are coming down but they never get seen? This could be browser independent/act as a sort of proxy. I realize Privoxy does something like this, but gets detected. Thoughts?

Pharaoh2 11y ago
uBlock is working on creating neutered version of ad/tracking scripts so that the js think that they are loaded fine and are working but they don't do anything. They are called surrogate script and noscript already uses them. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/experimental.txt https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/...

deadcast 11y ago

I use uBlock Origin and youtube appears to still be fine for me. Maybe Google is targeting AdBlock first and then they'll start trying to detect others maybe? I guess this all depends if they're actually indeed penalizing people for blocking ads in the first place.

lamethrowaway 11y ago
huh, interesting. i am using ublock origin (on chrome) and was getting this error earlier. shift+f5 didn't fix it. turned off ublock origin as a test and the video played. perhaps i'm flagged some other way on the backend and it then tries a test for ad block?
sergers 11y ago
i use uBlock Origin. and eff's privacy badger and tampermonkey w/ anti-adblock killer reek script. zero issues playing youtube all day long

RKoutnik 11y ago

I got this earlier this week (uBlock user). Everything worked fine under the same account with uBlock turned off (good Lord, didn't realize how many ads they've added since I last disabled adblock), so I don't think this is an account-level flag but rather some new way of serving ads that fails into "An error has occurred" rather than serving the video immediately. Interesting development in the ads vs blockers war but I doubt there's any account flagging going on right now.

MichaelBurge 11y ago

I've been amazed that adblockers work on videos since I started using them. It seems like it wouldn't be much trouble at all to simply embed the ad in the video stream. It does let people skip past the ad, but I'm not sure how important that is. If they start doing that, you could do the heavy-handed approach of re-encoding the video to show the ad(or a spot for the ad to be filled in by the server) side-by-side and allow them to 'opt in' to the old Javascript solution by disabling their ad blocker.

keehun 11y ago
I agree with this sentiment. It was weird to watch HBO's new edition of the Godfather (7.5hr one) with ads embedded in the video—but it felt much more like TV.
- BEEdwards 11y ago
  Maybe the wrong thread for the question, but what is the appeal of an 8hr recut of the movies? What is being added?
  - keehun 11y ago
    There is a myriad of new clips that have been added. I found that it really added to the story--but did lengthen the film quite a bit. I think it was really smart to have edited those out because they ultimately did not change the meanings in the movie while making it quite a bit longer. However, having watched the trilogy a few times already, I found these new clips to add a lot of depth to the characters and the progression of the movie. You have to understand that the 7 and half hours do not include the 3rd film. The 2 films and new clips account for the entire length. Also, this recut is in chronological order--and does not use flashbacks. I found this to work really well for me because I had already seen the film many times. However, I do agree with the decision to use flashbacks for first-time viewers as the parallelism Coppola draws is amazing. The chronological recut did add a new perspective on the film that I enjoyed.
randomflavor 11y ago

akkartik 11y ago

And there I was, blaming my browser for those "an error occurred" messages..

pygy_ 11y ago

You can practice mindfulness in the mean time, and your brain still isn't polluted with crappy ideas. That's still a win in my book. I used to visit a site that mandated turning off the ad blocker and paused the ad if you left the page. Thankfully, there was a countdown, and the page was large enough to scroll past the video while the ad was running. I became remarkably good at estimating how long wait down there (with the sound off) before scrolling back up...

tdub311 11y ago

Going to Google Ads setting[0] and turning off "Ads based on your interests" stopped the delay for me. [0] https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en

tdub311 11y ago

milankragujevic 11y ago

If anyone is interested, I'm working on a free online YouTube client website that doesn't show ads, has a separate login system that allows you to subscribe to users, without YouTube knowing anything about that. I need help with building the website, so anyone doing design / PHP is welcome to contact me. edit: Forgot to add, the website uses no JavaScript and doesn't track you at all. It also tries to implement most of YouTube's functionality, so you don't loose anything by using the website instead of YouTube.

cloudwalking 11y ago
How are you going to play YouTube videos without ads?
- milankragujevic 11y ago
  The server fetches the video page from YouTube, and embeds the VP8+Opus video URL into my site's page with a <video> tag.
  - amadeusw 11y ago
    Your server will probably get blacklisted for heavy usage or some arbitrary API violation. Do you have a plan to remedy or circumvent it?
    - k33n 11y ago
      Does he really need to lay out a plan for that? Getting a new IP is absolutely trivial these days, and if you need to move around between subnets, that's easy too.
  - milankragujevic 11y ago
    @amadeusw: I'm just planning to rebuild the VPS any time it gets blocked, if it gets blocked. Given that YouTube downloader websites have worked for so long without going down, I don't think that would be an issue.
  - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

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kentonv 11y ago

Presumably if you subscribe to YouTube Red -- which removes all ads on YouTube -- then you won't get delays. So, what's the problem?

notdang 11y ago
YouTube Red is not available in all the countries
- kentonv 11y ago
  Fair enough (for people in those countries)
  - fwn 11y ago
    jfyi: It's only available in the US. So about noone can use it.
eva1984 11y ago
Ad blocker for now is free. Disclaimer: I have Youtube Red
- kentonv 11y ago
  Yes but presumably no one sane thinks Google is morally obliged to serve us videos for free?
  - eva1984 11y ago
    No Google should adapt and move on, ad blockers are here to stay forever, says some people.
    - kentonv 11y ago
      What adaption to you suggest other than giving people the opportunity to pay directly, as YouTube Red does?

meritt 11y ago

YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.

marcoperaza 11y ago
I agree. I adblock but I fully expect web businesses to do everything in their power to stop me; if they think that's in their best interests. We're all looking out for number one.
zobzu 11y ago
its probably whats going to happen. Wait, its already happening. http://zeronet.io/ http://zeronet.io/ for example. served by users for users. all you pay is your ISP, thats IT.
- kyrra 11y ago
  "Works everywhere" except on mobile devices which is a major consumer of video today. It's definitely an interesting ideas but a long ways away from being somethings the masses can use easily.
decasteve 11y ago
If Google/YouTube doesn't like the autonomy we have over the http protocol, then it should launch its own proprietary medium/protocol/platform for its ad-driven business. The web is built in a way that allows me to choose how I render content.
BEEdwards 11y ago
OTA TV is free. It's free because the network pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content.
Retra 11y ago

SimeVidas 11y ago

Haven’t looked into it, but this looks like an unintentional technical error. Google tends to optimize their websites for Chrome, so other browsers like Firefox have to deal with issues like this, regularly.

ZachSaucier 11y ago
It is occurring on FF as well: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245

eva1984 11y ago

Finally

redxblood 11y ago

Use ublock, people. Adblock sells out.

redxblood 11y ago

Use ublock, people. Adblock sells out.

derFunk 11y ago

I'm not getting flagged (obviously) using my pi-hole.net device.

deleted 11y ago

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