[corn-dog]

Hey the creator here, was not expecting this to blow up at all. I made this I guess because of the Streisand effect, I probably never would have bothered if it weren’t for all the news about ad blockers not working.

I intend this as a second line of defence against ads, where the first line would be a conventional ad blocker.

After work I’m going to investigate the same technique for speeding up paid sponsor portions of the video.

My background is a web dev, but I make extensions in my spare time :) I recommend making some yourself they are a fun little project. This one only took about 4 hours so I’m laughing at the interest :)

If you want to see a way more awesome extension I’ve created check this out - https://mobileview.io/

[Modified3019]

Sponsorblock was already mentioned, but also have a look at what DeArrow does, which is allow crowdsourced titles and title cards to remove the horrible ":O" face clickbait.

[rchaud]

There's already an extension that does that: Clickbait remover for YT (FF/Chrome)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

[echelon]

One day we'll use AI to replace ads with anti-marketing.

Ads for McDonalds replaced with obesity stats. Ads for goods rephrased to make the actors say, "you don't need it."

[tetris11]

And one day they will use AI to place more covert ads.

[intelVISA]

'One day'...

[hanselot]

Why would watching that add any value to the lives of anybody consuming that content?

Why not just remove it entirely? The only people that would use it are the same people that already know those stats.

[Liquix]

thanks! the thumbnail trend has gotten really, really bad. any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon? is there data they have access to which suggests switching to this type of thumbnail will increase engagement?

[pjerem]

Veritasium made a video about this : thumbnails and title so much drastically change your view count that, even if you are against it, you would be stupid to not jump into the trend, especially if your business is correlated to view counts.

But I’m like you, I’m pretty sad about it because sometimes this pushes me back very hard and I avoided some otherwise very great quality channels for months or years because of that.

My most remarkable example of this is KURZGESAGT : YouTube algorithm was always suggesting it and my brain was always thinking that this looked like cheap animated videos with colors everywhere to catch my eyes, probably with synthetic narration. I ignored it for months until I watched one by accident. And boy did I discovered it was in fact a brilliant channel with probably one of the most impressive animation and music on YouTube, an incredible narrator, one of the rare YouTube channels which provides links to studies for anything sentence they say and all of this full of poetry. Also a very non intrusive business model with pertinents sponsorships at the end of the videos and their own merchandise marketplace with actually nice items and artwork to buy.

The even sadder thing is that their thumbnails are in fact pretty good but they mostly suffered from the fact that my brain is now programmed to avoid anything catchy.

[octacat]

> In 2015, the channel received a 570,000 US dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who later became one of their key sponsors. Kurzgesagt have made videos calling for investment in novel technologies the foundation also supports, such as carbon capture and artificial meat.

There is one good way to solve climate issues: consume less. Instead, kurzg says "we could consume, but someone will solve our issues with new great tech, like carbon capture".

Still, people like it, because it "sounds good".

[sgift]

> There is one good way to solve climate issues: consume less. Instead, kurzg says "we could consume, but someone will solve our issues with new great tech, like carbon capture".

No, kurzgesagt says that given that people won't be willing to consume less to the required degree novel tech will also have to play a role. It's disingenuous to run around and say that 'consume less' is the solution knowing that people won't do it. At least not if they aren't forced to. Do you want to argue for forcing people? Then say it. Don't hide behind "oh, just consume less, it's the only thing that works".

[octacat]

Please don't assume what I wanna force or not. I don't need a new CPU for windows, but windows wants it. Similar with phones, I am forced to buy a glued brick each 3 years (2 years now, woohoo). And I don't need a "new video" each week from my favourite creator, one good video once in a while is ok for me. Carbon capture is not even working properly yet, but we already pushing it as a solution. Probably solution would be "it releases more CO2 in the end, but you are forced to buy it, and it would make great profit to people involved in it".

