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Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions (RSS, but could also pull channels once a

Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions (RSS, but could also pull channels once a day), and detect and remove the ads? Or an extension/program that lets me pre download the first few minutes of a video, so I can start watching it after 2–3 minutes and won't get annoyed by ad that plays within the buffered amount of time. Or an extension/program that silences, blacks out ads, and notifies me when the ad is over.

tedunangst 2y ago
I imagine there's loads more to do on the JavaScript player that selects which video segments to download and play. They feed you a crap list of segments, then have the JavaScript skip past if it decides you're watching like they want.
- echoangle 2y ago
  You don’t have to do that yourself though, yt-dlp already handles everything
pompino 2y ago
It would be logical for them to fight tooth and nail on this as it puts their business model at risk. Personally, as much as I dislike Google, I'd rather everyone get off their youtube addiction, rather than use adblockers (or other similar circumvention methods. Their popularity (IMO) sends a strong signal to the platform owner that people value their content so they should keep fighting against such tools. The pressure Google puts on content creators forces them to skew greatly towards quantity not quality, and other terrible metrics like "engagement". Adblockers put further pressure on them to go out and personally find sponsors. IMO this makes the situation worse as they're focusing on not pissing off advertisers, and stay away from being opinionated, etc. All this probably won't affect established creators, but pushes everyone else to be vanilla.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Are you saying that there is… a systematic lack of edgy/niche opinions/content on Youtube? We must be on different sites!
  - pompino 2y ago
    You must have missed all the people who got banned for talking about the elections or wars in the middle east or public health policy on vaccines, or trans stuff or about a million other topics. The owners of Google don't want you talking about that stuff.
gretch 2y ago
At some point, if your methods are sophisticated enough and you are the only one doing it, then they probably let you go rather than creating a n=1 mitigation. However with that same ingenuity, you can probably make money implementing other things and easily pay the $15 monthly sub for no ads. If you have such skills and spend more than like 10 minutes on a solution, I think you lost money/time. But I respect it if it’s about beating the game (hacker mindset and all)
- beretguy 2y ago
  It would be worth paying Google money if they would care about customers and provided them with a good product but they enshitified YouTube and are continuing to do so. I’m not paying for that.
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  It's not one guy though, it's 10,000 bored but motivated code monkeys fueled only by their desire to not watch ads. My love goes out to each and every one of them. Bless their souls.
gary_0 2y ago
So basically we're going to have to record YouTube to a DVR in order to skip ads. Everything old is new again.
kurtoid 2y ago
I think the end game here will be something similar to their web environment integrity proposal, ie hardware attestation that the browser is what it says it is I really hope it doesn't come to that
abracadaniel 2y ago
ytdl-sub docker container to manage and download subscriptions and send them to Plex or similar.
riku_iki 2y ago
> Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions apply some robot detection tech and block robots/scripts

tedunangst 2y ago

I imagine there's loads more to do on the JavaScript player that selects which video segments to download and play. They feed you a crap list of segments, then have the JavaScript skip past if it decides you're watching like they want.

echoangle 2y ago
You don’t have to do that yourself though, yt-dlp already handles everything

pompino 2y ago

It would be logical for them to fight tooth and nail on this as it puts their business model at risk. Personally, as much as I dislike Google, I'd rather everyone get off their youtube addiction, rather than use adblockers (or other similar circumvention methods. Their popularity (IMO) sends a strong signal to the platform owner that people value their content so they should keep fighting against such tools. The pressure Google puts on content creators forces them to skew greatly towards quantity not quality, and other terrible metrics like "engagement". Adblockers put further pressure on them to go out and personally find sponsors. IMO this makes the situation worse as they're focusing on not pissing off advertisers, and stay away from being opinionated, etc. All this probably won't affect established creators, but pushes everyone else to be vanilla.

lxgr 2y ago
Are you saying that there is… a systematic lack of edgy/niche opinions/content on Youtube? We must be on different sites!
- pompino 2y ago
  You must have missed all the people who got banned for talking about the elections or wars in the middle east or public health policy on vaccines, or trans stuff or about a million other topics. The owners of Google don't want you talking about that stuff.

gretch 2y ago

At some point, if your methods are sophisticated enough and you are the only one doing it, then they probably let you go rather than creating a n=1 mitigation. However with that same ingenuity, you can probably make money implementing other things and easily pay the $15 monthly sub for no ads. If you have such skills and spend more than like 10 minutes on a solution, I think you lost money/time. But I respect it if it’s about beating the game (hacker mindset and all)

beretguy 2y ago
It would be worth paying Google money if they would care about customers and provided them with a good product but they enshitified YouTube and are continuing to do so. I’m not paying for that.
brokenmachine 2y ago
It's not one guy though, it's 10,000 bored but motivated code monkeys fueled only by their desire to not watch ads. My love goes out to each and every one of them. Bless their souls.

gary_0 2y ago

So basically we're going to have to record YouTube to a DVR in order to skip ads. Everything old is new again.

kurtoid 2y ago

I think the end game here will be something similar to their web environment integrity proposal, ie hardware attestation that the browser is what it says it is I really hope it doesn't come to that

abracadaniel 2y ago

ytdl-sub docker container to manage and download subscriptions and send them to Plex or similar.

riku_iki 2y ago

> Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions apply some robot detection tech and block robots/scripts