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Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

ericdraken.com

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Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#101

Post by vintermann »

omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning.

I remember I had this discussion after a school political debate in the 90s, with (adult) actual politicians. Textbooks at the time were not publicly funded, and naturally the textbook companies jacked up prices for their captive audience forced to buy their books.

This one party had the "brilliant" idea of ad-funded textbooks. I asked, if the textbook companies currently take $50 for the book, if it was instead funded by say McDonalds ads, how many extra burgers would each student have to buy that year? They didn't have any good answer to that.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#102

Post by fsflover »

izacus wrote: post #84
SnorkelTan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People paid for cable and they still forced ads on people.

And YouTube doesn't. And you can stop paying when they do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37280072

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#103

Post by anilakar »

beirut_bootleg wrote: post #89
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay And I dislike YouTube's hostile ad escalation in recent years. One ad - fine, two ads - hmmm, three ads - what the hell. Unskippable ads. Inappropriate ads. Loud-ass eardrum ripping ads. Ads even on Premium.

And even if you get rid of the ads, the sponsored content is not going anywhere.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#104

Post by squarefoot »

omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

> I dislike the attitude of those who reject ads but also refuse to pay.

What about fair advertising? The main problem here nobody dares to talk about because dealing with it would undermine the very essence of capitalism: unlimited growth, is that there is no way to have fair advertising exactly as there's no way to have a fair use of any resources. Once you allow anything to be used for profit, it will be abused from the strongest players at the expense of the others until the last drop. It would be extremely easy to put well defined limits on how much advertising can be shown, and make the Internet a better place, but no way, it's anti capitalistic and therefore a no-no. Ad blockers weren't born the same day advertising came to the Internet, and many years passed until someone realized we needed them; that was the day surfing became such a horrid experience thanks to unlimited, pervasive and ever growing advertising.

edit: and, by the way, I still have to see some company going bankrupt because of ad blockers.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#105

Post by joosters »

omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

Nowhere in YouTube’s voluminous terms of service does it say that you have to watch the ads.

Why are you defending a multi billion dollar company from something that the users aren’t obliged to do in the first place?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#106

Post by fsckboy »

chpatrick wrote: post #72
fsckboy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am happy pay for nice things, but I am never happy to pay a monopolist just on principle; so I don't.

But you're happy to use the monopolist's service.

yes, absolutely, but only inasmuch as it only decreases their producer surplus so it doesn't actually cost them anything. If the monopolist allowed competition, then I'd evaluate and choose, but I don't have that choice till then.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#107

Post by alsodumb »

a_imho wrote: post #94
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

I find this a false proposition, there are plenty of other ways to to support a video streaming platform. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exist in it's current form either. If a monetizing strategy does not work it is not the users holding it wrong. People consumed videos online before youtube and will be consuming after youtube just fine. It is not like Google is the creative mind behind…

You claim that there are plenty of other ways to support a video streaming platform yet fail to mention even one of them.

Things cost money. Every monetizing strategy involves users paying for it or the company making money from the users indirectly. OP mentions both of these. So tell me, what's a monetizing strategy other than these that works?

People consumed videos online at a very limited scale before YouTube, and those videos were usually hosted by few, generous individuals. Even if every user in the world decides to contribute 50% of their device storage for a decentralized streaming platform, I doubt it would even fit a small part of all videos in YouTube's catalog right now.

I really dislike the attitude of hating megacorps without really proposing any viable alternatives.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#108

Post by [deleted] »

redrove wrote: post #18

>I propose heuristically scanning for query and path parameters of ad URLs with high entropy and using those as keys (fingerprints). > https://xn--rr6sn-uxa0n-t8gz-vg6i.googlevideo.com/initplayba... &orc=1&oeis=1&c=IOS&oss=1&oda=1&oad=5500&ovd=5500&oaad=11000&oavd=11000 &ocs=700&oputc=1&oses=1&ofpcc=1&osbr=1&osnz=1&msp=1&odeak=1&odepv=1 &osfc=1&id=58cc678216d6aaca&ip=121.35.98.26&initcwndbps=2125000 &mt=1640373902 Th…

[deleted]

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#109

Post by fsflover »

a_imho wrote: post #94
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

I find this a false proposition, there are plenty of other ways to to support a video streaming platform. There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exist in it's current form either. If a monetizing strategy does not work it is not the users holding it wrong. People consumed videos online before youtube and will be consuming after youtube just fine. It is not like Google is the creative mind behind…

> There is nothing that suggest a platform like youtube has to exist in it's current form either.

This. PeerTube can provide similar benefits without centralization.

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