[bitcharmer]

That's extremely disingenuous way to describe Kurtzgesagt. The channel offers high quality educational content.

[octacat]

There are channels without propaganda like ScienceClic/pbs space time. Good propoganda would not work if it would be too obvious. But once you read Kurtz story and try to reevaluate their "proposed" solutions to eco issues, you can see how it aligns. It is "technooptimism". Like similar to "invest into AI, it will solve all of our problems".

Sadly... Ok ok, so it is basically science video channel with sponsored content where they don't say it is sponsored content. Better description?

[uranusjr]

They offer educational content. From limited consumption I would not rate it as high quality. More like acceptable I guess.

[imtringued]

Veritasium is the kind of guy who makes a video explaining how his titles aren't clickbait, yet he optimizes thumbnails and video titles after the video is published to maximize views more than anyone else.

[pjerem]

Which at least is … honest.

[bitcharmer]

How do you know he does that more than anyone else?

[brandnewideas]

Ignoring the fact that KURZGESAGT is a blatant propaganda conduit, the art-style they use in their animations is so flat and devoid of any personality at all, I'm actively repulsed by it.

[pjerem]

I’m open to debate but propaganda for what exactly ?

There was only one of their video I felt awkward was their video about the fact we will tackle climate change, I felt like they were I little too techno optimistic. But given that they have a good history in this subject, I just felt their goal was to provide optimism.

Also, I’m sorry if I’m overly paranoid but I feel strange that you created an account just to make this comment.

[brandnewideas]

Propaganda for billionaires and the various methodologies they use to control and slowly reshape society. The following video is a good start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI

The optimism you mention in your comment is key. Conditioning the public to perceive and blindly accept the ideas and procedures commonly discussed in many of their videos as something net-positive seems to be the primary goal.

The art-style I think plays a very well-defined role in that: yes it's bland, but it's the most unlikely one to offend any one average viewer, irrespective of nationality or culture. It's just cute 2D flat birds after all.

[Onawa]

If I remember correctly, Linus from Linus Tech Tips said begrudgingly at one point that the clickbait thumbnails increase views by 20-30%. Even he wasn't happy about having to do them, but the drop in viewership from not doing them seemed quite large and hard to disagree with.

[wkat4242]

LTT is pretty much the most clickbaity YouTuber anyway when it comes to IT. Mediocre content, extremely high monetisation including in-stream ads.

I never bother watching LTT anyway. It represents everything that's wrong with YouTube.

When it comes to creators I actually respect I'd think of Dave Jones (EEVBlog), Naomi Wu, Louis Rossman...

[pjerem]

It’s not my favorite channel, I don’t even have a subscription to it, but for such a mainstream and popular channel it’s honestly pretty good.

Each time I stumbled upon a video of LTT, it ranged from "great" to "really ok".

There are way better channels but LTT is far from being the worst.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Hard disagree, at least on some content. The engineering videos where they do crazy hacks like negative cooling computers, swimming pool water cooling etc are all insightful and inviting viewers to explore hardware hacking and engineering.

I suspect techlinked troll HN for news content, but I watch that for the humour rather than news.

[tanjtanjtanj]

I think you can both be right.

They put out a "crazy engineering" video maybe once every 6 months while putting out 5+ videos every single week. The majority of the videos being uploaded are them faking enthusiasm for version i+1 of whatever product giant tech company put out this week or them trashing some silly or sometimes misunderstood idea.

[SoftTalker]

> any insight into why creators are hopping on the bandwagon

It probably works.

[rpastuszak]

My (semi) serious attempt at blocking sponsored segments: https://butter.sonnet.io

[vGPU]

Hey, I just wanted to say that your “say hi” page is an insanely cool idea and I might take you up on that offer at some point :).

[rpastuszak]

Thanks, and yeah -- give it a go, it's a tonne of fun.

Also, you can call me for a quick 3 minute rant if a longer call feels like a commitment. In fact, I just finished my first rant today!

