YouTube's server-side ads resulted in a black screen for ad blocker users - gHacks Tech News
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Ad blocker users say that they are seeing a black screen when trying to play a video on YouTube. Here's what happened.

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.

  • eronth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    5 months ago

    I legit strongly suspect they don’t work, at least not as well as it’s implied. Like, everyone thinks they work because they used to work really well or something.

    • ianovic69@feddit.ukEnglish
      52·
      5 months ago

      It’s all much more simple than people think it is. I hate ads, I know I hate them and I generally ignore them. But if I need something, the ads with that in are the ones I notice. Like when you buy a car and start seeing the same car everywhere.

      That’s all the general stuff ads, some are crap, some are funny, etc.

      Then there’s the top level brands, the big guys with the huge budgets. They advertise to say to the world “we are the biggest and best and don’t you forget it!”

      If they stopped, it wouldn’t take long for their biggest competitor to take the lead in market share. And getting it back is almost impossible unless the ground is once again conceded.

      So yes, advertising does work. But not really in the way we think it does. Which is why I despise it so much, because it wouldn’t work if we weren’t so busy and preoccupied with all the day to day stuff we are forced into.

      We are lab rats, scurrying around trying to get to the end of the maze having finished all the tasks thrown in that become more and more so there’s less time to think and we’ve never been taught differently argh!

      You think they don’t know this?

      Because if we raised the level of education, the base standards of living, the sense of empathy and kindness we have for eachother, advertising would just look like this -