YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#51

Post by milankragujevic » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:54 AM UTC

imaginenore wrote: post #47

milankragujevic wrote: post #34

If anyone is interested, I'm working on a free online YouTube client website that doesn't show ads, has a separate login system that allows you to subscribe to users, without YouTube knowing anything about that. I need help with building the website, so anyone doing design / PHP is welcome to contact me. edit: Forgot to add, the website uses no JavaScript and doesn't track you at all. It also tries to implement most…

If you're building such a website, Google will shut it down quickly. It probably breaks some laws too (i'm not a lawyer).

It doesn't break any laws since I don't play any videos which have forbidden embedding. Plus, technology like that has been mainstream in VLC, youtube-dl, etc, for ages. It uses the official YouTube API, and respects mosts of the Terms of Service, except the video fetching, which doesn't use the API at all, just loads the page on the server and catches the video stream.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#52

Post by wpietri » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:55 AM UTC

martinald wrote: post #19

It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business. They have virtually no business apart from ads. AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv. Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials? Staggering.

Google has two importantly different kinds of ads.

One is where you are searching something and they show you relevant offerings. Here, people are often happy to see the results, as they can move them toward their goal.

The other is where you are trying to do something (read a blog post, watch a video) and they want you to do something else (read about somebody's product, watch a video advertisement). Here many people are resistant, as it takes them away from their chosen activity.

My understanding is that Google makes most of their money from the first kind of ad, and that ad blockers mainly block the second. So I don't think this is a very big deal for them. In Google's shoes, I'd happily let people run ad blockers if they wanted. One, those people were unlikely to click on ads anyhow. And two, it's dangerous money. For their long-term success, they're much better off if they're doing things that customers actually like.

It's dangerous when companies get hooked on money that requires them to work against their users. Look at how much trouble TV networks have had adapting, for example; they just aren't clear on how to make great TV in the same way that places like HBO are. Or look at the sad, slow fall of Yahoo, which has always thought of itself as a media company. They were never able to do much with customer-focused acquisitions like Flickr because they never could quite understand them.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#53

Post by milankragujevic » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:56 AM UTC

milankragujevic wrote: post #46

cloudwalking wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to play YouTube videos without ads?

The server fetches the video page from YouTube, and embeds the VP8+Opus video URL into my site's page with a tag.

@amadeusw: I'm just planning to rebuild the VPS any time it gets blocked, if it gets blocked. Given that YouTube downloader websites have worked for so long without going down, I don't think that would be an issue.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#54

Post by imaginenore » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

martinald wrote: post #19

It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business. They have virtually no business apart from ads. AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv. Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials? Staggering.

They have all kinds of other businesses besides the ad (which is a large percentage of their revenue). Cloud services, maps, email for work. Very soon they will be selling self driving car systems, which is going to be huge. Even if they made zero through ads, being a search engine, they can charge for positioning. Or they can start their own businesses in literally any area, and drive all the traffic they want to them.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#55

Post by denim_chicken » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

jeffgreco wrote: post #42

kirykl wrote: post #10

I'd sign up for a low tier Red. Don't watch too many videos maybe $1/$2 month for an ad free vid limit or ability to buy instant skips

This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how many people expect their content for free.

I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money for them.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#56

Post by j_s » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:58 AM UTC

stepvhen wrote: post #40

ghrifter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> videos through youtube-dl these days how do you find the video you want without using youtube? do you just use the youtube search interface then download the video by copying the url (w/o even clicking on the link to start the video buffer)

youtube-dl can fetch a video via its ID, the part after the "/watch?v= " in the URL. Combined with a video player, such as vlc, mpv, mpc-hc or similar, you can stream youtube videos without viewing from the youtube website. There are scripts available that make this less DIY, such as ones that launch your video player with youtube-dl when you load a page on youtube, though I do not have any of those on hand to show y…

The question was more about discovery than how the tool worked... I'd imagine he doesn't watch much YouTube but just uses youtube-dl when the videos are found on other sites.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#57

Post by imaginenore » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 2:59 AM UTC

milankragujevic wrote: post #51

imaginenore wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're building such a website, Google will shut it down quickly. It probably breaks some laws too (i'm not a lawyer).

It doesn't break any laws since I don't play any videos which have forbidden embedding. Plus, technology like that has been mainstream in VLC, youtube-dl, etc, for ages. It uses the official YouTube API, and respects mosts of the Terms of Service, except the video fetching, which doesn't use the API at all, just loads the page on the server and catches the video stream.

Embedding and scraping into a video tag aren't the same thing.

As soon as you store any of their content on your server, even if in just RAM, you're fucked, because that's copyright infringement.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#58

Post by ihuman » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

stepvhen wrote: post #40

ghrifter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> videos through youtube-dl these days how do you find the video you want without using youtube? do you just use the youtube search interface then download the video by copying the url (w/o even clicking on the link to start the video buffer)

youtube-dl can fetch a video via its ID, the part after the "/watch?v= " in the URL. Combined with a video player, such as vlc, mpv, mpc-hc or similar, you can stream youtube videos without viewing from the youtube website. There are scripts available that make this less DIY, such as ones that launch your video player with youtube-dl when you load a page on youtube, though I do not have any of those on hand to show y…

You can stream videos through VLC even if you don't download them. Just Select File->Open Network, and put in the url of the YouTube video.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#59

Post by milankragujevic » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

milankragujevic wrote: post #51

imaginenore wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're building such a website, Google will shut it down quickly. It probably breaks some laws too (i'm not a lawyer).

It doesn't break any laws since I don't play any videos which have forbidden embedding. Plus, technology like that has been mainstream in VLC, youtube-dl, etc, for ages. It uses the official YouTube API, and respects mosts of the Terms of Service, except the video fetching, which doesn't use the API at all, just loads the page on the server and catches the video stream.

@imaginenore: They're not, but if the video is licensed for embedding that means that I can't be sued for copyright infringement, plus the standard "linking != infringement" applies.

Re: YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running

#60

Post by k33n » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 3:06 AM UTC

amadeusw wrote: post #49

milankragujevic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The server fetches the video page from YouTube, and embeds the VP8+Opus video URL into my site's page with a tag.

Your server will probably get blacklisted for heavy usage or some arbitrary API violation. Do you have a plan to remedy or circumvent it?

Does he really need to lay out a plan for that? Getting a new IP is absolutely trivial these days, and if you need to move around between subnets, that's easy too.