[wrayjustin]

I would be super interested in seeing engagement metrics for this, especially from organic, cold, leads.

[vGPU]

Well, here would be the ones I’m interested in: the 3 minute rant would be perfect right now as I finish processing shitty family. The general chat with topics includes several that I personally am interested in, including photography and mental health. The offer to pair program with me to help me with a programming problem? Amazing. Though I’d feel too guilty about using that one personally when the vast majority of my coding problems can be solved by Google and sometimes screaming into a pillow.

All in all, if I was looking for an employee, seeing this page would put that person at the top of the list for me because it gives off all the right vibes - team player, interested in helping others, well rounded, etc.

[rpastuszak]

I'm not sure what qualifies as a cold lead here, but I've had ca. 150 calls so far. I reached out to people directly only twice with 50% success rate.

This comment seemed to generate 1k visits to my site, from and 2 called booked for Tuesday.

Most of my calls are 30m coffee chats (I'd say close to 90%).

Rants are quite rare and people tend to cancel those last minute. My theory is behind this is that the decision to book a call is more likely to be driven by emotions.

Rants rarely end up being rants. For instance, the first one I had ended up being a 2 hour discussion about life, privacy, cryptography, tech + a century-long and hemisphere-wide family history in English and Ukrainian.

If you have any questions about this -- please let me know as I'm compiling an article for untested.sonnet.io

[hunter2_]

Whoa! I love it. For anyone wondering about the not-so-secret sauce:

https://github.com/paprikka/butter/blob/main/src/watcher/det...

The irony would be incredible if you happened to use Bard.

[langsoul-com]

Why only 16x speed? Was there some kind of technical limitation or it just felt like the best option?

[mattigames]

Yep technical limitation, the most you can speed the video element in Google chrome is 16x (the slowest is 0.07x)

[hunter2_]

I used to have a computer with an audio interface that had a wordclock input (BNC connector) and a huge rack mounted wordclock (Antelope Isochrone) to theoretically reduce jitter that a cheap internal crystal clock built into an interface might otherwise introduce. To work normally, the interface and external clock both needed to be set to the same thing (say, 48 or 192 kHz, or whatever you wanted). We quickly discovered that if the interface was set lower than the clock, any audio playback would be sped up and high pitch (and vice versa) -- not only playback from the DAW, but from anything, even YouTube videos and so forth. And of course the a/v sync was maintained, so the picture would also be sped up to match.

I wonder if this effect could be completely virtualized as an audio driver, where you choose this middleware as the default output device in the OS, and it messes with the audio clock speed: essentially overclocking the upstream (OS) side whenever an ad is detected, and dropping samples (basically a rudimentary sample rate conversion) proportionately so the downstream (hardware) side never skips a beat. I don't know how an extension/userscript would be able to communicate with said middleware, but maybe there's a way.

Aside: I wonder what would happen with live streams. Probably just periodic buffering, not from congestion but from the analog to digital conversion consuming the stream faster than it's being created. Theoretically a very miniscule version of this problem always occurs if the DAC on the production side is running slightly lower clock speed (say, 47999 Hz) than the ADC on the consumer side (say, 48001 Hz) and the player knows how to gracefully compensate to avoid occasional buffering (or buffering does occur but it's too brief for anyone to notice). Hmm.

[Naracion]

This is absolutely fascinating and I love how this experience leads to an interesting idea for a solution to a different problem.

As an aside, what audio interface was this? Sounds fascinating (as an amateur audio-interested person).

[hunter2_]

M-Audio Delta 1010 but it could probably be anything.

[just_testing]

When browsing the page for MobileView, I was very pleasantly surprised by the lack of a subscription option.

Not because I don't think you should be payed for your hard work, but because the extension being free allows me to recommend to any of my students - some of which are very poor.

Thanks!

[corn-dog]

That’s awesome feedback, thanks! Definitely get your students into it

[ndr]

Is there any chance something like this could work on chromecast?

