Considering the number of thick volumes of regulations the world's governments are accumulating in trying to combat harmful behaviour by businesses (or, in economic parlance, negative externalities), and still failing to keep them in check, I wonder whether we should consider bringing back more flexible, socially imposed injunctions instead of legislation/regulation. Something not quite as strict as judge-made law / common law, but also not quite as mob-rule-esque as mass cancellation. Boycotting is obviously one form. Ostracism was another, but no longer practical. Perhaps there are other methods. Perhaps any business that cannot be effectively boycotted by a majority of its customers, should be considered too big to exist.
petcat 2 hours ago [-]
This was a ridiculous loophole that needed to be closed. FCC has already made this practice illegal over broadcast TV.
Calvin02 2 hours ago [-]
I found this to be an issue on YouTube. It wasn’t necessarily malicious. I often put on a no-talking video in the background while reading and the ad interruptions became really loud. I eventually just ended up subscribing, but this is great to see.
pkulak 39 minutes ago [-]
I don’t think YouTube normalizes the audio on their videos. I have no idea why, but that could easily become a quiet video that leads into a -16 LUFS ad that blows your ears out.
dinfinity 2 minutes ago [-]
They have a "stable volume" toggle, actually. I don't see ads, so I don't know whether it works for those.
nephihaha 1 hours ago [-]
I have experienced this while listening to classical concertos and to meditation videos.
You don't need to pay YouTube protection money. Get a different browser.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
> The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” […]. Server-side ads can have differing volumes due to companies using various encoding pipelines.
Boo-freaking-hoo. Cry me a river, poor streaming services without the technical know-how to calculate an ad’s volume. We can’t expect them to know how audio works!
> Additionally, as the opposing groups previously pointed out, streaming services must contend with a broad range of output devices, including TVs, tablets, and phones.
See, that’s just flat-out lying. What’s this mythical circumstance where playing audio A at the same volume as audio B on one device will magically make A louder than Bon another? Especially when dealing with server-side ad insertion, as the article discusses, where the service has full control of the input files and the output stream? This reads like a restaurant trade group claiming that it’s impossible to know how much salt they put in the gravy.
rdedev 1 hours ago [-]
The group includes Netflix, the most technically capable streaming company. It's sad that companies will only go down kicking and screaming even for the mildest of regulations
kstrauser 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah. If I had to do this, there’s the likelihood I’d screw it up. I am not Netflix, who quite good at the whole streaming video thing. I find it very hard to believe there are technical challenges in this law that Netflix couldn’t possibly solve.
pkulak 35 minutes ago [-]
I think the point is that when you don’t control the ad, it’s a bit tough to normalize its audio. And controlling the ad means bringing ad serving in house, which while possible, is a huge engineering ask.
I guess the solution is to switch to a proper ad insertion company that normalizes to -24 like you’re supposed to, but that’s not cake either. Especially if contracts are signed.
Ar-Curunir 21 seconds ago [-]
[delayed]
avereveard 1 hours ago [-]
I hate loud ads as well as anyone else and I welcome this resolution but I would not treat the challenges regulation poses as simplisticly as this. There is a lot of research in increasing loudness without increasing decibels, especially for concerts, but it migrated to ads when tv started adding automatic volume controls to normalize across services.
chimeracoder 1 hours ago [-]
> See, that’s just flat-out lying. What’s this mythical circumstance where playing audio A at the same volume as audio B on one device will magically make A louder than Bon another?
Regarding your second point: as any audio engineer or electronic musician knows, the same exact audio absolutely will sound very different on different speakers, depending on how well they replicate various sounds, what level of gain is being applied, and the volume (which is different from gain, although people confuse the two).
That's even before you get into the fact that many modern devices, like smartphones, will apply their own compression or sound processing before playing the sound, sometimes to compensate for those deficiencies and make them less noticeable, and sometimes to "enhance" the sound.
Loudness/volume (technically different things but let's conflate them here) are also unintuitive because human ears don't have a flat frequency response curve, and some things will be perceived as louder despite being the same volume, or vice versa.
Advertisers actually can (and do) take advantage of this, by using sound engineering to make things feel louder while staying within the desired volume, by targeting the way humans perceive the sound.
This isn't a defense of the advertising/streaming companies here, because it is a solvable problem. But it is true that this is a problem that they need to solve.
kstrauser 1 hours ago [-]
All that’s true, but those factors affect all the audio similarly. The article specifically talks about server-side ad insertion, so it’s not like the case where it somehow uses the device’s .mov codec to play the content and an MP3 codec to play the ad. All ffmpeg (most likely) knows is that it’s decoding one long stream, and doesn’t switch audio pipelines mid-stream when it thinks it might be playing an ad at that moment.
Regarding the perceptual volume differences: while true, that’s also a solvable problem. Output volumes can be calculated using standard curves. In any case, TV broadcasters have had to figure all this out years ago.
davemp 16 minutes ago [-]
It definitely isn’t simple, but it’s a pretty well trod path. If the FCC or state equivalent doesn’t have folks who can write the spec that’s a huge problem. I would be surprised if an existing spec doesn’t already exist that just needs to be applied to this scenario.
