YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users
YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users
Ad blocker users say that they are seeing a black screen when trying to play a video on YouTube. Here's what happened.
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.
Well, I'd rather see blankness than another ad.
it's nuts that no one likes ads yet advertising wouldn't be a billions of dollars industry if they didn't work
I think you're giving companies too much credit. Freakonomics did a series called "Does Advertising Actually Work?" and the tl;dr was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-1-tv-ep-440/
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/
A lot of people don't mind ads, they even say they don't see them anymore, that their brain just tunes them out. Then you look at their spending habits and it's quite clear they are seeing them.
A big part of the population doesn't mind being constantly manipulated.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
This reprieve from modern life brought to you by the colour Black
6 seconds of black screen VS 11 mins of the epoch times telling me how trans people are the devil?
I’ll take the black screen.
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.
Wait so there was a brief black screen, then the video? That sounds like the ad blocker is doing a great job…
That sounds like a feature, not a bug.
It’s honestly really weird that the journalist ever thought that would be a joke. Like how is it funny? Unless the whole thing is written by a bot that doesn’t understand emotions…
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.
Fully agree, I YouTube a lot for white noise as I fall asleep, and while I've had premium for a few years now the advertisements that I had before premium were much higher volume then anything else and I would much rather have no audio than a random advertisement blasting
Also before the better twitch adblock that let you bypass adtime with a lower quality video, people do literally use the plugin that replaced the ads with purple screen.
I can't be fucked to set up a pi hole so YouTube on my Roku in the living room had ads. I unironically mute the tv and check my phone during ads. I'd take a black screen any day
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.
This is my book case and I love to read. Don't mind the lambo, focus on the books!
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.
I can understand, I would feel better watching a black screen than an ad trying to psychologically manipulate you in a personalized way.
The day adblocks/yt-dlp finally loose to google forever is the day I kiss youtube bye-bye. No youtube premium, no 2 minute long unskippable commerical breaks. I am strong enough to break the addiction and go back to the before-fore times when we bashed rocks together and stacked CDs in towers.
Peertube, odysee, bittorrenting, IPTV. Ill throw my favorite content creators a buck or two on patreon to watch their stuff there if needed. We've got options, its a matter of how hot you need to boil the water before the lowest common denominator consumer finally has enough.
Nebula has some of the better creators anyway.
Same. I do enjoy sitting back and skimming trough the sub content every now and then, but I have gotten to a point recently, where I might as well save my time by not watching them. Definitely not watching 10+ sec ads before I can see the video.
It isn't fair to expect free hosting from platforms where creators are expecting revenue for original content.
Hoping for piracy means you expect someone else to pay.
Google should be pressured into changing their policies so user experience feels less disruptive and provide a healthy monetization
Video hosting is one of those things which can probably never be done profitably. But that’s okay, lots of things can’t be done profitably but still exist.
The internet used to be almost entirely run by passionate individuals with no thought towards how they’re going to make any money.
The long-term solution is probably something like inter-connected peertube instances provided by some of the big video creators with lots of patrons, and if someone gets big and starts making patreon money, they can make their own instance and start hosting their own videos.
don't bother, Lemmings have this weird entitlement that should be able to watch any video anywhere in the world for completely free, no ads and definitely won't pay for it, because storage and bandwidth don't cost anything and Google should be glad, they are blessed by their eyeballs.
I'll take a black screen over an ad any day of the week. Screw ads.
Or better, use FreeTube and NewPipe.
I get a feeling their time will be up soon. I hope I'm wrong.
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
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.
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.
I remember a time when ads weren’t crazy intrusive. They weren’t being shoved into every os and app and website.
There wasn’t 20 of them on every page, and advertisers weren’t trying to harvest my data to the point where they knew every last detail of my personal life.
And I didn’t mind having them in order to have “free” content. But they got greedy and now I’ll block them in every chance I get.
Maybe forcing ads into everything isn’t the answer.
you're misremembering the time. ad blockers aren't new and they were invented for a reason. people forget pop up ads could literally cover your entire screen and they were so bad that blocking them was a browser feature. popups are blocked by default even today.
Not to mention that ads are a prime vector for malware and spyware (well, more spyware on top of the ad vendor itself).
I went to my banking account page, where I can make transfers and look at my money. My ad blocker had blocked a GIANT ad in the center of the screen.
I find myself watching less and less youtube. Till is no longer part of my daily routine.
I backed up a few videos that I loved using tubearchivists and move on to other platforms.
I'm into small web and the fediverse now.
I remeber when it was all about the YOU part of tubin'. Real people making real content because they wanted to show it to you.