[c0wb0yc0d3r]

https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV might work

[cassianoleal]

Any chance that this technique can be added to iSponsorBlockTV? :)

https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV

[eagleinparadise]

I tried your extension but it wasn't able to activate in a Next14 project i'm working on... getting a hydration error.

[corn-dog]

Is this my mobile view one? Yeah I’m aware of this error so I need to fix it. Is it an open source or public repo.? That would help a lot for bug fixing

[jraph]

In case you don't know about it, make sure to check out SponsorBlock, which optionally, automatically skips parts you don't want to see like for example sponsors (but not only). You can use this awesome DB for what you want to do.

And also Invidious.

And also their combination.

User of both, I'm unaffected by the recent adblocking issues on YouTube and I can still subscribe to channels, reliably. Without any Google account. (by the way, a simple regular RSS feed reader would do, since YouTube provides RSS feeds for each channel, but Invidious is a really convenient, specialized UI for this, without the notification / algorithm issues that seem to plague YouTube wrt this, but I digress)

All these issues are already solved by these projects. I guess one could consider contributing to them (financially or with code for instance). The official YouTube frontend actually don't need no love, others already achieve what we want.

Piped, NewPipe and FreeTube are also projects to look into (I loved NewPipe when I had a smartphone, Piped looks very good too and FreeTube looks interesting but I know less about them).

[Hikikomori]

Smarttube on my tv (Nvidia shield), revanced on phone and Vivaldi with ublock, no YouTube ads anywhere.

[xvector]

I just pay for Premium instead of grifting. Planetary-scale server farms and video hosting is not free.

[zeta0134]

I do not have a moral obligation to waste my time on content B, merely because it has been delivered alongside content A. The advertiser paid to make that offer to be, but I am not obligated to pay it any mind. That I've instructed my computer to automatically reject such offers is no sin.

For the record I do pay for premium, but that's because I want to support creators directly. I do that a lot actually; Patreon is great. But I block ads anyway, everywhere I go. There is no moral argument you can make that will convince me to actually watch ads. If companies want to stop making stuff available for free because advertising is not a sustainable business model, good! Cut the marketing out. Let it die.

[Sebb767]

> I do not have a moral obligation to waste my time on content B, merely because it has been delivered alongside content A.

Of course you don't. But neither does Google have the obligation to serve you if you don't pay and don't watch ads.

[BLKNSLVR]

I pay a certain fee in the effort I have to go to in order to block scam content reaching my home network.

Given that advertising platforms are one of the primary vectors of scam content these days, it's almost negligent to not block advertising.

[oaththrowaway]

They harvest everything I do online without my consent or permission without paying me. Fair is fair

[Jensson]

That has almost no value to them unless they can use that to show you ads. They use that data to target ads to you, that is the whole point. Do you think they care about what you do or who you are for any other reason?

[unclenoriega]

So if I block the ads, I guess that makes us even.

[oaththrowaway]

If it has no value then why don't they stop?

[dangus]

You consented by using the service. You don’t have to use YouTube.

[jraph]

It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere.

Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules. Nobody asked them to kill their competitors. Besides, I'm not really concerned for them. It's not like they are struggling.

[rockskon]

I have no sympathy for a company that operated at a loss for enough years to price out competitors to the point it was the only real game in town.

You kill competitors and now want to dictate the price (including attention) everyone pays to see user-generated content? Yeah no.

Got zero sympathy. None. You do not command my attention - a resource I am less and less willing to pay with these days.

If that results in YouTube becoming unsustainable and collapsing and something more sustainable emerging charging a price consumers are willing to pay? Well then that sounds acceptable.

[isaacremuant]

YouTube is a service that competes unethically with others and censors wildly to further its political interests.

Some of us control our computers, instead of letting every third party do it.

[oaththrowaway]

I don't consent on every other site that uses google analytics? And last time I checked, consent isn't implied.

