YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is being added directly into the video stream.

This breaks sponsorblock since now all timestamps are offset by the ad times.

For now, I set up the server to detect when someone is submitting from a browser with this happening and rejecting the submission to prevent the database from getting filled with incorrect submissions.

@sponsorblock can you see a way of working around this?

@sponsorblock

@sponsorblock

YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection

wow when/if this reaches me it might be time to break my youtube addiction and say goodbye to google

@sponsorblock@fosstodon.org what the FUCK ​​

@sponsorblock WHAT THE FUCK

@sponsorblock …wonder if there’s enough metadata exposed to determine new offsets and block the injected ads? like, maybe something can be pulled from the transcript from known good submissions?

probably not accurate enough to make submissions on an injected video work properly, but.

@sponsorblock YouTube is freakishly devoted to staying with a monetization plan that has never worked for them and is currently not working for them

@sponsorblock recent updates also break adblocking with ublock.

@sponsorblock

I agree with the person who said that, if necessary, they will watch a black, silent rectangle with a countdown timer, until the ad has passed.

@iain the ui needs to change to include ad links, so the data for when ads happen should still be retrievable _somewhere_ in the page. Then just a bit of math

@sponsorblock@fosstodon.org thank you for your service

@comradevlast @sponsorblock Except it IS working for them. They're just not content with obscene profits and want even more obscene profits, but they're incompetent and going to end up reducing profits.

@sponsorblock The day sponsor block and ad block stops working is the day I stop using YouTubr all together.

@sponsorblock@fosstodon.org

@sponsorblock They are spending a lot of time and money to ensure that people see ads. Be great if they invested that much energy into improving the user experience

@TrackerRoo how does that benefit the shareholders?

And @sponsorblock is investing a lot of time and money into playing along with Google's game.

Imagine if all that were spent on improving the user experience on open platforms, so we could stop playing Google's game!

(Yet, thanks for the effort! It sure improves life for YouTube consumers, I just don't consider it sustainable.)

@sponsorblock @TrackerRoo This made me laugh and also cry a little inside

@sponsorblock I somehow doubt this will be deployed on a wide scale. It's too constly for YouTube to live encode video for every single user.

If I'm wrong I will probably just quit YouTube and go back to plain old TV shows and movies.

@fell @sponsorblock Why would they encode for every single user? First, they already do some kind of chunking. Second, they can just create 5 versions of each video, each with different advertisment, and then serve those. Update popular videos from time to time...

@fell@ma.fellr.net @sponsorblock@fosstodon.org I bet YouTube found a way to concat two videos without re-encoding everything.

@pavel @sponsorblock @fell honestly this comment is somewhat reassuring. This still sounds expensive enough to be in a similar ballpark as the ad revenue lost from 3rd party clients and ad blockers. I'd wager they'd roll it out to only the most viewed videos at first.

@dalias @comradevlast @sponsorblock

I really would like to know how much costs all these server and the huge storage.

@redstone @sponsorblock @fell Expensive: yes. Not doable: no. :-).