When they first started getting paid they just made more of that same stuff, heck plenty of reviewers could even be trusted as they made the reviews on their own accord.
It was my go to place for entertainment, information and to help me decide to get brand x or y for the product i need.
Nowadays i just have it on as it's less annoying than cable but nothing is actually interesting anymore. Mature youtubers who have turned into adhd 9yo olds just to try and stay relevant, people messing with annoying sounds effects just because they read it catches the viewers attention...video's nowadays are an attack on my home space, constantly triggering me with noise or ads just to be annoying. It's become exhausting to consume content.
Same goes for instagram which i very much liked, it's on constant mute for me and the only reason i'm still around is because it's become a habit and titties.
This is what I and many others on these forums have been trying to bring back and spread. People should exchange ideas based on logic and good humour, not money.
Ironically I'm enjoying it for the first time ever at the moment.
We were going away on holidays and would have patchy internet and I needed to make sure my iPad addicted kids has plenty of content for the the road. I decided I was too old and too busy to spend hours stealing YouTube content with shitty apps and just bit the bullet, got a VPN and signed up for a family plan of YouTube plus through Nepal for like $4 / month.
And now without ads and the bullshit I have for the first time found creators that I like, and I put on videos throughout the day. Also because it comes with music I actually use my google speaker for more than just alarms and timers because I refuse to buy Spotify.
The $4 is actually good value. I'm as surprised as the next person.
I’ve seen videos mentioning they have started cancelling plans opened on a different region to save money using VPN software, so be careful how much you rely on it.
If that's what it comes to then so be it. I'd rather stare at the void than an ad.
Or my ugly mug when the sun is up
I think its important to highlight that Odysee and Rumble are both "free speech" platforms that neo-nazis love to use to platform their calls for violence.
New platforms get the fringe content first, because the vanilla content can happily use the old incumbents.
Here's a few more in a reddit thread.
I thought Odyssey was just gun nuts? When did the shitters get there?
although to be fair, that is just what's going to happen.
What does neo-nazi mean to you?
The reason I ask. I see that word get thrown around on social media (twitter) all the time. The way I see that used 99% of the time. Some Left Winger sees a Right Winger say something they don't like. The Left Winger can't counter it or they just don't like that Right Winger said. So the Left Winger calls the Right Winger the worst thing they can think of.
there is also peertube which is fedirated
Sadly, too large to die. 99% of content creators willl stick to what the majority use. I'm just using Grayjay (Android) & Invidious (desktop) to watch all my content.
fuck rumble
lack of content and engagement are the main issue and Youtube reign top because of that
I can't wait for the day that saying "youtube" makes people say "what's this? a peertube instance?".
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.
Ditto. I want to use PeerTube, but network effect is a pain.
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.
How are they supposed to attract new customers when they are already a monopoly?
From the beginning of the article:
...in a bid to get users to switch to YouTube Premium
Which is still ludicrous of them, considering how much you pay for how little it offers
Which I've been saying into the void for a while. Ideally in capitalism demand drives supply. If their demand is lack luster (for people upgrading to premium), rather than trying to cajole people through force into buying their product, they should drop the fucking price. Instead, they want to keep it bundled with music, and thus make it prohibitively expensive, while simultaneously competing in two seperate markets simultaneously. Give the people a video only tier, at a truly reasonable price, and begin (read: continue) to rake in cash. It's very frustrating.
Im honestly waiting for Google to sue for blocking ads in a last ditch effort.
Adblocking has been ruled a constitutional right in Germany. Let them try.
Axel Springer tried again recently, arguing that ad blockers "infringe copyright by altering HTML elements on their sites", and Germany waits, because a similar lawsuit happened in Luxembourg which will be settled on the European level.
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bundesgerichtshof-will-entscheidung-auf-europaeischer-ebene-abwarten-104.html (in German)
Another article, where they tried the exact same thing two years ago: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/landgericht-hamburg-ueber-adblock-plus-springer-verlag-verliert-erneut-a-5e058ee7-e0fa-4f0e-aa10-d95d9cfad654 (also in German)
(Also it's not a constutional right (Verfassungsrecht), since it wasn't the BVerfG that ruled in the first case (they tried to get them to rule, but no response was given), but a civil case ruled in the first instance by the BGH, after the local courts told Axel Springer to get bent)
(Edited: Added more context)
It could also go the other way and someone could sue Google or other companies. Web browsers and ad blockers run on the client not the server, generally with the authorisation of the owner of said client system. It is a technical measure to prevent unauthorised code (i.e. unwanted ads) from running on the system, imposed by the owner of the system. Anti ad blocker tech is really an attempt to run software on someone's computer by circumventing measures the owner of said computer has deployed to prevent that software from running, and has not authorised it to run. That sounds very similar to the definition of computer fraud / abuse / unauthorised access to a computer system / illegal hacking in many jurisdictions.
