Technology

59653 readers

3986 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

775

YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users (www.ghacks.net)

submitted 3 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

238 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Mashable reports that users ran into a black screen on YouTube, and that it stayed for about 6 seconds before the video began playing. The reports indicate it affected several browsers including Firefox, Edge, Vivaldi.

Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than an ad. While that's certainly a better experience, it does waste precious seconds of our time. A simple workaround for the black screen on YouTube is to just refresh the page, hit F5 as soon as the page starts loading. uBlock Origin's filters were updated with a patch to resolve the problem, the add-on updates its filters automatically. If you are still experiencing the black screen issue, just open the extension's dashboard and manually update the filters. This tug-of-war is getting annoying, but it appears to me that Google's efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers, instead of attracting new subscribers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] knolord@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Axel Springer tried again recently, arguing that ad blockers "infringe copyright by altering HTML elements on their sites", and Germany waits, because a similar lawsuit happened in Luxembourg which will be settled on the European level.

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bundesgerichtshof-will-entscheidung-auf-europaeischer-ebene-abwarten-104.html (in German)

Another article, where they tried the exact same thing two years ago: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/landgericht-hamburg-ueber-adblock-plus-springer-verlag-verliert-erneut-a-5e058ee7-e0fa-4f0e-aa10-d95d9cfad654 (also in German)

(Also it's not a constutional right (Verfassungsrecht), since it wasn't the BVerfG that ruled in the first case (they tried to get them to rule, but no response was given), but a civil case ruled in the first instance by the BGH, after the local courts told Axel Springer to get bent)

(Edited: Added more context)

[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

ad blockers “infringe copyright by altering HTML elements on their sites”,

LOL that's like saying you're infringing copyright if you rip a page out of a book or magazine, or scribble some notes in it.

[–] ff0000@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago

More like putting a post-it on the ads in magazines. You are not altering anything for the next person, or even for yourself after reloading a page.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ah nice, thanks for the update and correction! Hope Axel Springer will get shafted for good. Nothing of value comes from their publications.

[–] knolord@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Agreed. Even though I dislike Eyeo's practices as well (letting the ad companies pay for whitelisting their ads), it's a better outcome than outright banning ad blockers (or if Axel Springer had gotten their ways, "light" web-browsing via reader modes would have been turned illegal as well)