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

ericdraken.com

491–500 of 659 posts

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

#491

Cool hack overall, but some of the statements about protobuf strike me as odd. > Exploit a Protobuf Flaw to Easily Remove All Ads by Changing One Byte He's intentionally corrupting the tag on one field of the protobuf. The "flaw" is apparently that Protobuf ignores tag numbers it doesn't recognize. But that's not a flaw, it's a core design feature of Protobuf, designed to allow extensibility. > Notice how the Protobu…

Brilliant response and observations. I’m not sure I’d agree with this one tiny assertion though: “1.87MB is not that big“ I have lived in rural communities most of my life and unless I’m on my own Wi-Fi, this actually is a big file to download. Maybe they have a workaround for mobile? Mostly I just want to add that rural Wi-Fi still struggles with Web 2.0 architecture. More often we’re operating on 2-4G speeds. Altho…

If you struggle with 2MB payload, how do you expect to stream video, which is usually hundreds of megabytes?

You’re right about 2MB being a large payload in some network configurations, but I think it isn’t that big in Youtube’s context.

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

#492

Cool hack overall, but some of the statements about protobuf strike me as odd. > Exploit a Protobuf Flaw to Easily Remove All Ads by Changing One Byte He's intentionally corrupting the tag on one field of the protobuf. The "flaw" is apparently that Protobuf ignores tag numbers it doesn't recognize. But that's not a flaw, it's a core design feature of Protobuf, designed to allow extensibility. > Notice how the Protobu…

Brilliant response and observations. I’m not sure I’d agree with this one tiny assertion though: “1.87MB is not that big“ I have lived in rural communities most of my life and unless I’m on my own Wi-Fi, this actually is a big file to download. Maybe they have a workaround for mobile? Mostly I just want to add that rural Wi-Fi still struggles with Web 2.0 architecture. More often we’re operating on 2-4G speeds. Altho…

My friends house sat for the chair of my university's Computer Science department. This was in Arkansas, and he lived a fair drive away from the university. He had a data cap of 15GB a month.

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

#497

People create new content because they expect revenue from ads. Without ads, the entire content creation industry would die. If you watch and enjoy YouTube in any capacity you should be ensuring that the creators get paid otherwise you’re robbing yourself of content.

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

#498

On a side note, I noticed a rare tracking consent banner. You may want to update it to track users and respect GDPR correctly. It should be possible to refuse as easily as accepting to be tracked, with the same button size and colour, for example. The tracking should start after consent is given. Also, GDPR isn’t so much about accepting cookies but giving consent to be tracked. So many websites get it wrong, and the…

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

#499
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you continue to give Google money you'll continue to get things like AMP, Manifest V3, Web "Integrity", and whatever else they think up to track you across the web. They're an ad company. They pay the creators per impression even if you block the ads. Blocking ads harms Google, not the content producers.

The price they pay per impression is based on ad revenue, not pie in the sky...

Do not confuse Google's revenue with market rate of an impression on YouTube. More revenue for Google does not equal higher pay for content creators. Google pays them the minimum to keep them on the platform. And that minimum is tiny since their platform is essentially a monopoly.

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

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant response and observations. I’m not sure I’d agree with this one tiny assertion though: “1.87MB is not that big“ I have lived in rural communities most of my life and unless I’m on my own Wi-Fi, this actually is a big file to download. Maybe they have a workaround for mobile? Mostly I just want to add that rural Wi-Fi still struggles with Web 2.0 architecture. More often we’re operating on 2-4G speeds. Altho…

My friends house sat for the chair of my university's Computer Science department. This was in Arkansas, and he lived a fair drive away from the university. He had a data cap of 15GB a month.

My parents’ cap is 10GB with $1/GB overage charge. They are on line of sight microwave connection.
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