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

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

#81

Post by milankragujevic »

meritt wrote: post #67
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.

Ha. So you're stealing content and then offering it up for free (and presumably you're on the hook for bandwidth bills)? Exactly what's the goal of your ill-fated plan? You're going to get blocked/banned and when you continue to circumvent it, you're going to get a C&D. This is an absolutely terrible idea.

My goal is to use YouTube on an Intel atom single core netbook without waiting minutes for the video to load in their stupid DASH player.

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

#83

Post by imaginenore »

k33n wrote: post #61
imaginenore wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you always give people legal advice based on your wild fantasies about how law works?

Correct me, if you think I'm wrong.

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

#84

Post by JoshTriplett »

spriggan3 wrote: post #18
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days, even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox with…

> assuming a bug rather than intentional malice lol, no malice here, it's their websites they can do whatever they want and they are far from stupid, they test all these things. I'll still block ads and if Google prevents me from seeing Youtube content so be it. I'm not going to disable my ad blocker anyway. The fight against ads is getting interesting. Let's see who gets the "last word".

They absolutely can; the question then becomes how much they can do so without driving some traffic to secondary sites. Right now, YouTube enjoys massive mindshare; pushing ads too hard could cause people to start remembering that other video sites exist (whether for video hosting, or competitors for the same user attention spans like Netflix and Amazon).

(Also, I was using the phrase as a callback to the classic expression; I changed it to "intended behavior" to better reflect my intent.)

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

#85

Post by KMag »

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.

Will that work? For some reason, I guessed the YouTube video URL was a function of the first two or three bytes of your IPv4 address, to prevent exactly this case. I did something like that back when I designed a CAPTCHA system for LimeWire.

(The LimeWire website only ran PHP (soft requirement), the credit card processing box only ran Perl (hard requirement), no shared network drive between website and credit card box (hard requirement), so none of the existing Open Source CAPTCHA implementations worked. So, I made the CAPTCHA answer a cryptographic function of a shared secret, the user's /24 network, and a user-supplied timestamp rounded to a 32 or 64-second boundary. Timestamps older than 15 minutes were rejected, and messing with the timestamp would mean that the captcha answer wouldn't match the image you were given. I watched an attacker solve a CAPTCHA for an IP in Virginia and a couple seconds later try replaying it thousands of times from an IP in England. A few IP addresses for US navy satellite ground stations in Virginia (NAT for tons of deployed sailors) had to be white-listed from the replay checker.)

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

#86

Post by kyrra »

zobzu wrote: post #77
meritt wrote: post #70

YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.

its probably whats going to happen. Wait, its already happening. http://zeronet.io/ for example. served by users for users. all you pay is your ISP, thats IT.

"Works everywhere" except on mobile devices which is a major consumer of video today.

It's definitely an interesting ideas but a long ways away from being somethings the masses can use easily.

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

#87

Post by imaginenore »

Animats wrote: post #76
imaginenore wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Ads are still about 94% of Google's revenue.

And as I said, if the ads die, they will charge for positioning in the search results.

I'm also pretty sure there are many ways to get around adblock, like rendering the ads on the server instead of a script tag.

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

#88

Post by adrusi »

ghrifter wrote: post #33
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be downloaded, rather than silently skipping it. But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days, even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox with…

> 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)

I use the web interface and have a keybinding in my web browser to download the video using youtube-dl and play it in mpv.

If you want to completely bypass the web interface, you can subscribe to channels by RSS.

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

#89

Post by wpietri »

ams6110 wrote: post #63
wpietri wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

I don't care for either type of ad. I've never intentionally clicked an ad that came up in a search result.

My last cofounder had done a ton of user testing on shopping-related behaviors, and it turns out you (and me, generally) are atypical.

He had one session where he told a guy to shop for something he was likely to buy soon. The guy opened up Google, searched for something, and said, as if sharing a secret, "Ignore the stuff in the middle. The really good stuff is here on the side."

That guy was odd in how excited he was, but most people are pretty happy to see relevant advertising when they are seeking something. E.g., Computer Shopper magazine was popular for years with the nerd set, and I have fashion-oriented friends who love getting the big seasonal magazines that are mostly ads. My dad hasn't bought a car or a house for years, but he still likes looking through newspaper ads occasionally just to see what's on offer.

It's definitely not my style, though.

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

#90

Post by decasteve »

meritt wrote: post #70

YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do they feel like they're owed something for nothing? If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-included video site.

If Google/YouTube doesn't like the autonomy we have over the http protocol, then it should launch its own proprietary medium/protocol/platform for its ad-driven business. The web is built in a way that allows me to choose how I render content.
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