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YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users

Mashable reports that users ran into a black screen on YouTube, and that it stayed for about 6 seconds before the video began playing. The reports indicate it affected several browsers including Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi.

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad. While that’s certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time. A simple workaround for the black screen on YouTube is to just refresh the page, hit F5 as soon as the page starts loading. uBlock Origin’s filters were updated with a patch to resolve the problem, the add-on updates its filters automatically. If you are still experiencing the black screen issue, just open the extension’s dashboard and manually update the filters. This tug-of-war is getting annoying, but it appears to me that Google’s efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers, instead of attracting new subscribers.

umami_wasbi ,

Or better, use FreeTube and NewPipe.

original_reader ,

I get a feeling their time will be up soon. I hope I’m wrong.

AceSLS ,

This is the same cat and mouse game hackers have been doing with game-/anticheat developers since multiplayer games became a thing

Are people still cheating? Yes

So unless google manages to pull of their device certification fuckery for PCs it will never work out in their favor

Hazzia ,

NewPipe had to update a couple of times in the past month because YouTube made changes that broke the 3rd party playback. First time it took a few days, but so far it seems they’ve been able to keep up with YouTube’s bs.

I worry for a day when YouTube figures out how to make ads an unskippable part of the video itself so that they’re present with or without adblock, while also maintaining the ability to update them as needed.

circuscritic , (edited )

Piped apps have been broken at least 6 - 8 times in the past couple of weeks.

It’s the biggest Google effort I’ve seen to crack down on 3rd party YT clients.

I actually used to pay for YT premium, then they removed my discount AND raised the price to over $12/mo.

Sometimes I do miss my algorithm feed, just not enough to watch YT ads, or pay $12 - 15/mo.

Usernameblankface ,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

Well, I’d rather see blankness than another ad.

solsangraal ,

it’s nuts that no one likes ads yet advertising wouldn’t be a billions of dollars industry if they didn’t work

Sibbo ,

No one likes being manipulated. I like ads that promote healthy living for example, if they don’t secretly promote any brand or product. They are pretty rare though, almost only in some public health care facilities.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I’ve seen a few ads recently that are just random as hell, don’t say a product name and don’t even have a website or link to find out what it is even advertising. They always make me wonder how they’re working, if they’re working. They seem like just a waste of money and time for everyone involved, including the advertiser themselves.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

The people that do spend the time trying to find out what it is for will remember the eNgAgEmEnT from needing to find out what it is and that correlates with future sales. Just like “rewards” programs that are designed to mentally lock someone into the store/product while harvesting their data.

crimsoncobalt ,

I think you’re giving companies too much credit. Freakonomics did a series called “Does Advertising Actually Work?” and the tl;dr was ¯_(ツ)_/¯

freakonomics.com/…/does-advertising-actually-work…

freakonomics.com/…/does-advertising-actually-work…

solsangraal ,

i think human psychology is too nebulous and qualitative with way too many factors to definitively “measure” how effective ads are. all they really know is (most of the time) buy ads, revenue goes up.

but there’s a reason your personal data is so coveted by advertisers. if they can parse that you’re an avid hiker from the millions of data points they collect from you (websites visited, geolocation data, other purchases, etc), then they can sell ads for $400 hiking boots specifically for you, that people who never leave their couch and order delivery from hungry howies every day would just ignore

Ilovethebomb ,

I suspect that’s why Facebook makes so much money, they have a lot of information on you like that.

In a weird way, this is actually quite handy, as you get ads for things that are actually relevant to you.

HelixDab2 ,

Beat me to this.

Advertisers tend to be strongly opposed to measuring advertising effectiveness, because if they’re not effective, then they’re out of a job.

PixeIOrange ,
@PixeIOrange@lemmy.world avatar

The sad thing is: ads dont need to be liked to work. Making enjoyable ads is expensive, making annoying ads that still work is cheaper

bionicjoey ,

That’s because they are psychological warfare. They don’t need to be liked because the goal isn’t to create a positive association with the product, it’s to brainwash people into thinking they need the product

eronth ,

Or sometimes just remind you the product exists. They don’t have to make you like <insert snack here>, but when you see it you end up thinking “man it’s been a while since I’ve had <snack>”. Next then you know, you’re grabbing <snack> at the grocery store because you’ve been thinking about it lately.

AbidanYre ,

Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!

barsquid ,

That was certainly memorable but also I did not buy any.

solsangraal ,

Yum Yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee Tuna!!

FiskFisk33 ,

well, as long as the companies buying the ads think they work, we have an industry

solsangraal ,

i am also immune to ads lol

Gullible ,

Until they subtly inject them into other social media platforms, whereupon they’ll trickle into Lemmy like so much piss from an overflowing toilet. Mark my words, we’ll be up to our eyes in piss by 2026.

KillingAndKindess ,
@KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Luckily for me, I have the new AntiAdAssAdapter™, so I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff at all. Finally! I have the time to do what I want like take my grandkids to their school performance, or sit and nod at my clearly pregnant daughter while we look over a baby crib catalogue! Thanks Quadruple A!

tabular ,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

Can you think of something you may have bought which you saw an advert for it years ago? Does or doesn’t have to be the first time you became aware of it.

