alt.hn

2/26/2026 at 6:11:56 PM

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

 https://twitter.com/KryDotExe/status/2026806591517856208

by josephcsible

2/26/2026 at 6:22:24 PM

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.

by ge96

2/26/2026 at 6:47:55 PM

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

by ozgrakkurt

2/26/2026 at 6:56:53 PM

The extension 'sponsorblock' automatically jumps over ad reads in the video, with user-submitted start/end data.

by michaelt

2/26/2026 at 7:04:30 PM

Can't recommend it enough. And with this plugin you'll immediately notice if a video is vapid (read: only exists to plug the sponsor.)

by abnercoimbre

2/26/2026 at 10:37:00 PM

If you have YT Premium and start skipping ahead while an in video ad is playing, it helpfully provides a button to skip it. Still annoying, but much less so.

by quickthrowman

2/26/2026 at 7:26:22 PM

I pay for YouTube Premium to block YouTube's "native" ads on Apple TV, but yeah, the sponsorship crap is getting out of hand. I need to look into getting the Apple TV sponsorblock thing set up.

by nozzlegear

2/26/2026 at 7:34:15 PM

This is a side complaint on YT but I have purchased so many UHD movies and they only stream in 480P. I think you have to have some kind of YouTube certified device to play it in UHD but annoying.

by ge96

2/26/2026 at 7:59:14 PM

Pro tip: If you still have a local record store with a used section, you can probably buy blurays and dvds super cheap. They’re typically 25-50% the price of renting on Amazon/Apple, or buying used media on Amazon.

Also, it’s actually easier to bypass the DRM crap than not, so they’ll continue to play in full resolution moving forward.

by hedora

2/26/2026 at 8:12:39 PM

That's one of those things, gotta have all these discs... I already have a hoarding problem, but it is a solution

I want to point out I'm still an apt dweller unfortunately

by ge96

2/26/2026 at 9:57:43 PM

Nah, you can rip the discs and sell them back/toss them.

You can also get discs from most libraries, book stores, many garage sails, ebay, for super cheap.

by BobaFloutist

2/26/2026 at 7:54:52 PM

We use an official YouTube app, and it’s all ad fraud.

It rapid rolls through video streams showing a second or two of each ad.

Presumably this is so Google can charge advertisers for impressions that don’t actually exist.

by hedora

2/26/2026 at 9:28:39 PM

I've noticed this with shorts. I'll go through 20 or so, check my YT history and Google treats the worst ones as a watched video. I'll spend less than a second as my brain processes the slop and then skip. Sure as shit they act like I watched the whole video and recommend me more. It has to be some sort of revenue scam, no customer advantage has appeared to me yet.

by slumberlust

2/26/2026 at 6:54:43 PM

I watch stuff related to photography/cinematography, fishing (creeks), hobby electronics stuff, cars. That's most of it. Some makers like Hyperspace pirate. Travel videos like Japan Maibaru travel is good. Music recommendations, search a song and click on the "Song name + mix". The travel stuff I don't travel myself but the mood/atmosphere is great like Japanese towns near coast lines.

It's funny being a developer you don't watch much developer content like Primogen though I'm jealous these guys can just talk into a camera and make money. It is a skill to be likeable/mass appeal, being entertaining.

I already know the ad anyway, "this video is sponsored by SquareSpace". Bro I'm not going to use square space alright, I'm going to go into VS Code, make a SPA, host it on S3, buy a domain, connect the DNS, setup up ALB, CDN, setup RDS, cognito and then I'll have a website. Oh I also need github actions to do the build and push out the new changes.

Will throw this random comment in. Competition with the masses is hard. I paid a friend of mine $100 per song he produced for me (which were bad). But then I can go on Epidemic Sound and for $10/mo pick from a shit ton of good songs... how does a single creator compete with that.

by ge96

2/26/2026 at 6:58:01 PM

Sponsor block works great.

by throwaway85825

2/26/2026 at 9:45:14 PM

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

by CompromisedTool

2/26/2026 at 6:40:54 PM

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%.

by dundarious

2/26/2026 at 7:02:24 PM

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.

by maskull

2/26/2026 at 6:18:48 PM

Drink verification can to continue

by tencentshill

2/26/2026 at 6:32:42 PM

I was thinking the same thing lmao

by MiiMe19

2/26/2026 at 6:29:37 PM

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.

by ortusdux

2/26/2026 at 7:28:51 PM

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.

by deltoidmaximus

2/26/2026 at 6:49:15 PM

Please drink verification can.

