this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 months ago (11 children)

My gut reaction is that this won't work long-term. Users on youtube often point to specific timestamps in a video in comments or link to specific timestamps when sharing videos, meaning there needs to be some way to identify the timestamp excluding ads. And if there's a way to do that there's a way to detect ads.

Of course, there's always the chance they just scrap these features despite how useful they are and how commonly they're used; they've done similar before.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Feedback across the Firefox and YouTube subreddits highlighted that it could break timestamped video links and chapter markers. However, YouTube knows the length of the ads it would inject, and can offset subsequent timestamps suitably.

The move also adds a layer of unnecessary complexity in saving Premium viewers from these ads. If they are added server-side, the YouTube client would have to auto-skip them for Premium members, but that also means ad segment info will be relayed to the client, opening up a window of opportunity for ad blockers to use the same information meant for Premium subscribers and skip injected ads automatically.

It sounds like there's a silver lining after all.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Surely at the server side it knows the premium status of the user it is supplying the video to, so just wouldn't insert the ads? I don't see why that would need to be client side.

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