
YouTube now shows "An error has occurred" while ads running - ZachSaucier
https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=44403&sid=3c9223b35ed148365c17866d687af4ff&start=45#p149246
======
tdub311
Going to Google Ads setting[0] and turning off "Ads based on your interests"
stopped the delay for me.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en](https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated?hl=en)

------
JoshTriplett
Alternative hypothesis (assuming a bug rather than intended behavior): YouTube
is testing a new ad mechanism, and the new mechanism (rather naturally) wasn't
tested on systems blocking ads; it then produces a delay if the ad can't be
downloaded, rather than silently skipping it.

But yeah, I do tend to watch most of my videos through youtube-dl these days,
even though the HTML5 player works fine for me in Firefox without any ads.

~~~
ghrifter
> videos through youtube-dl these days

how do you find the video you want without using youtube? do you just use the
youtube search interface then download the video by copying the url (w/o even
clicking on the link to start the video buffer)

~~~
stepvhen
youtube-dl can fetch a video via its ID, the part after the "/watch?v=<ID>" in
the URL. Combined with a video player, such as vlc, mpv, mpc-hc or similar,
you can stream youtube videos without viewing from the youtube website. There
are scripts available that make this less DIY, such as ones that launch your
video player with youtube-dl when you load a page on youtube, though I do not
have any of those on hand to show you.

~~~
j_s
The question was more about discovery than how the tool worked... I'd imagine
he doesn't watch much YouTube but just uses youtube-dl when the videos are
found on other sites.

~~~
ghrifter
I watch a bit of YouTube, but I only use YouTube-dl to doownload videos I
really like - like abridgements or YTPs - stuff that can easily be copyright
notice'd down

------
martinald
It's quite staggering to think the risk adblocking poses to Google's business.

They have virtually no business apart from ads.

AFIAK they have marketshare in the UK (and maybe US) which surpasses print+tv.

Can you imagine this 40 years ago? An invention which cuts out newspaper ads
and time travels broadcast TV past the commercials?

Staggering.

~~~
wpietri
Google has two importantly different kinds of ads.

One is where you are searching something and they show you relevant offerings.
Here, people are often happy to see the results, as they can move them toward
their goal.

The other is where you are trying to do something (read a blog post, watch a
video) and they want you to do something else (read about somebody's product,
watch a video advertisement). Here many people are resistant, as it takes them
away from their chosen activity.

My understanding is that Google makes most of their money from the first kind
of ad, and that ad blockers mainly block the second. So I don't think this is
a very big deal for them. In Google's shoes, I'd happily let people run ad
blockers if they wanted. One, those people were unlikely to click on ads
anyhow. And two, it's dangerous money. For their long-term success, they're
much better off if they're doing things that customers actually like.

It's dangerous when companies get hooked on money that requires them to work
against their users. Look at how much trouble TV networks have had adapting,
for example; they just aren't clear on how to make great TV in the same way
that places like HBO are. Or look at the sad, slow fall of Yahoo, which has
always thought of itself as a media company. They were never able to do much
with customer-focused acquisitions like Flickr because they never could quite
understand them.

~~~
ams6110
I don't care for either type of ad. I've never intentionally clicked an ad
that came up in a search result.

~~~
wpietri
My last cofounder had done a ton of user testing on shopping-related
behaviors, and it turns out you (and me, generally) are atypical.

He had one session where he told a guy to shop for something he was likely to
buy soon. The guy opened up Google, searched for something, and said, as if
sharing a secret, "Ignore the stuff in the middle. The really good stuff is
here on the side."

That guy was odd in how excited he was, but most people are pretty happy to
see relevant advertising when they are seeking something. E.g., Computer
Shopper magazine was popular for years with the nerd set, and I have fashion-
oriented friends who love getting the big seasonal magazines that are mostly
ads. My dad hasn't bought a car or a house for years, but he still likes
looking through newspaper ads occasionally just to see what's on offer.

It's definitely not my style, though.

------
meritt
YouTube is free. It's free because Google pays for it via ads. If you aren't
watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the content. Exactly what
are people expecting to happen and why are they mad at Google here? Why do
they feel like they're owed something for nothing?

If you don't like it, go launch and finance your own free-to-watch-no-ads-
included video site.

~~~
hysan
Incorrect. It's free because Google pays for it by:

\- tracking users both on YouTube and outside of it

\- then using the collected data to sell more targeted ads

If it were just ads, then far fewer people would care about watching them (at
least in the HN demographic). So if you are going to use this argument, please
use it correctly.

~~~
meritt
My comment is actually quite correct. The reality is YouTube generates revenue
in numerous ways and only one of which I pointed out as it pertained to the
discussion at hand.

~~~
hysan
> If you aren't watching ads, then you're effectively not paying for the
> content.

