When I was browsing Lemmy today, I came across a post about YouTube server-side advertisements breaking SponsorBlock, a browser plugin that automatically skips sponsors in YouTube videos. On first thought, this seems to be a really bad thing, as server-side ads will mean the adblocks won't work on them, as these are ads injected directly into the video.
On second thought, this may just end the entire adblocking war, with the users winning.
Think about it. If the advertisement becomes part of the video, that would mean you can just fast-forward using the YouTube player. This is like the pre-Internet age, when people still record TV programs. The recordings would obviously contain ads, but you can skip those parts with the fast-forward buttons.
Heck, some of the older recorders even had functions for trimming videos. I know because the old one in my house had that function. It was broken a few years ago though. Now we still record with a smart TV, but this feature is long gone. I'm suspecting the recorder makers signed contracts with the broadcaster or something, which means enshittification has started way earlier than the Internet, but that's not the point of this post.
The point is, it will cost minimal effort to skip YouTube server-side ads, just like TV recordings.
Some may ask. Let me tell you, this is not a problem at all.
In order for YouTube to only disallow seeking the ads, the server would have to send information about when the advertisement starts to the client, your browser. One can easily write a browser plugin to obtain these data, and straight up skip the ads automatically, without user input. But YouTube may not be so stupid to just send plain data about those ads. Maybe they will be sent in sophisticated ways, with encryption, or even randomness.
That is not a problem thanks to JavaScript. JS is basically sent to clients entirely for clients to interpret them. Therefore, all JS files are technically open source. However, developers can still choose to obfuscate their code to make them harder to read. Keyword being "harder", not impossible.
At that point, it may be better off to just download the entire video using yt-dlp, and watch the video like an actual TV recording.