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by svantana 3416 days ago
What I find interesting is that google/youtube doesn't circumvent adblockers, though they easily could, given that they own the whole ad supply chain. For example, they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream. My guess is they don't because a) they are wildly profitable anyway, and b) they don't want to alienate adblock users, especially the techies.
2 comments

> they could make the ads indistinguishable from the actual video (in the html), or even splice the videos into one stream.

And make ads unsuitable for the most egregious attacks on privacy, simple plain tracking or even as distribution channel for malware. Curiously, this nuclear option will make things better than the current situation.

I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
> I don't understand. What do you mean by this?

Ads embedded in the video stream (i.e. "burnt" as one with subtitles) can't be blocked but also can't deliver any active content (JS, Flash, etc) used for tracking or infecting users.

That wouldn't be a silver bullet; MythTV already has ad-blocking tech that works for a single stream.