137

Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers (www.engadget.com)

submitted 6 months ago by Bebo@literature.cafe to c/technology@beehaw.org

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

From the article: “In some ways, the current situation has spurred an arms race. YouTube has inadvertently improved ad blockers, as the new knowledge and techniques gained from innovating within the YouTube platform are also applicable to other ad and tracking systems.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] MiddledAgedGuy@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

Oh, yeah. Hadn't thought of that. Or maybe it'd just blank out the ad while it was playing and you'd just have to wait. Either way, annoying.

I got to thinking you could crowdsource it, like sponsorblock. But that'd probably only catch popular videos, and YouTube could just randomize what ads and when.

[-] peter@feddit.uk 2 points 6 months ago

YouTube could make it impossible to skip, or at least impossible to entirely skip. If there hasn't been enough time between you requesting the ad frames and the frames at the start of the video it could simply refuse to give you the new frames