Aggregates

Evidence: High: 0 Medium: 1 Low: 0 No Data: 30

Theme Radar

tencentshill 2026-02-26 18:18 UTC link

Drink verification can to continue

ge96 2026-02-26 18:22 UTC link

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.

TulliusCicero 2026-02-26 18:23 UTC link

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.

andrewflnr 2026-02-26 18:24 UTC link

This is something that browsers should solve.

thih9 2026-02-26 18:26 UTC link

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.

ortusdux 2026-02-26 18:29 UTC link

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.

jackdoe 2026-02-26 18:34 UTC link

> 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

PeterStuer 2026-02-26 18:38 UTC link

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

dundarious 2026-02-26 18:40 UTC link

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%.

SunshineTheCat 2026-02-26 18:46 UTC link

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.

add-sub-mul-div 2026-02-26 18:47 UTC link

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

impute 2026-02-26 18:51 UTC link

"for a better experience"

Do people writing this type of copy actually believe this?

EarlKing 2026-02-26 18:53 UTC link

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.

ozlikethewizard 2026-02-26 19:00 UTC link

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.

j1elo 2026-02-26 19:08 UTC link

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.

CamperBob2 2026-02-26 19:28 UTC link

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

nozzlegear 2026-02-26 19:35 UTC link

> 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.

commandlinefan 2026-02-26 19:38 UTC link

That was a black mirror episode.

kg 2026-02-26 18:25 UTC link

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. :(

MiiMe19 2026-02-26 18:32 UTC link

I was thinking the same thing lmao

nyeah 2026-02-26 18:33 UTC link

Yeah. But anything bad does that.

toomuchtodo 2026-02-26 18:35 UTC link

organsnyder 2026-02-26 18:46 UTC link

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

TulliusCicero 2026-02-26 18:47 UTC link

Seems like something a plugin could solve.

ozgrakkurt 2026-02-26 18:47 UTC link

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

Legend2440 2026-02-26 18:49 UTC link

Please drink verification can.

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

jeffwask 2026-02-26 18:51 UTC link

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

NewJazz 2026-02-26 18:52 UTC link

Not sure if this applies, but might be worth consideration

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/06/no-more-loud-commercials-g...

jeffwask 2026-02-26 18:53 UTC link

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

throwaway85825 2026-02-26 18:55 UTC link

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

ratelimitsteve 2026-02-26 18:57 UTC link

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

dogleash 2026-02-26 18:59 UTC link

> 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.

chmod775 2026-02-26 19:00 UTC link

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."

nticompass 2026-02-26 19:01 UTC link

> use firefox, install uBlock Origin

maskull 2026-02-26 19:02 UTC link

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.

cosmic_cheese 2026-02-26 19:03 UTC link

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.

baal80spam 2026-02-26 19:05 UTC link

> 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.

BenjiWiebe 2026-02-26 19:09 UTC link

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.

deltoidmaximus 2026-02-26 19:28 UTC link

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.

toss1 2026-02-26 19:30 UTC link

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

vodofrede 2026-02-26 19:56 UTC link

Firefox, uBlock Origin, then follow the linked section of the Twitch Ad Solutions GH. This has worked for me for a very long time. Use the VAFT script. https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions?tab=readme-ov...

hedora 2026-02-26 20:06 UTC link

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>

hydrogen7800 2026-02-26 20:22 UTC link

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.

iroddis 2026-02-26 20:58 UTC link

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.

Epistemic Quality

Propaganda Flags

1 techniques detected

Solution Orientation

Emotional Tone

Stakeholder Voice

Temporal Framing

Geographic Scope

Complexity

Transparency