The streamers should be responsible for the signal. If the device front end has crazy frequency response or the backend does weird DSP tricks, that’s on the device manufacturers.
b112 1 hours ago [-]
I guess in the interim, while they try to work it out, they'll just have to make sure it's quieter.
Start at 1/4 the volume they use now.
After all, they don't need to approach compliance tuning and debugging from the loud side. They can start at a whisper and work up.
(I hope they get fined into bankruptcy, if they try to claim they're "working on it", but do so from the loud side.)
iamshs 2 hours ago [-]
Went on Instagram last week for 2-3 days, and found out an annoying pattern where just the beginning 1s or so of a video ad is loud and then the volume is normal. Doesn't occur on all Ads either.
AegeanGreen 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
seobot_dk1289 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
phendrenad2 2 hours ago [-]
Well, since loud ads may be going away, I want to share my observations for posterity: Loud ads only annoyed some people. Or rather, some people found them hellishly torturous (mostly neurodivergent people like me) and others were remarkably okay with them (or were just placated by the thought of saving a few dollars a month)
b112 1 hours ago [-]
My parents used to have the TV on, blaring, all day long. The ads back then were loud too.
They liked the "background noise". They'd read with it on, have conversations shouting over it, and so on. Baffled me. I often wondered, why not just plop down a food blender and leave it on?
Why pay for cable?!
copperx 18 minutes ago [-]
How did you stop this behavior?
globular-toast 10 minutes ago [-]
My parents were never this bad, but I've experienced this with parents of friends and partners. A lot of people seem to crave structure. They don't want to have to think about what to do and have non-existent conversational ability. The TV gives them the structure they need. The schedule always provides a talking point or just something to zone out on when there's a lull.
Mindless scrolling is the modern version of this, but it's worse because there isn't even a shared experience that might spur a conversation.
People like you and me are quite the opposite: we hate external structure and long to be left to our own thoughts and devices. It's not too dissimilar to micromanagement in that respect. What's the point of having a brain (and the rest of the body, that matter) if you can't use it?
buffer_overlord 4 hours ago [-]
I just use Spotify premium how do you get feee music with ads??
el_io 7 minutes ago [-]
My YTMusic App is patched with Revanced(/Morphe), Ublock Origin on browser takes care when I'm on Computer.
I also self-host Navidrome in my homeserver.
vitally3643 2 hours ago [-]
UBlock in Firefox removes Spotify ads for free.
microgpt 2 hours ago [-]
Idk either. For free music without ads, there's piracy
AegeanGreen 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:18:32 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
You don't need to pay YouTube protection money. Get a different browser.
Boo-freaking-hoo. Cry me a river, poor streaming services without the technical know-how to calculate an ad’s volume. We can’t expect them to know how audio works!
> Additionally, as the opposing groups previously pointed out, streaming services must contend with a broad range of output devices, including TVs, tablets, and phones.
See, that’s just flat-out lying. What’s this mythical circumstance where playing audio A at the same volume as audio B on one device will magically make A louder than Bon another? Especially when dealing with server-side ad insertion, as the article discusses, where the service has full control of the input files and the output stream? This reads like a restaurant trade group claiming that it’s impossible to know how much salt they put in the gravy.
I guess the solution is to switch to a proper ad insertion company that normalizes to -24 like you’re supposed to, but that’s not cake either. Especially if contracts are signed.
Regarding your second point: as any audio engineer or electronic musician knows, the same exact audio absolutely will sound very different on different speakers, depending on how well they replicate various sounds, what level of gain is being applied, and the volume (which is different from gain, although people confuse the two).
That's even before you get into the fact that many modern devices, like smartphones, will apply their own compression or sound processing before playing the sound, sometimes to compensate for those deficiencies and make them less noticeable, and sometimes to "enhance" the sound.
Loudness/volume (technically different things but let's conflate them here) are also unintuitive because human ears don't have a flat frequency response curve, and some things will be perceived as louder despite being the same volume, or vice versa.
Advertisers actually can (and do) take advantage of this, by using sound engineering to make things feel louder while staying within the desired volume, by targeting the way humans perceive the sound.
This isn't a defense of the advertising/streaming companies here, because it is a solvable problem. But it is true that this is a problem that they need to solve.
Regarding the perceptual volume differences: while true, that’s also a solvable problem. Output volumes can be calculated using standard curves. In any case, TV broadcasters have had to figure all this out years ago.
The streamers should be responsible for the signal. If the device front end has crazy frequency response or the backend does weird DSP tricks, that’s on the device manufacturers.
Start at 1/4 the volume they use now.
After all, they don't need to approach compliance tuning and debugging from the loud side. They can start at a whisper and work up.
(I hope they get fined into bankruptcy, if they try to claim they're "working on it", but do so from the loud side.)
They liked the "background noise". They'd read with it on, have conversations shouting over it, and so on. Baffled me. I often wondered, why not just plop down a food blender and leave it on?
Why pay for cable?!
Mindless scrolling is the modern version of this, but it's worse because there isn't even a shared experience that might spur a conversation.
People like you and me are quite the opposite: we hate external structure and long to be left to our own thoughts and devices. It's not too dissimilar to micromanagement in that respect. What's the point of having a brain (and the rest of the body, that matter) if you can't use it?
I also self-host Navidrome in my homeserver.