Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube’s dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there’s an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.
And if Google went nuclear and starts embedding the ad into the videos themselves?
the current solution for that would be similar to the current “sponsor block” plugins, here’s an example
crowdsourced start and endpoints for embedded sponsorships
something like this tool, but for future embedded google adverts
Without talking about the resources it would require, youtube could totally only serve the ad until it has been “watched”. And no amount of sponsor block or similar software would help. These software only work because youtube allow you to navigate the video. If they decide that you have to fully download a 30s ad video, and that you can’t ask for the video for the first 30s, then you wouldn’t be able to do anything (or at the very max, just hide the ad and wait 30s on a blank screen).
i would choose the blank screen over watching an ad, every single time
How do those extensions that skip download countdown timers work then?
All other hope forlorn, there’s still ML to recognize and cut out ads.
Or one can download the same video with as many as possible metrics different, so that ads would be different, and then compare the two videos. Ugh.