YouTube is currently experimenting with server-side ad injection. This means that the ad is being added directly into the video stream.
This breaks sponsorblock since now all timestamps are offset by the ad times.
For now, I set up the server to detect when someone is submitting from a browser with this happening and rejecting the submission to prevent the database from getting filled with incorrect submissions.
Advertising is poison.
We could just ban it.
People will say, “but then how could a website like YouTube exit at all?”
To which I say that we should retvrn to sharing funny videos via long email chains.
See Flash websites ripping each other off for five years on either side of Youtube’s introduction.
See Bittorrent moving more video than Netflix until like 2012.
See twenty years of web-based P2P experiments. Weirdos with fat hard drives (hi) will always be happy to seed.
Or - crazy thought - services could cost money. It would not take much. Youtube’s not getting ten bucks each time you watch a video. Bandwidth and storage keep getting cheaper. Nor are they paying for content, unlike Netflix and so on, and those fuckers are also considering ads.
I’ve got no problem paying money for a service that’s worth it. I still buy games on Steam even though I know how to pirate them because Valve’s service is so goddamn convenient it beats piracy in many ways.
Netflix used to be that good, and when YouTube Red rolled out I bought a year of it. But things have deteriorated significantly since then and the price has only gone up.
But think of all the people that would die because they didn’t forward those emails to 10 people they knew…