this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024

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

submitted 3 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

239 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.

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[–] x00z@lemmy.world 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.

[–] cellardoor@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nobody mentioning Grayjay for Android?

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

6 seconds?! GASP

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] antler@feddit.rocks 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 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?

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 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.

[–] Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.world 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!

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 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

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[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 5 points 3 months ago

No black screens in GrayJay...

[–] poopsmith@lemmy.world 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.

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[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 5 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 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.

[–] general_kitten@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 months ago

Some random no context 6s youtube videowould be funny

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[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

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

[–] doomi@discuss.tchncs.de 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?

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