You can fix this bug by installing a Safari extension called Vinegar which will convert non-standard video containers to standard HTML5 video elements. As a bonus, this also prevents content injection by the malicious code that google sends to your browser to render content from third party advertisers on your device without your consent.
On the other hand, Apple wants to incentivize developers to build apps, and they have a history of gatekeeping features from the browser to force certain use cases into the App Store. So hopefully they’re not omitting this setting to encourage app developers to create apps where they can run their “safe ads” without content blockers.
Yeah SponsorBlock is the only reason I still have Firefox installed on my Air. YouTube is horrible without it. I already pay for Premium, I refuse to put up with more ads.
I checked, Sponsor block is available as well!
You’re kidding right?
Deliberately watching videos on a freely provided service supported by ads, makes the ad script “malicious and non-consensual”?
It’s my device, so I can choose what code executes on it. If I choose to block code from executing, that must mean I did not consent to its execution, because otherwise why would I need to block it?
I owe no debt to Google, especially since YouTube is often a non-consensual venue, in the sense that content I want to watch, which Google did not create, is only available on Google’s website.
I was not an active participant in the economic conditions that led to Google’s monopolization of the video hosting market. So if I am only watching a video on YouTube because it’s only hosted on YouTube, but I would have watched it if it were hosted elsewhere, then I am only passively responsible for the choice of watching it on YouTube.
I do not owe anything to Google in this case, because it implies I benefit from the existence of YouTube, but any benefit I derive is actually from the content, not the host of it.
The suggestion that I benefit from Google’s monopoly on video hosting presupposes the idea that free-to-watch video hosts cannot exist without serving advertisements. I don’t believe that, and I always choose alternative hosts over YouTube in the rare case where a video is hosted on both, or banned from YouTube.
I don’t use SponsorBlock, although I do manually scrub past promotional content.
- Creators use YT for ease of hosting, earnings for their effort, widespread dissemination
- Users choose YT for ease of watching, content discovery, non-bloated UI/UX
Google uses Ads to cover significant hosting and bandwidth costs, as well as to build quality features to help both creators and users alike.
If this logic doesn’t make sense to you, so be it. But your tirade is both entitled and ignorant.
Having said that, they now enabled Picture-in-Picture on iOS (though last check it's still in beta I joined the beta a while back) and one of Apple's requirements is you cannot but OS features (such as Picture in Picture) behind an app paywall. So they could only do this by making it available to everyone including free users. Not sure what got them over the line but its there now.
So makes me wonder if that will go away - or whether they still enforce that requirement on Android, or what.
Is it possible that this is related to the iOS link preview feature?
When you long-press a link, do you get the full destination page preview? That might explain why the phone renders the page, including the video taking over.
Long-press on another page link (like one here on HN), and you have a tiny option at the top-right for "Hide preview," select that. Then try another link that has a take-over video, and see if it no longer does that.
If you hate video takeovers more than you like link previews, this might solve your problem.
I don't recall ever using link previews very much. I suppose if I really need it I can toggle it on for that specific instance, but as it is it's not worth it for the video hijacking
You literally have to race the video popup, and sometimes I just have to memorize the location on my phone's screen where the "download linked file" button will appear and have my finger ready over the spot because there's not enough time to scan over all the menu items.