this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Netflix is able to only serve paying customers.
Sure, granting view credits for ads is a little more complicated, but definitely within googles scope.
So they can block everyone, unless you either pay or watch ads. Unpopular, sure. But they have a huge library and a constant stream of new content, so enough people would put up with it. They can also start soflty, and only tighten the screws later. Lets start with one ad per day.
How exactly? What stops someone from creating a program that behaves like a normal user earning view credits for ads, but never showing that to the actual user, only letting Google think the user is legitimate? Afaik nothing.
Yes, turning it pay-only like Netflix would technically work, but YouTube itself only works because it's "free", so yeah.
There are audits that try to determine if the view credits are legitimate. They'll cross reference a selection of data (what segments did they fetch, what was the timing like, did each ad checkpoint get crossed, etc) because companies don't like paying for ads that arent watched.
That can all be faked, just grab all the segments at a timing that would match playing it. This is why Google wants to do that trusted client thing, because there's no way to guarantee that a user is watching something on their own device unless the software and hardware on that device prevent it and the server makes the user prove they are running that software and hardware and nothing else.