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Twitch: "Hey, come back! This commercial break can't play while you're away."

176 points| josephcsible | 3 days ago |twitter.com

137 comments

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ge96|3 days ago

I'm still unable to accept that people accept ads as a part of life. I can't use instagram it's full of ads. I did finally get YT premium convinced by people on here but UBO all the way. Thankfully I never got sucked into Twitch.

I get it too I'm a bad person for not accepting articles where every other paragraph is an ad.

xtracto|3 days ago

There was a Firefox extension long ago that did NOT block ads but hid them. Basically it loaded them and for all the site knew, the add was showing, so it was transparent.

But, the ad wasn't rendering in the page. So the user didnt need to suffer them, but the website owners still profited.

The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.

Someone should bring something like that for current platforms. Even for video like, a placeholder video with a tip, interesting fact or whatever, playing while the page load the real video.

ozgrakkurt|3 days ago

Youtube is still very much ad spam even if you block the ads.

Of course it depends on what kind of videos you watch. But videos themselves are becoming more ad filled and lower effort for me.

I mainly consume software, gaming, cooking and hardware news videos.

Huge portion of human effort going to ads is really sad

CompromisedTool|3 days ago

My 2.5 year old recognizes ads and says “ew, ads” because I’ve intentionally said it each time we see one.

Wowfunhappy|3 days ago

The people who "accept ads as a part of life" are funding the content you read and watch. You are not in any way "a bad person", but you should be thankful that not everyone blocks ads.

dundarious|3 days ago

I am just today experience an issue where the volume is reset 100% for each ad. Ads play, I turn volume down to 8%, I have the tab still on display (though I have focus on a separate window), and when the 1st ad ends, the 2nd ad is as loud as 100% even though the slider remains at 8%. Click to reset it to 8%, then 3rd ad plays at 100%.

maskull|3 days ago

I noticed during the olympics that they would hide the in-page volume controls during commercials. I hadn't seen that before. Fortunately it's still possible to mute via the tab control.

ortusdux|3 days ago

I think it was the MPAA that tried to develop DVD players with cameras so they could count room occupancy and lock the content if you were tying to exceed the terms of their license.

deltoidmaximus|3 days ago

Was it Sony that had the patent on a device that would require the watcher to say the product name out loud to the microphone to continue watching? The product to my knowledge doesn't exist but the patent for it did.

Legend2440|3 days ago

Please drink verification can.

(This never happened though. The MPAA did a lot of shady things with DRM, but not this.)

throwaway85825|3 days ago

I believe this was a Microsoft patent related to the kinect.

SunshineTheCat|3 days ago

This is related but also kinda an aside: has anyone been able to find a solid, reliable ad blocker for Twitch?

Brave use to block it for a while by default (it does great on YouTube ads).

There also use to be a ping pong between Twitch and some chrome extensions which worked temporarily and then Twitch broke a week later.

The best I've been able to find is Alternate Player for Twitch.tv which does hide the ads (essentially freezing the stream while they play), but I have been unable to keep the stream playing ad free for quite some time.

baal80spam|3 days ago

> The best I've been able to find is Alternate Player for Twitch.tv which does hide the ads (essentially freezing the stream while they play), but I have been unable to keep the stream playing ad free for quite some time.

This is not my experience. Alternate Player for Twitch.tv essentially ignores twitch ads for me. Using Brave, not sure if this is relevant.

PeterStuer|3 days ago

Twitch has been speedrunning their own demise. Maybe the people on charge have personally invested heavily in Kick?

jeffwask|3 days ago

When it stopped being about people playing games and became discount reality TV, it's death nell was rung.

dogleash|3 days ago

> Maybe the people on charge have personally invested heavily in Kick?

Twitch is owned by Amazon. AWS sells the streaming tech Twitch uses to Kick.

Amazon would probably rather sell IVS to Kick than try and figure out how to make Twitch profitable. Or the just don't care enough to notice the people at Twitch are just LARPing at business.

Ekaros|2 days ago

I think fundamental truth is that live streaming live content was never financially great business. Most popular creators could make it out, but platforms have heavy costs.

quickthrowman|3 days ago

It’s owned by Amazon, a publicly traded company. They squeeze as hard as they can, and then some to hit those quarterly numbers.

nozzlegear|3 days ago

> Avoid minimizing or muting Twitch for a better experience.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that it's not possible for javascript to detect that you've muted the browser tab itself, at least. Doesn't solve the problem of them checking whether you have the tab focused, of course, but it should be mutable.

hedora|3 days ago

I suspect this is one of the less nefarious reasons age verification is getting pushed so hard. 2026: you need a webcam to prove your age. 2030: we know you have a webcam because you verified your age. It must be left on with echo cancellation and background noise suppression disabled so we can hear the ad we are playing.

<insert obvious ways in which this will be misused here>

j1elo|3 days ago

Why does the Window Manager have to provide focus and even visibility info to the application? I could foresee an evolution of runtime controls where "Is Focused" is a user-selectable permission for apps, just like how the browser requires user approval to allow web notifications or PeerConnection access to network or webcams.

iroddis|3 days ago

I think this case was the browser was active, but not the tab, so the browser reports that.

Many, many telemetry metrics have been added in the name of power and efficiency. If a page refreshes every 30 seconds, is it still worthwhile doing it when the tab isn’t active? It would be better to wait until the tab is active again, then refresh immediately.

That being said, all of these capabilities are a privacy nightmare, only increasing the precision of browser fingerprinting and user monitoring. Firefox could have taken a stance on refusing to implement them, but I don’t think it has an easy opt out.

redox99|3 days ago

Because it's pretty useful, for example to avoid refreshing data if the tab is unfocused and refresh immediately on focus.

