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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

About hours watched, did you somehow account for viewers like me who start a show, promptly fall asleep, and the episodes play all night.

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> and the episodes play all night.

Do you not awake to a prompt asking you to confirm that you are still actively watching?

Hmm not that I remember. Maybe if it hit the end of the season? Though it's actually been a while, at some point last year I felt like I'd run through all the interesting content on Netflix. Now I do the same thing on YouTube.

They ask every few episodes.

Yeah but have you seen the interesting content while awake? ;)

Wow, is that a thing? Reminds me of an episode from Black Mirror.

It's more like a screen saver. You haven't interacted with the app in X amount of time, it suspends loading the next episode until you confirm you're still there.

No more nefarious or creepy than a screen saver.

Hell, YouTube too does that on Android, pausing playback after ~1 hour.

I was quite annoyed when I saw it for the first time - I had music playing over my Bluetooth headset while cleaning my bathroom, so it was quite inconvenient to tap on the phone when YouTube suddenly paused it to check if I'm still there.

That would be unforgivable if you were paying for Youtube Premium.

But if it's just for the ad-supported version, it makes sense.

If it is a setting that can be disabled it would make sense even for Youtube Premium imo. Accidentally leaving it on would result in a lot of data for the user, potentially missing/losing where they are, would quickly drain the battery, and so on.

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