[scotty79]

No, I did not. The fact that somebody somewhere wrote "You consent to ...." doesn't mean I actually consented.

[rchaud]

I prefer to think of myself as grandfathered into the free plan.

[Hikikomori]

I happily paid for YouTube lite until they cancelled it.

[crimsontech]

I used to pay for premium but I stopped just incase they thought ramming shorts and ‘people also watched” videos on me was the reason I was paying.

[Boogie_Man]

Required default response to all of these comments calling me a criminal (that is the implication of grift, intended or not): I have and will never ever pay one red cent to any company to watch videos for the purpose of entertainment outside of specific creators making high quality content that I personally enjoy. You can not make me. I have zero (0) moral compunction on the subject. I will explore every legal avenue. Weep and gnash your teeth. If every other legal avenue is exhausted I will imagine new Top Cat episodes in my head. You cannot stop me.

[Jensson]

It being junk doesn't matter, if you like to watch it then it should be fair to pay for it. If you don't like to watch it then why do you even care what YouTube does, just don't watch.

[koolba]

They’re free to provide the service over a different channel than HTTP which restricts my ability to restrict their ads.

My user agent works for me.

[crummy]

Do you sneak into movie theaters?

[Boogie_Man]

As a kid I used to sit across from the drive in and watch. I also used to watch other people's TV's through their windows before I knew it was creepy.

[aftbit]

I pay for Premium and use it on one PC, but I browse logged out (with ublock) on another PC. This gives me two (slightly) different views into what the Youtube algorithm wants me to see, based on what I happen to watch on each machine. I occasionally reset cookies on the logged out machine.

I definitely avoid watching ads, except the non-national spots on local TV where I kinda like the local city flavor of the ads. Is that grifting? I dunno. The ads are still there in aggregate, I just won't give them my brain space. Give me a way to pay without being tracked and having my content streams tied to a single account, and I'm all over it instead of adblock.

[sys_64738]

Maybe not but I don’t watch ads from ad companies like GOOG.

[oska]

Conversely, 'grifting' is exactly what you should be doing if you want to undermine the current server farm supported by advertising business model.

Videos don't need to be hosted on a server, they can be shared through peer to peer networks, which cost nothing.

[ffgjgf1]

Which is not something that could scale to Youtube’s levels.

> nothing

Except huge amounts of drive space and upload bandwidth. Considering most (to an overwhelming degree) people consume videos on phones, tablets or laptops with relatively tiny drives it’s not realistic.

Maybe some decentralized system with content providers hosting themselves might work.

However all that is irrelevant even if it were technically feasible because it doesn’t align with the incentives many/most content creators have (they actually want to be paid either through ads or subscriptions..)

[rainyMammoth]

following your logic, people should actively engaged with ads if not they are grifting. Please tell me you work for google?

[Jensson]

They pay to display the ad. Think of a highway ad. If you sell a highway ad placement and then cover it with a big blanket (with maybe another ad on it) so nobody sees it, that would be a serious case of fraud.

So if you tell them the ad has been displayed so you get the video, but no ad was displayed for you, then that is a form of fraud. I don't think that would hold in court since it is such a petty crime, but it is still fraud. You lie to their server so that you can see the video without ads, that is fraud.

[LegibleCrimson]

And if I simply mute the ad and do something else until it's over? It's that still fraud?

How about if I download the ad but don't watch it?

Since when is watching an advertisement a moral imperative?

[ffgjgf1]

> that is fraud.

I don’t think that true. Users have no have signed no contract and/or have any obligations to watch those ads.

Of course it would still be fraud if ad buyers were paying for ads which were never displaying it, except Google would be committing it. In most cases on a significant scale to warrant legal action.

[hypertele-Xii]

> Think of a highway ad.

Equally annoying, I'd block those too if I could.

