YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users - eviltoast

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.

  • And009@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    It isn’t fair to expect free hosting from platforms where creators are expecting revenue for original content.

    Hoping for piracy means you expect someone else to pay.

    Google should be pressured into changing their policies so user experience feels less disruptive and provide a healthy monetization

    • sandbox@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Video hosting is one of those things which can probably never be done profitably. But that’s okay, lots of things can’t be done profitably but still exist.

      The internet used to be almost entirely run by passionate individuals with no thought towards how they’re going to make any money.

      The long-term solution is probably something like inter-connected peertube instances provided by some of the big video creators with lots of patrons, and if someone gets big and starts making patreon money, they can make their own instance and start hosting their own videos.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      don’t bother, Lemmings have this weird entitlement that should be able to watch any video anywhere in the world for completely free, no ads and definitely won’t pay for it, because storage and bandwidth don’t cost anything and Google should be glad, they are blessed by their eyeballs.