What if the user doesn't watch ads but allows Google to track them outside of
YouTube, and then Google uses that data to sell higher priced ads elsewhere?
Ads you may allow because not all websites are obnoxious about how they serve
ads. That is another way you are paying for YouTube content. It's disingenuous
[via your original statement] to state that not watching YouTube ads means you
aren't paying for the content. Users are already paying for the content in a
lot of other ways that aren't immediately transparent. Hence why I said you're
incorrect. You are leaving out information to support your stance and make the
issue black and white when in reality, it isn't so simple.

------
deadcast
I use uBlock Origin and youtube appears to still be fine for me. Maybe Google
is targeting AdBlock first and then they'll start trying to detect others
maybe? I guess this all depends if they're actually indeed penalizing people
for blocking ads in the first place.

~~~
sergers
i use uBlock Origin.

and eff's privacy badger

and tampermonkey w/ anti-adblock killer reek script.

zero issues playing youtube all day long

------
SimeVidas
Haven’t looked into it, but this looks like an unintentional technical error.
Google tends to optimize their websites for Chrome, so other browsers like
Firefox have to deal with issues like this, regularly.

~~~
ZachSaucier
It is occurring on FF as well:
[https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245](https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=149245#p149245)

------
MichaelBurge
I've been amazed that adblockers work on videos since I started using them. It
seems like it wouldn't be much trouble at all to simply embed the ad in the
video stream. It does let people skip past the ad, but I'm not sure how
important that is. If they start doing that, you could do the heavy-handed
approach of re-encoding the video to show the ad(or a spot for the ad to be
filled in by the server) side-by-side and allow them to 'opt in' to the old
Javascript solution by disabling their ad blocker.

~~~
keehun
I agree with this sentiment. It was weird to watch HBO's new edition of the
Godfather (7.5hr one) with ads embedded in the video—but it felt much more
like TV.

~~~
BEEdwards
Maybe the wrong thread for the question, but what is the appeal of an 8hr
recut of the movies? What is being added?

~~~
keehun
There is a myriad of new clips that have been added. I found that it really
added to the story--but did lengthen the film quite a bit.

I think it was really smart to have edited those out because they ultimately
did not change the meanings in the movie while making it quite a bit longer.
However, having watched the trilogy a few times already, I found these new
clips to add a lot of depth to the characters and the progression of the
movie. You have to understand that the 7 and half hours do not include the 3rd
film. The 2 films and new clips account for the entire length.

Also, this recut is in chronological order--and does not use flashbacks. I
found this to work really well for me because I had already seen the film many
times. However, I do agree with the decision to use flashbacks for first-time
viewers as the parallelism Coppola draws is amazing. The chronological recut
did add a new perspective on the film that I enjoyed.

------
RKoutnik
I got this earlier this week (uBlock user). Everything worked fine under the
same account with uBlock turned off (good Lord, didn't realize how many ads
they've added since I last disabled adblock), so I don't think this is an
account-level flag but rather some new way of serving ads that fails into "An
error has occurred" rather than serving the video immediately. Interesting
development in the ads vs blockers war but I doubt there's any account
flagging going on right now.

------
pygy_
You can practice mindfulness in the mean time, and your brain still isn't
polluted with crappy ideas.

That's still a win in my book.

I used to visit a site that mandated turning off the ad blocker and paused the
ad if you left the page. Thankfully, there was a countdown, and the page was
large enough to scroll past the video while the ad was running.

I became remarkably good at estimating how long wait down there (with the
sound off) before scrolling back up...

------
kirykl
I'd sign up for a low tier Red. Don't watch too many videos maybe $1/$2 month
for an ad free vid limit or ability to buy instant skips

~~~
jeffgreco
This is the only reasonable response to this news. I find it remarkable how
many people expect their content for free.

~~~
denim_chicken
I would probably watch 95% fewer YouTube videos if I actually had to pay money
for them.

~~~
CamperBob2
As a Red subscriber, I can tell you that the opposite is probably true. When
there's no longer any risk of being annoyed by unskippable ads, you tend to
click on a lot more video links (and waste a lot more time.)

YT Red is worth it IMHO.

~~~
inefficient
Exactly this. I got some free time with youtube red when I got a nexus 6p. In
spite of already having spotify, I purchased some more google play music all
access (which includes Red) simply to keep the ad-free youtube.

------
greenisland
What about the notion of something like some of us did with Flash content? I
symlinked .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null and was able to watch Flash
content without the LSOs/SuperCookies being downloaded to my drive -- they
were written to the bit bucket.

Does anyone think it's possible to write a Perl/Python/Bash program to
basically achieve the same thing? To "convince" the site the ads are coming
down but they never get seen? This could be browser independent/act as a sort
of proxy. I realize Privoxy does something like this, but gets detected.

Thoughts?