Then google could be sued everutime it distributes malware.
What's the endgame here for users?
Do we just want a reasonable subscription price? Something we can genuinely afford?
If youtube doesn't play ads then they cant remain a service. At least not as it is today. Hosting costs money.
Im not shilling for them, i dont want ads either. And google are a terrible company. But im trying to be realistic.
Do we want cheap subscription?
Or a reduced service that can be maintained without so many ads
Do we just want 5 second skippable ads back?
Im just seeing this fight progressing to the point were youtube becomes subscription only and the ad blocker users have to pay or lose the service they obviously want to access.
I remember the days of tasteful ad banners on the internet. Those are long gone. Now everything has to be an obtrusive unskippable autoplay 30 second ad or cover half the screen.
It is not reasonable to browse the internet without an adblocker anymore, regardless of privacy concerns...
They're already harvesting my data. The greedy fuckers can fuck right off if they think I'm going to pay a subscription for that. It's not as if Google isn't profitable as it is. They just want more, and it will never be enough.
I think the baseline of what I would want is:
- Have actual moderation of the ads. Don't allow malware ads, don't allow porn ads etc
- Don't allow obtrusive ads, or at least categorize them and have preferences. Do NOT play my ads 2x the volume of whatever I was watching.
- Don't interrupt my video with ads. Play before or after. Ideally after, but I can see why that would not be feasible. I guess it is also feasable if the creator marks ad breaks, like the current-day sponsor segments.
I genuinely think Youtube premium is alrightish as it is. I wouldn't pay for it; though, since I do not want to give my money to Google. They are getting enough out of me that I don't want to give them.
I honestly just want the alternatives, like PeerTube, to have a funding model, which allows creators to get paid. Donations? Sure. Optionally ads? Sure. I think peertube having opt-in ads that go to the creator would go a long way.
Don't interrupt my video with ads. Play before or after. Ideally after, but I can see why that would not be feasible. I guess it is also feasable if the creator marks ad breaks, like the current-day sponsor segments.
FYI ad placement and type is decided by the creator not youtube. If you see a video full of ads in the middle it's because the creator of that video chose it to be so.
My problem is that paying for premium doesn’t actually remove the ads. YouTube fucked creators so hard that they started running their own sponsorship segments and product placements. So with premium I’m still paying to watch ads.
Well thankfully SponsorBlock still works whether or not you're a Premium subscriber. There's also always YouTube ReVanced for mobile (which has SponsorBlock built-in). There's no reason to ever have to put up with an online ad, no matter the source.
Do we just want a reasonable subscription price?
Yay, basically. I paid for premium when I could afford it because I want the platform to keep working and I hate ads.
Premium prices went up without a lot of value for me so I quit paying. Technically premium offers a lot but the core feature that I actually cared about (YouTube without ads) never changed in value. If I had the option of only paying for that, I'd do it. To me, YT is a higher priority than any other streaming service. But they don't provide a way for me to only pay for the stuff I care about
Let creators choose: normal ads or sponsors. Not both. YouTube getting part of the sponsorship deal.
If they choose ads, YouTube goes back to 1 shippable ad after 1 second.
OR
A subscription which is just "no ads". No YouTube music, not Google drive, no nothing. Just a cheap "no ads" subscription.
That being said, even if option 1 happens, I'm probably not uninstalling ublock. Once YouTube forced me to install it, it's impossible to use the internet without it. Actions have consequences.
I'd seriously consider a sub that just removed ads if the price is fair. I don't give a shit about premium, red or whatever it's called.
There already is a subscription service, it's called YouTube Red or Premium or something.
Yes, i said that, that one point was more about making it cost less so its affordable.
Remember when good ads used to be unobtrusive? Return to that.
They were?
I’ve been toying with a “Pay Per View” model for a bit. But it’s sort of modified.
Basically you can “pay what you want” on a per view basis. You as a user get to decide how valuable your view is and pay a creator that much each time you watch a video. Maybe this gets linked to watch time somehow to avoid people just spamming short content. YouTube presumably gets a cut to keep the lights on.
Creators making actually good content will hopefully attract viewers willing and able to pay, and viewers that have the means and really like a creator can up the amount they are paying. This could be on a per channel basis, or just a blanket setting of I pay someone ¢10 a view or something.
Idk, seems like a bit of a silly idea now I type it out
Its very socialist. So i like it.