Fermion ,

My wife worked for a company that was heavily reliant on generating leads from ads. They had lots of real time monitoring of conversion rates to make sure they were actually making more money than they were spending on the ads. They would have to turn ad channels off all the time because the return on ad spend went negative.

So my conclusion is that ads can be somewhat effective for companies, but if they don’t actively monitor and control the performance of their ads, they’re probably just burning money. A lot of companies seem to advertise because they think that’s the only way to grow.

meco03211 ,

Was it a niche company/product?

MonkderVierte , (edited )

Or they work somewhat, resp. in some cases and the rest is make believe in execeutives, a waste of money. Let’s say 50/50?

Crismus ,

The problem started when they went from a basic preroll ad, to unskippable and then the large amount of mid-roll ads to push people into buying premium just as they increased the price.

solsangraal ,

the real problem is that people will complain about it for a minute, then buy it anyway

warm ,

People accepted unobtrusive ads, it's once they started taking over the actual content that they became a big no-no. The ad companies and ad-reliant websites fucked themselves.

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

Apparently there are some people that like ads, and a larger amount who may not like them but are willing to tolerate them.

Those of us who will make proactive choices to not engage with advertising are the minority.

Lost_My_Mind ,

My mom (mid 70s) says “Oh I don’t mind the commercials. It gives me a break to go pee.”

And when I say “or you could just get a dvr, and pause for as long as you want, any time you want.”

Her response was “Yeah…but who wants to do all that???”

Um…boomers are weird.

Ilovethebomb ,

Lemmy users typically vastly overestimate the amount of hassle people are willing to put up with to deal with technology.

It’s why we have so many Linux evangelicals.

eronth ,

I legit strongly suspect they don’t work, at least not as well as it’s implied. Like, everyone thinks they work because they used to work really well or something.

metaStatic ,

This reprieve from modern life brought to you by the colour Black

Teknikal ,
@Teknikal@eviltoast.org avatar

I think this is going to continue to the point we have AI adblockers that edit the files free of ads for us in real-time. Then hopefully the technology jumps to Televisions etc.

Google’s really helping it along in that direction.

LainTrain , (edited )

Before Sponsorblock I had an idea of abusing YT’s auto-generated subtitles to auto-skip sponsor spots in a very rough manner

themoonisacheese ,
@themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

Someone has apparently toyed with the idea of using AI to detect sponsor segments in subtitles to generate sponsorblock segments. I don’t think it went anywhere though.

CosmoNova ,

Yeah I know. Youtube tested them on me for only a day and yes of course I would rather see a black screen than an ad. I am not that needy for background noise that I would want to listen to an ad of the millionth MLM scam this month.

sunzu ,

This is my book case and I love to read. Don't mind the lambo, focus on the books!

GoOnASteamTrain ,

Thank you for reminding me of this!

It’s wasn’t that long ago that I was in a little lamborghini, and sleeping on bookshelves.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

I can’t wait for the day that saying “youtube” makes people say “what’s this? a peertube instance?”.

bluGill ,

i can't wait for the day content is there. I always look there first but too often I can't find anything close to what I want.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Ditto. I want to use PeerTube, but network effect is a pain.

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

We probably need a few more years of network and storage improvements to make open video platforms properly viable. Video data is big and bandwidth is expensive, which makes keeping servers running over a certain size difficult.

QuadratureSurfer ,
@QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world avatar

GrayJay has also been very quick to push updates. I haven’t had any issues watching YouTube videos on there. Hopefully more content creators will continue to spread out across multiple services so that there’s better competition with YouTube.

Bezier ,
@Bezier@suppo.fi avatar

If I hqve to watch a black screen, so be it. Better a moment of peace than an ad.

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad.

This wasn’t a joke.

melroy ,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

It's indeed not a joke.

suzune ,

How about when the ad blockers insert a joke, when a blank screen is shown on YouTube?

BearOfaTime ,

I’d prefer a blank screen

LainTrain ,

Soon we’ll all be free as the enshittification snake eats its own tail.

MonkderVierte ,

I thought the whole point of server side ads was that they are embedded in the video, not blockable?

Fiivemacs ,

Just because a company makes lots of money, doesn’t mean they know wtf they are doing or are smart.

Xeroxchasechase ,

Sure they know! Every level of middle managers knows exactly what the status of the graphs of goals and progress of their team!

poopsmith ,
@poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

I’m a scrub that pays for YouTube Premium and I’ve also been running into songs and videos that just don’t play recently because I’m using uBlock Origin.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad.

This isn’t a joke. I would literally rather see a black screen than an ad.

AcesFullOfKings , (edited )

relevant - “YouTube server-side ad injection faq” from Ajayyy, the developer of SponsorBlock

gist.github.com/…/f7b1807e13731c25cef4c2c057d022b…

doomi ,

A few years ago I‘ve been traveling in Morocco. And as long as I was there, YouTube didn’t show me any ads! Neither in the web player nor in the app (on iOS). Does anybody have a VPN with a server in Morocco to test if this is still working?

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

No black screens in GrayJay…

_Sprite ,
@_Sprite@lemmy.world avatar

the moment I see a damn grammarly ad on freetube I’m dropping $100 on real debrid

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