[rainyMammoth]

bad analogy. An Adblock would be similar to blocking part of my windshield so I don't see the highway ads. No fraud there.

[gustavus]

> In case you don't know about it, make sure to check out SponsorBlock

So I don't love ads but mostly because of the privacy invasion they represent, but sponsorships I have a lot less of a problem with. Oftentimes sponsorships will have at least marginal connection with what in watch (most of the time looking at you NordVPN and Raid Shadow Legends) but to me sponsorships are the happy middle ground that allows creators to get some recompense for their labors without turning everything into an adscape dystopia.

Really I don't have a problem with ads on websites back in the day as long as they were somewhat tasteful, which they often were because the creator worked to integrate them into their work, but the constant user surveillance and spamming random nonsensical ads are what bugged me.

I mean some channels that I frequent have even turned the sponsorships into additional entertaining content (check out Ryan George's the Adstronaut or Viva La Dirt League).

[bee_rider]

Ad based businesses also have an incentive to maximize attention and interaction rather than enjoyment, education, or user happiness.

We’ve played a few rounds of this game, we’re dumber, sadder, and more politically polarized for it.

[jraph]

Yeah, I personally hate sponsor segments but strongly sympathize with your view. I'm currently looking for a way to donate to the stuff I watch instead.

[saturn8601]

Any open source player client for iOS? Does not seem like any of the listed ones are compatible with iOS.

[Manuel_D]

Unless you're willing to root your phone, or use a developer certificate to run an unofficial app, I don't think there's any chance of getting an 3rd party youtube client on iOS. They're breaking youtube's TOS which is why they have to be side loaded on android.

[saturn8601]

I am willing to use a developer certificate to run unofficial apps...if there is code available i'd be happy to compile and load it onto my phone. I don't think there is though.

I just cannot go back to Android after years of dealing with garbage(I owned all the Nexus phones and gave up after Nexus 5) so my options have been to limit phone usage in favor of Desktop + start working on as many homemade/ open source versions of iPhone apps that I use as possible. Luckily most apps i'd be likely to have installed are just some downloaded data(text, audio, video) and some buttons. How hard can it be to scrape and rip the content and make my own container to serve that data?

For other apps like Youtube alternatives I am in search of an app.

[jraph]

Invidious and Piped should actually work quite well. Not apps, but work fine in a browser. That's what I'm using on the PinePhone and on regular computers. Though I don't know if Safari still has limitations that make it a pain to use. Invidious is a pain on the iPad 2 because of some dumb design decisions in Safari but I expect it to have improved since then. And maybe third party browsers will at last be allowed on iOS through third party stores, maybe also allowing SponsorBlock to be used on this platform.

I'm missing some features like being able to select a play next video easily, so I may look into writing an Invidious-based client of some sort for this, but they are so many things to do for a strongly limited time.

Maybe Piped has the features I'd like to have, I should check it out.

[doawoo]

You can use an app currently in the App Store called "yattee" -- you can add an Invidious source in the settings, and viola you're good to go. I self-host mine, but you can totally point it at a community hosted one.

[saturn8601]

This is really cool, thanks!

[eiiot]

uYou+ is good, I use it regularly. Especially with a developer certificate.

[saturn8601]

Thanks, will check it out!

[Lamad1234]

I don't mind sponsor ads..

[nullandvoid]

Do you not get bored of spending ~10% of the total time you watch videos being spent on largely brainrot gambling / predatory game advertisements?

[true_religion]

I don’t know what you watch, but the videos I watch just have sponsorships for jewelry and other luxury products.

It’s not really worth it for me to block fashion sponsors who tell me what is popular, when I would otherwise have to go research to find the same information.

[nullandvoid]

Fair, I have never seen a single jewellery / luxury sponsor (It's more Raycon, Raid shadow legends etc for me), however I wouldn't ever purchase them even if I did.

My experience is that most sponsors are overpriced, largely garbage products, that they must pay YouTube to promote in order to sell.