Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54746 readers

222 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others

Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

💰 Please help cover server costs.


Ko-fi	Liberapay

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

373

SponsorBlock (and DeArrow): "YouTube is currently experimenting with server-si…" - Fosstodon (fosstodon.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Switch to 3rd party clients like pipe-viewer (doesn't need api key), it's less likely (though I suppose not impossible) google would roll this out against 3rd party clients as they can't track you for targeted ads.

To people thinking of joining Nebula because their marketing team/shills are currently spamming this thread, see peertube (federated like lemmy, open source)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

If they are injecting ads into the actual video stream; it won't matter what client you use. You request the next video chunk for playback and get served a chunk filled with advertising video instead. The clients won't be able to tell the difference unless they start analyzing the actual video frames. That's an entirely server-side decision that clients can't bypass.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

To people thinking of joining Nebula because their marketing team/shills are currently spamming this thread, see peertube (federated like lemmy, open source)

Peertube is fine, but like lemmy (but worse), there's barely anything there. Nebula at least got creators from YouTube to make ad-free versions for Nebula. If the channels that a person are subscribed to don't exist in Peertube, that's not an appealing alternative for them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

While I think federated services are a good idea in theory, the unfortunate reality is that they're also privacy and GDPR minefields that nobody has figured out how to make legal yet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Has any federated service ever been in trouble for GDPR?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I think for that to happen, it would have to be on a server hosted in the EU, owned by a corporation, with a user that just happened to report them for violations.