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Lovely... > The removal of in-video ads. You can pay YouTube for ad-free viewing... not doing so and stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just wan

Lovely... > The removal of in-video ads. You can pay YouTube for ad-free viewing... not doing so and stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it" > Prevent YouTube from tracking your play/pause/seek activities. A little bit of a tinfoil hat issue here, but it's fair if this sort of analytics bother you (it doesn't bother me). > Restore picture-in-picture functionality. Picture in picture works just fine on Windows and Android without a YouTube Premium account. Is this something specific to iPhone? > The videos don’t stop playing if you switch to another browser tab. On mobile, web videos are paused when you switch tabs or apps regardless of the website. Not something YouTube can control, and certainly not something YouTube is intentionally doing (unless you count Google and the decisions Chrome makes, and there is definitely something to that). What YouTube is doing, as I'll elaborate on in the next point, is stopping you from resuming the content after you have switched away from that tab. On all other websites, as long as they do nothing to prevent it, you can resume your video in the background by going to your media controls and hitting the Play button. On desktop, this is not an issue, whether you have YouTube Premium or not. YouTube does not pause or stop videos when you switch tabs. > You can choose the audio-only stream to keep the music playing when Safari is in the background. As I hinted above, the crux of this one is that YouTube has deemed that background playback is a paid feature of YouTube Premium. I think this is silly, but it is their policy. Feel free to work around YouTube's technical restrictions on this topic if you want, but I return to exhibit A, that you can skip the ads and the restrictions if you sign up for YouTube Premium. In the Flash days, making it use HTML 5 was (afaict) a quality of life change. This extension seems a bit sketchy at best. On the other hand the fact that the entire thing seems to be Apple ecosystem only probably says more about the Apple ecosystem than anything else (as I've said, this is mostly unnecessary on other platforms). EDIT: PS: I would love if Chrome and the other browsers reversed their decision to auto-pause HTML5 video when you switch tabs or apps on mobile. It just feels like a way to push native mobile apps over web apps for no reason. I understand the risk potential of allowing this on the open web, but I think a permissioning model can work here to reduce the risks.

Eelongate 5y ago
I'm something of a master thief myself; my whole life when commercial breaks started on TV, I changed the channel or turned the TV off.
- rezonant 5y ago
  Yeah and I see how this is kind of a modern analog to that, but at least in that case the consumer of the media is making a tradeoff. Perhaps a better analogy is DVRs and their fast forwarding (or completely automatic) removal of ads. This kind of tech will always be possible and I kind of doubt YouTube will make a loud fuss about it.
wand3r 5y ago
>> The removal of in-video ads. > You can pay YouTube for ad-free viewing... not doing so and stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it" I don’t understand this sentiment AT ALL. Google has built an entire business out of scraping and selling other peoples content. YouTube has become the defacto host of virtually ALL VIDEO. So yeah, I would watch a video without ads. This is the internet. If they send the ad and the video and I use a program to hide the ad but watch the video thats my choice. Its MY computer. If they want to take steps to stop this thats up to them. Advertising is disgusting honestly and your statement in my opinion is an ice cold take
- rezonant 5y ago
  Completely your choice to bypass it, I just don't agree it's ethical when there is a choice to pay a bit of money instead to not have the ads. I will agree that this does not stop them from gathering your data and that is fair. But just stripping the ads without paying when they give you that choice doesn't seem like an ethical choice.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    With all the shit google has done i honestly don't care if people are ethical when dealing with them.
    - rezonant 5y ago
      I don't care about Google. I'm more concerned with the creators on YouTube.
      - aaomidi 5y ago
        Still don't care to be honest.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    I close my eyes during the ads. Want to lecture me about how unethical that is? I’m “stealing” from the advertiser now because google will charge them for that view.
Ygg2 5y ago
Will someone, please, think of pure defenseless multi-gazillion corporations?!
defaultname 5y ago
> Picture in picture works just fine on Windows and Android without a YouTube Premium account. Is this something specific to iPhone? Google decided that in YouTube for iOS the feature would be premium only, at least for now. Maybe they feel iOS users are more easily monetized. Who knows. It most certainly isn't a limitation of the platform. > stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it" I never use YouTube intentionally. The service is a bit of the perfect example of boiling a frog, with one short skippable ad becoming multiple skippable ads becoming multiple unskippable ads becoming multiple unskippable ads plus interstitial ads, on top of the content itself almost always having sleezy "sponsored by" advertising content. It's simply remarkable how what was supposedly the new world that would break us free from the classic television model has somehow gotten so much worse. That doesn't really address your point, but it is kind of tough to feel too sympathetic. The morality becomes...clouded. > On the other hand the fact that the entire thing seems to be Apple ecosystem Google decided to be extra greedy towards iOS users, so users helped solve it. Sounds like you're giving it a thumbs up.
- rezonant 5y ago
  Yeah I just want to suss out that picture in picture is indeed working just fine for iOS users as it is documented as working by Apple. Do other sites activate PiP reliably? Note that PiP on mobile has always required (stupidly so) that you be in full screen mode prior to activating it. In my own experience, making picture in picture trigger on iOS on my own video apps seems to be fleeting. Can someone on iOS check in on alternative video sites to see if PiP is triggering reliably? I don't use iOS, if you say YouTube is treating it differently than Android and blocking said feature, that sucks and they should change that for sure. Just seems like there may be problems on Safari/iOS (and the underlying WebKit framework that all or most third party iOS browsers use) more than on other platforms/browsers
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > Yeah I just want to suss out that picture in picture is indeed working just fine for iOS users as it is documented as working by Apple. It does not. I just re-tried (iPhone XR on the latest version of iOS). If I jump out of Safari I get the PiP video for about half a second and it disappears. It works great with Vinegar, as advertised. Websites that use the standard video tag work as they should as well, from what I have seen. > I don't use iOS, if you say YouTube is treating it differently than Android and blocking said feature, that sucks and they should change that for sure. Indeed. And in the meantime I will work around them. And if they block it, I’ll just YouTube-dl stuff ahead of time. And keep laughing when Google devs whine about Safari not supporting Chrome’s HTML extension du jour.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Eelongate 5y ago

