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YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

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131–140 of 212 posts

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#131
post #79
post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

The best engineer I've ever known ended up working for years on optimizing ad space auction time by micro seconds.

That is really sad.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#132
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug dealers invented this business model, they would give heroin to young children for free and then once hooked hike the prices or force them to turn tricks to pay for their habit. It’s effective but not very admirable to say the least.

I've also seen this done for cheese, do you find that equally reprehensible? Or is the argument just rhetorical sleight of hand, where "drug dealers do X, so therefore X must be bad"? Drug dealers also consume food, and you know who else consumes food? You.

Cheese isn't so far off drugs after all: https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2015/study-reveals... plus you have to make baby animals to get the milk for the cheese, so some exploitation is going on. I like cheese and youtube, but maybe they're both bad.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#133
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yt-dlp is great if on desktop.

I do this, then send it to VLC on mobile.

Note that there are great UIs around yt-dlp on mobile, for instance Seal, if it can be of any help.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#134
post #10

This will be a positive if browsers (extensions?) allow the ability to spoof visibility by site. Most websites have no business knowing if they're in the foreground or background.

Nice - you’ve just increased significantly power consumption of your browser! Browsers will “slow down” various aspects of pages when they’re not visible, like animations or timers, to save on battery usage on laptops or phones. Even if your remove explicit APIs for backgrounding, pages can still use heuristics to detect anyway.

I mean... What's wrong with youtube tab consuming power "as if it's on screen" if it plays video?

As an avid idle game player, I'm tired of opening games in different window and having main window not-fullscreen just for the game to play normally

This "tab unloading" is great and all, but not giving us users any control to turn it off is awful

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#135
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that's what they desire. Serving YouTube video has marginal cost and you provide marginal zero value. Losing you as a customer is probably desired.

That's a very narrow view. YouTube is the only reason I have a Google account. Because of it I use some of their other products. And because I'm connected to my YouTube/Google account, they can track my behavior across products and across devices. My usage profile has value if only because it can be correlated to others (who don't bock ads), and because I share link to their platform on social media and messaging app…

You'll probably find that most of us don't share links all that much. You're probably an outlier that they're not going to care about. They'll just look at the aggregate of lots of users not generating much revenue, and not encouraging revenue from others.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#136

Imagine trying to take a basic browser function we’ve all taken for granted for decades and attempt to paywall it as ‘Background playback is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members.’ Get fucked. I vote we remove API access to any focus state information. Fuck you google.

> Imagine trying to take a basic browser function we’ve all taken for granted for decades

What basic browser function is that? Video playback with the video tag? It's only been around for about 15 years and mainstream for 10 years.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#137
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow view. YouTube is the only reason I have a Google account. Because of it I use some of their other products. And because I'm connected to my YouTube/Google account, they can track my behavior across products and across devices. My usage profile has value if only because it can be correlated to others (who don't bock ads), and because I share link to their platform on social media and messaging app…

Yeah and people have been trying to pay artists in exposure for eons now. I’m sure the artists are really feeling bad about the decision now.

Comparing artists and a company like Google is… bold of you.

If you're thinking about content creators, you're just wrong. Most of them get almost nothing from YouTube ads, and for those who do, a few of them have no money have multiple revenue sources of which YouTube AdSense is very rarely the main one. Many do in-video product placements, which are not affected by being able to get audio only or having an ad blocker, and many have things like a Patreon, Tipeee, Ulule, of some sort. I pay monthly directly to the creators I watch the most on these platforms and who do not have millions of followers, because that's what they say help them the most.

Really, thinking Google worsening our user experience is even remotely something they do in favor of content creators having a hard time at the end of the month is beyond naive.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetizing a basic OS feature is not a good look.

the only time ive tried to use a feature like that, is when im in the car listening to a podcast or something. juggling the phone to not only skip ads, but also forcing the phone screen to be active, is a hazard. In my case this loophole being closed, wouldn't make me pay for premium... but it would make a younger version of me certainly more dangerous on the road.

Do you ever watch videos on a computer? If so, do you ever switch away to a different tab, or to a different app entirely, and keep the video playing in your browser tab? YouTube artificially prevents that exact same action on tablets and phones unless you pay them.

Multitasking is a basic OS feature, no matter what kind of device you’re using. Gating it behind a paywall is user-hostile behavior at its finest.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#139
post #94
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour. This is where their most brilliant engineers have bested you, because they control the client too .

and my answer is Firefox! (maybe also Ladybird and Servo in distant future)

Currently Firefox on Android doesn't play YouTube videos in background.

UPD found https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/video-backgro... elsewhere in the thread

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is use yewtu.be from time to time on web, and pipepipex on android.

Do you realize that those are just wrappers for YouTube, not a real competitor?

yup, not a problem for me.

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> Okay, so list which websites I can use to watch all kinds of content that I can find on YouTube.

it serve this purpose.

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