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

by Legend2440

2/26/2026 at 6:55:57 PM

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

by throwaway85825

2/26/2026 at 7:35:01 PM

> 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.

by nozzlegear

2/26/2026 at 8:06:36 PM

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>

by hedora

2/26/2026 at 6:38:13 PM

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

by PeterStuer

2/26/2026 at 10:38:44 PM

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

by quickthrowman

2/26/2026 at 6:53:36 PM

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

by jeffwask

2/26/2026 at 6:56:53 PM

The trashiest moved to kick. Twitch is mostly soft porn now.

by throwaway85825

2/26/2026 at 7:58:51 PM

Thank you for telling me where they went so I know not to go there

by neko_ranger

2/26/2026 at 9:30:38 PM

Right, but which streams specifically...so I can block them of course.

by slumberlust

2/26/2026 at 7:00:59 PM

Even when it was about games there was an absurd amount of "games ... but the host has almost uncovered boobs pointed at the screen" content.

Felt like Twitch was always teetering on the edge and really nobody with any power cared to avoid the inevitable.

by duxup

2/26/2026 at 6:59:58 PM

> 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.

by dogleash

2/26/2026 at 6:23:13 PM

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.

by TulliusCicero

2/26/2026 at 6:51:51 PM

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

by jeffwask

2/26/2026 at 7:08:38 PM

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.

by j1elo

2/26/2026 at 8:58:51 PM

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.

by iroddis

2/26/2026 at 6:46:35 PM

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.

by SunshineTheCat

2/26/2026 at 7:05:13 PM

> 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.

by baal80spam

2/26/2026 at 6:34:31 PM

> 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

by jackdoe

2/26/2026 at 7:03:23 PM

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.

by cosmic_cheese

2/26/2026 at 7:01:38 PM

> use firefox, install uBlock Origin

by nticompass

2/26/2026 at 8:17:23 PM

This is the only correct answer. The second firefox is actually no longer viable, I guarantee you chrome is going to rapidly go closed source or require software attestation to prevent modification (not sure what the analogous plan for Safari will be, but it won’t be good).

The passkey stuff is a step in this direction.

by hedora

2/26/2026 at 6:47:03 PM

Seems like something a plugin could solve.

by TulliusCicero

2/26/2026 at 7:02:44 PM

Not sure it can with the v3 changes.

by ozlikethewizard

2/26/2026 at 6:58:22 PM

>claude build a plugin to do the above

by ratelimitsteve

2/26/2026 at 6:51:23 PM

"for a better experience"

Do people writing this type of copy actually believe this?

by impute

2/26/2026 at 6:57:59 PM

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

by ratelimitsteve

2/26/2026 at 7:30:39 PM

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

by toss1

2/26/2026 at 7:00:29 PM

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."

by chmod775

2/26/2026 at 9:37:09 PM

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

by red-iron-pine

2/26/2026 at 6:24:27 PM

This is something that browsers should solve.

by andrewflnr

2/26/2026 at 7:09:17 PM

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.

by BenjiWiebe

2/26/2026 at 6:25:20 PM

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. :(

by kg

2/26/2026 at 6:34:48 PM

It's a huge conflict of interest for an ads company to develop a browser, let alone the browser with...(checks notes)...77% market share.

by titzer

2/26/2026 at 6:28:07 PM

https://github.com/mozilla/video-bg-play

by roywiggins

2/26/2026 at 7:36:43 PM

This, but as a built-in browser feature, configurable per-site, and also for all the other potentially useful/creepy web APIs.

by andrewflnr

2/26/2026 at 6:28:53 PM

Both could work. The API could be permission based. E.g. without consent the app would always see itself as in focus.

by thih9

2/26/2026 at 7:34:05 PM

But just use Chrome! Our website only works in Chrome. Everyone should just be using Chrome. What's wrong with a Chrome monoculture?

:)

by xenadu02

2/26/2026 at 7:38:17 PM

That was a black mirror episode.

by commandlinefan

2/26/2026 at 6:26:36 PM

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.

by thih9

2/26/2026 at 6:33:00 PM

Yeah. But anything bad does that.

by nyeah

2/26/2026 at 6:46:34 PM

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

by organsnyder

2/26/2026 at 7:28:33 PM

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

by CamperBob2

2/26/2026 at 7:00:58 PM

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.

by ozlikethewizard

2/26/2026 at 6:47:28 PM

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

by add-sub-mul-div

2/26/2026 at 6:53:16 PM

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.

by EarlKing

2/26/2026 at 8:22:30 PM

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.

by hydrogen7800