this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024

777 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

58303 readers

11 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

777

YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users (www.ghacks.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

233 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 3) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

I've been enjoying Odysee a lot. It doesn't have much content but it works great. Hopefully content creators start uploading there as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nobody mentioning Grayjay for Android?

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

this is true if the client itself has no knowledge of what is ads and what isn't, so like if they have no skip to time feature, no clickable links etc. Otherwise the plugin could just search for those elements and mute or skip if they are present.

with YouTube it just adds another layer of complexity for ad blockers

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] ICastFist 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I'm actually annoyed that NewPipe stopped working again and Invidious' download speeds are glacial

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

Grayjay seems to fix things real fast, been using that a lot lately

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

6 seconds?! GASP

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

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.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I wonder how this affects people that setup Pi Hole and VPN and all that.

load more comments (2 replies)

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

Movie scene from Untouchables. Sean Connery and Kevin Costner in a church sitting in pews.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wonder if someone could make a browser add-on that replaces the black screen with something else. Like plays a short song or something.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Some random no context 6s youtube videowould be funny

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Or an ad

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

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

load more comments