I'm something of a master thief myself; my whole life when commercial breaks started on TV, I changed the channel or turned the TV off.

rezonant 5y ago
Yeah and I see how this is kind of a modern analog to that, but at least in that case the consumer of the media is making a tradeoff. Perhaps a better analogy is DVRs and their fast forwarding (or completely automatic) removal of ads. This kind of tech will always be possible and I kind of doubt YouTube will make a loud fuss about it.

wand3r 5y ago

>> The removal of in-video ads. > You can pay YouTube for ad-free viewing... not doing so and stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it" I don’t understand this sentiment AT ALL. Google has built an entire business out of scraping and selling other peoples content. YouTube has become the defacto host of virtually ALL VIDEO. So yeah, I would watch a video without ads. This is the internet. If they send the ad and the video and I use a program to hide the ad but watch the video thats my choice. Its MY computer. If they want to take steps to stop this thats up to them. Advertising is disgusting honestly and your statement in my opinion is an ice cold take

rezonant 5y ago
Completely your choice to bypass it, I just don't agree it's ethical when there is a choice to pay a bit of money instead to not have the ads. I will agree that this does not stop them from gathering your data and that is fair. But just stripping the ads without paying when they give you that choice doesn't seem like an ethical choice.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  With all the shit google has done i honestly don't care if people are ethical when dealing with them.
  - rezonant 5y ago
    I don't care about Google. I'm more concerned with the creators on YouTube.
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      Still don't care to be honest.
- kortilla 5y ago
  I close my eyes during the ads. Want to lecture me about how unethical that is? I’m “stealing” from the advertiser now because google will charge them for that view.

Ygg2 5y ago

Will someone, please, think of pure defenseless multi-gazillion corporations?!

defaultname 5y ago

> Picture in picture works just fine on Windows and Android without a YouTube Premium account. Is this something specific to iPhone? Google decided that in YouTube for iOS the feature would be premium only, at least for now. Maybe they feel iOS users are more easily monetized. Who knows. It most certainly isn't a limitation of the platform. > stripping out the ads is dangerously close to "I just want this for free, so I'll steal it" I never use YouTube intentionally. The service is a bit of the perfect example of boiling a frog, with one short skippable ad becoming multiple skippable ads becoming multiple unskippable ads becoming multiple unskippable ads plus interstitial ads, on top of the content itself almost always having sleezy "sponsored by" advertising content. It's simply remarkable how what was supposedly the new world that would break us free from the classic television model has somehow gotten so much worse. That doesn't really address your point, but it is kind of tough to feel too sympathetic. The morality becomes...clouded. > On the other hand the fact that the entire thing seems to be Apple ecosystem Google decided to be extra greedy towards iOS users, so users helped solve it. Sounds like you're giving it a thumbs up.

rezonant 5y ago
Yeah I just want to suss out that picture in picture is indeed working just fine for iOS users as it is documented as working by Apple. Do other sites activate PiP reliably? Note that PiP on mobile has always required (stupidly so) that you be in full screen mode prior to activating it. In my own experience, making picture in picture trigger on iOS on my own video apps seems to be fleeting. Can someone on iOS check in on alternative video sites to see if PiP is triggering reliably? I don't use iOS, if you say YouTube is treating it differently than Android and blocking said feature, that sucks and they should change that for sure. Just seems like there may be problems on Safari/iOS (and the underlying WebKit framework that all or most third party iOS browsers use) more than on other platforms/browsers
- kergonath 5y ago
  > Yeah I just want to suss out that picture in picture is indeed working just fine for iOS users as it is documented as working by Apple. It does not. I just re-tried (iPhone XR on the latest version of iOS). If I jump out of Safari I get the PiP video for about half a second and it disappears. It works great with Vinegar, as advertised. Websites that use the standard video tag work as they should as well, from what I have seen. > I don't use iOS, if you say YouTube is treating it differently than Android and blocking said feature, that sucks and they should change that for sure. Indeed. And in the meantime I will work around them. And if they block it, I’ll just YouTube-dl stuff ahead of time. And keep laughing when Google devs whine about Safari not supporting Chrome’s HTML extension du jour.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]