I’m actually rediscovering YouTube right now. A few years back it seemed like too many attempts were a huge unskippable ad, for a short video. Ads were way too high a percentage. And even when a video was a bit longer, any attempt to scroll was met with more ads, and maybe getting reset to the beginning
This time around, I typically see one ad, skippable after 5 seconds, then another every 15 minutes or so. While I’d rather not have ads, it’s not bad. Even better, content has matured enough in the years since I first tried it, that there’s actually longer stuff worth watching: the percentage of ad time is much lower, so I do get entertainment value rather than just be fed constant ads. I could watch that.
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.
Ever since YouTube started this nonsense I moved to invidious and haven't looked back
This nonsense is about one step away from affecting Invidious too.
I tried using invidious but its was super slow and i only ever got 720p max is this fixed?
I have a lot of love for invidious, but I love in fear of yt finding a way to nullify it with some fuckery.
Recently they started blocking ips of VPS providers... so I can't run an instance on a VPS, it has to be local.
While that’s certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time
Time not having [corporation]'s advertisements shoved in my face is time well spent
I've been seeing the black screen on Firefox. Still better than an ad, but it would be nice to be gone lol
When I stream YouTube to my TV, I get 15-30 seconds of unskippable ads with the ability to skip enabling at the 15 or 30 second mark. The full length of the ad is 90+ seconds (according to the timer that never goes down). Would this implementation work similarly? 6 seconds of a silent black screen is fine; 90 or more seconds because the skip button is also missing would be more annoying (or be a nice time for a bathroom break).
I recently had to watch YouTube with ads on my tv, because smartube stopped working and needed to wait a day for a new patch.The ads are insane and i stopped watching anything on yt. I can't imagine anyone consuming content this way.
If your tv is using an Android-based OS: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
I rather see a black screen than an ad. Pretty much what I do with twitch, those corpo fuck heads can fuck off with their shitty cringy ass ads that make you loose a braincell everything it plays.
Hulu used to work this way with ad blockers back in the day
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.
If I'm watching YouTube I'm not too worried about my time. The black screen is worth it as long as it directly spites their greedy asses.
Soon we'll all be free as the enshittification snake eats its own tail.
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.
Nobody mentioning Grayjay for Android?
I have never used peertube or heard about it until i signed up for social medias in the fediverse I only heard of rumble and odessy
I thought the whole point of server side ads was that they are embedded in the video, not blockable?
Just because a company makes lots of money, doesn't mean they know wtf they are doing or are smart.
Sure they know! Every level of middle managers knows exactly what the status of the graphs of goals and progress of their team!
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
There's loads of information people making apps like NewPipe can save, and lots of that is fighting tracking systems, too.
Presumably the implementation is not as seamless as that, and 3rd party clients do not handle it like 1st party ones.
I'm actually annoyed that NewPipe stopped working again and Invidious' download speeds are glacial
6 seconds?! GASP
I wonder how this affects people that setup Pi Hole and VPN and all that.
I don't think DNS black holing was ever effective against YouTube ads. I use mullvad with a DNS filter for ads + uBO and still got served a few ad placeholders from YouTube in the past 10 days. I believe the actual ad was blocked by uBO, not the DNS filter.
You are correct. Google serves ads from the same domains as the actual legitimate content therefore sending those requests to null via DNS blackhole would simply block YouTube entirely. UBO and other browser extensions strip out or work around the problematic code itself to render a functioning page without the ads.
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.
Oh that's messed up! Especially if you're paying them!
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?
I saw some social media post from proton recently, where they showed a lost of countries without ads (obviously with the hint "we have servers there 😉"). Not sure Morocco was among them, but there definitely seem to be countries like that.
Edit: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7zEbEDMdhd/?igsh=MXBnYW00YzNnandhdg==
Not Morocco, but I've experienced this before. Been to a country where YouTube didn't display any ads.
Wonder if someone could make a browser add-on that replaces the black screen with something else. Like plays a short song or something.
Some random no context 6s youtube videowould be funny
Or an ad
fine on firefox and ubo here
the moment I see a damn grammarly ad on freetube I'm dropping $100 on real debrid
I've been seeing more and more State Farm ads sneaking past Ublock Origin in Firefox since about a month ago. Like OP, I also found that refreshing the page solves the problem. As long as F5 continues to fix the issue, I can put up with seeing 1 second of an ad or a black screen.
Those that make peaceful ad-blocking impossible make violent rage quiting inevitable.
Hot take for those who hate YouTube ads while still keep using it. You deserve it. The answer is right in front of us, stop using it there are alternative out there.
If your seconds were that precious you shouldn't be wasting them watching YouTube.
Hey, seconds add up fast if you're watching a lot of videos.
Some people have an ethical objection to advertisements.