~~~
Pharaoh2
uBlock is working on creating neutered version of ad/tracking scripts so that
the js think that they are loaded fine and are working but they don't do
anything. They are called surrogate script and noscript already uses them.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/assets/ublock/experimental.txt)

------
AndyKelley
Pasting YouTube URLs into VLC still works.

~~~
dublinben
As does youtube-dl.[0]

[0][https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

------
akkartik
And there I was, blaming my browser for those "an error occurred" messages..

------
milankragujevic
If anyone is interested, I'm working on a free online YouTube client website
that doesn't show ads, has a separate login system that allows you to
subscribe to users, without YouTube knowing anything about that. I need help
with building the website, so anyone doing design / PHP is welcome to contact
me.

edit: Forgot to add, the website uses no JavaScript and doesn't track you at
all. It also tries to implement most of YouTube's functionality, so you don't
loose anything by using the website instead of YouTube.

~~~
imaginenore
If you're building such a website, Google will shut it down quickly. It
probably breaks some laws too (i'm not a lawyer).

~~~
milankragujevic
It doesn't break any laws since I don't play any videos which have forbidden
embedding. Plus, technology like that has been mainstream in VLC, youtube-dl,
etc, for ages. It uses the official YouTube API, and respects mosts of the
Terms of Service, except the video fetching, which doesn't use the API at all,
just loads the page on the server and catches the video stream.

~~~
imaginenore
Embedding and scraping into a video tag aren't the same thing.

As soon as you store any of their content on your server, even if in just RAM,
you're fucked, because that's copyright infringement.

~~~
k33n
Do you always give people legal advice based on your wild fantasies about how
law works?

~~~
dang
Please don't be uncivil on Hacker News, whether someone else is wrong or not.

------
kentonv
Presumably if you subscribe to YouTube Red -- which removes all ads on YouTube
-- then you won't get delays. So, what's the problem?

~~~
notdang
YouTube Red is not available in all the countries

~~~
kentonv
Fair enough (for people in those countries)

~~~
fwn
jfyi: It's only available in the US. So about noone can use it.

------
tn13
I dont login into YouTube since google started forcing G+ accounts on the
users!

~~~
amelius
Good for you, but you are missing out on a lot of interesting material,
including online courses and presentations.

~~~
Implicated
Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but he said he _doesn't log in_, not that he
doesn't actually visit youtube.

~~~
amelius
Well in that case, just view the videos in an anonymous window, and login when
you want to place a comment. Also minimizes tracking.

~~~
beedogs
I've never felt the need to comment on a video on Youtube. The 4chan phrase
"pissing into an ocean of piss" springs to mind.

~~~
tn13
Exactly. I always liked to "Like" a video so I could revisit in future but now
I simply bookmark it in the browser.

------
derFunk
I'm not getting flagged (obviously) using my pi-hole.net device.

------
redxblood
Use ublock, people. Adblock sells out.

------
marcosdumay
Why?

Does Adblock Plus block the on video ads?

~~~
trungaczne
uBlock can also do this. I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video
is supposed to handle it smoothly.

The only ads that cannot be blocked are those that streams over the same
origin server, like Twitch's new embedded ads.

~~~
fixermark
> I suppose if the ads cannot be retrieved, the video is supposed to handle it
> smoothly.

And if this supposition is violated, one would expect an error. I wouldn't
personally have assumed that would work; it's probably the case that YouTube
changed something that happens to also play ill with AdBlock (since AdBlock is
basically futzing around with the content the page expects to be able to load,
that should be expected).

------
eva1984
Finally

------
yarou
Let the games begin! The endless arms race for ad blocking and ad blocking
detection has officially started.

~~~
fabulist
We are already engaged in so many of these that I fear opening a new front
will cause integer overflow. Perhaps it would be better for publishers and
consumers to find a way to transact in cash rather than eyeball time.

------
TheWiseOne
Do no evil, right?

/s

People seem to have this romanticized view of Google but this is a company
that makes almost the entirety of its revenue from tracking users. Between
Google, Chrome, Android, Gmail and Google Maps they have an astonishing amount
of access to people's lives and most people seem none the wise to it. And yet,
if another company does anything even remotely close (Microsoft with Windows
10, for example), they would be crucified. Google seems to escape the same
level of criticism for some reason.

~~~
ardit33
They are business at the end of the day. How much are you paying monthly for
the youtube/search/gmail, whatever else you are using from google?

Probably, $0.00. Then how are they going to keep those services up without any
ads?

Also, form my understanding the Youtube Red service has no ads. If ads bother
you so much, you can sing up for it, for 9.99/mo.

~~~
jackvalentine
Two things that come to mind.

1) it's impossible to compete with ad-supported "free" services in a large-
scale way. Any competitor to YouTube that tried to pay their bills only with
paying customers can't succeed. This makes me think that we need some kind of
anti-trust like law if it doesn't already exist to cover situations like this.

2) No YouTube red in most countries. I have been hit by this "delay" because I
use an adblocker, but when I try to give YouTube my $9.99US a month I'm
refused.

Of course, I have no implicit right to use YouTube in the way of my choosing
but I would like to see them act in good faith towards me when I try to with
them.