JeremyStinson|3 days ago

In addition to what Twitch is doing, a banner popped up in the Android YouTube app stating that you need to upgrade to Premium to be able to "Jump Ahead to parts other users think are valuable". Different from skipping 10 seconds at a time, but there's a non-zero chance that'll be pay-walled too.

It'll only be a matter of time until you can't do anything but watch whatever content Google has curated for you, with no chance to adjust anything at all.

dogleash|2 days ago

> Premium to be able to "Jump Ahead to parts other users think are valuable".

This is Google's euphemism for building a SponsorBlock equivlient into youtube. It just sounds terrible if they come out and tell you that in addition to removing their ads, they're selling an adblocker. They don't want you adblocking their ads, but they'll gladly charge you to do it to someone else.

KomoD|2 days ago

> a banner popped up in the Android YouTube app stating that you need to upgrade to Premium to be able to "Jump Ahead to parts other users think are valuable".

You can still scrub the video manually, that's just a separate "Jump ahead" button that skips past the most skipped section.

I don't have a problem with it because they didn't take anything away from me.

EmptyCoffeeCup|2 days ago

At that point, you stop watching, right?

Youtube isn't some life or death resource - if they go too far, users will switch off.

TulliusCicero|3 days ago

Long ad breaks were real annoying on Twitch, I try to watch the same streamers on YouTube now if possible, since I have a YouTube family subscription (seems like avoiding ads on Twitch requires a subscription to each streamer?).

That YouTube is much better technically (e.g. immediate rewinding) is also a nice bonus.

Edit: I'm seeing now that there's something called Twitch Turbo for $12/month to avoid ads, though YT premium family still seems like a better deal as long as you have 2+ people for it, since you also get a YouTube music sub and, y'know, no ads on the rest of YouTube proper.

jeffwask|3 days ago

Twitch Turbo used to be Twitch Prime and was free with your Prime subscription.

impute|3 days ago

"for a better experience"

Do people writing this type of copy actually believe this?

ratelimitsteve|3 days ago

you'd be amazed what you can believe when eating food and sleeping indoors depends on that belief

toss1|3 days ago

They don't specify who gets the "better experience" (hint: it is them, harvesting the ad dollars)

chmod775|3 days ago

No, they do not. They just value their silicon valley paycheck over personal integrity.

And really, this isn't a big deal. It's a bold lie everyone can see through, but it's not nearly as consequential as other bold lies society tolerates or is complicit in. Many of these lies make modern society function in the first place - they're necessary fictions everyone participates in.

This lie is... laughably irrelevant, which is why calling it out won't make you a pariah. People are jumping at the chance to point and laugh when doing so carries no consequence.

Other examples of inconsequential bullshit: "Your call is very important to us", "We value your privacy", "We're like family here", and "It's not about the money".

tl;dr: "whatever."

andrewflnr|3 days ago

This is something that browsers should solve.

kg|3 days ago

Unfortunately, browsers "solved" this by intentionally adding APIs that enable websites to do this to you. It wasn't possible to abuse users this way until the relevant APIs for detecting focus and occlusion were added. :(

BenjiWiebe|3 days ago

Open a new browser window just for that tab. Presto, that tab is always active, even if that window is underneath another window.

In Firefox you can drag'n'drop a tab "out" of the tab bar, which will move it to a new window. Might work in other browsers too.

thih9|3 days ago

In some way it’s a feature, leaves more room for products that are more user friendly. Of course overall it's still bad; this framing gives me some hope at least.

nyeah|3 days ago

Yeah. But anything bad does that.

organsnyder|3 days ago

They'd all enshittify in similar ways if they got traction.

arkaic|2 days ago

When those commercials start playing at the gas pump I instinctively turn away out of sheer principal.

CamperBob2|3 days ago

Just think. No matter how bad a day you're having at the office, somebody had to come to work and implement this.

jraph|3 days ago

And could have decided not to work for Amazon in the first place.

add-sub-mul-div|3 days ago

Maybe Spotify didn't do this first but they're the ones I blame. They pause an ad while the output is muted.

djhn|2 days ago

Which platform is that on? How would they know the operating system sound levels?

Pooge|3 days ago

Is there an about:config setting to disallow JavaScript access to tabs?

red-iron-pine|3 days ago

so basically a more upbeat version of that Black Mirror episode?

jackdoe|3 days ago

> claude fork chromium, remove the api so it knows if the tab is open, always return true, compile it and replace my current chrome with it

cosmic_cheese|3 days ago

All this is also a great argument for just not making browsers capable of conveying this kind of information in the first place…

Some might argue that it allows for better web apps, but the delta between how much better in can make web apps and how much poorer it can make the overall web experience is too great to be worth it, and that's before one gets into the privacy implications of browsers being so eager to share all these little nuggets of info.

nticompass|3 days ago

> use firefox, install uBlock Origin

TulliusCicero|3 days ago

Seems like something a plugin could solve.

ozlikethewizard|3 days ago

Friendly reminder to use a browser you can disable the active tab apis in, IronFox / LibreWolf are both great (Mobile / Desktop), Firefox if you value convenience the most.

xeonmc|3 days ago

This is nothing. Wait until you see what the eye-tracking technology Amazon has been developing for their workers could be used for.

EarlKing|3 days ago

It's like someone saw an episode of Black Mirror and Idiocracy and went, "That's it! That's what we need to do!" and began using them as a playbook.

Yeah, I'm sure this won't drive massive adoption of ad blockers or anything.

hydrogen7800|3 days ago

Good fiction writers seem to have a very deep understanding of human behavior, both as individuals and groups/systems. It's probably a combination of art imitating life, imitating art, and part prediction based on this understanding how human behavior and human systems evolve and interact.