Seriously this was very surprising. I’ve been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it’s a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn’t “true open source” but it’s a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.
I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me “turning this on harms creators” and made me click a box before I could continue.
Bruh, you’re literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I’m “harming the creator”?
I believe this is because sponsor segments are like traditional TV ads. They don’t use trackers, they are not targeted and they respect your privacy.
In that case it won’t matter to anyone that I skipped them.
As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I believe YouTube provides analytics on this (hence the “most replayed” parts for some videos), and I’m certain I’ve seen some creators mention sposors requiring that information before a deal is made. So it may really hurt some small youtubers that can’t rely on merchandise sales.
That said, I personally use sponsorblock as I don’t feel like wasting my life on nordvpn ads, but I have to admit sponsor segments are a whole lot better than regular YouTube ads.
Edit: And as I far as I know they pay much better than regular ads.
I manually skip all sponsored segments except for the Internet Historian ones.
You thief!! /s
Pretty much. I watch all the NordVPN Man ads and don’t even sign up for a 12 month discount and the first month free. I’m basically a criminal.
Also Mullvad FTW.
Well, they can see whether you watched them or not. So technically still tracked. At least in the official youtube app.
They can see the percentage of people who watched that part of the video, as part of the video analytics. This doesn’t track the user, though, at least not if you have history turned off, or are using another front end.
And I’d guess that’s done in the backend instead of the frontend. They should be able to know how many times their server steamed a part of a video.
They don’t respect my attention and time, thought
I mean, the person making the video you are watching respected your time to the point they put in 10-100x the amount of time it takes you to watch that video to make it.
And the sponsor ad is how they afford said time commitment.
And show it to millions of people… So per capita… I put in more time then they did.
Apologies. You are the true hero. Thank you for your service
Hence why it might be hurtful to small creators. I’d love to see the numbers on that though, as the overall percentage of people using an adblocker is very low, I assume for Sponsorblock it’s significantly less.
No not even close. You did not put in more time.
Skip it all you want but don’t act like it’s such a terrible inconvenience. Creating high quality content is a full time job and people gotta eat
Shit, I didn’t realize the only way some people can eat is by making Youtube videos.
Shit, I didn’t realize there were 48 hours in a day.
Sorry, you’re right. Creators should work their 9-5 and then spend another 8 hours a day making videos for us out of the goodness of their hearts. I now think it’s disgusting that these people try to monetize their hard work
I think it’s ironic that the argument is both “sponsor segments don’t respect my time!” AND “I have no respect for the time of the creators”
Nobody needs YouTube videos nor is anyone compelled to make them. I’m guessing you don’t remember when YouTube was completely free and people just made videos for fun?
Now people quit jobs that support them to do something fun and try to make monry off that. Which is fine, but we’re not required to support their hobby. Stop acting like people have no other option in their life except to make reaction videos, video essays, meme compilations, etc.
Everytime the same argument. I don’t want to see ads never ever, period. They are useless and annoying at best, sometimes plain evil manipulation.
I recognize the need of income for creators, and they can ask for money in the form of donation/subscription and other methods. I am paying and will pay for everything I want to support. If you decide that your way to sustain yourself is by shoving up fake opinions and useless noise in order to manipulate me into buying something, I don’t accept it. It’s as simple as that.
If the creators you like choose to monetize with sponsors, you can choose not to watch them instead of complaining about it on a forum. Or go create the content you like yourself.
I don’t like ads either and have stopped watching several channels because of how they use them.
“Every time the same argument” is right - “my time is valuable but the creator’s time is not!”
deleted by creator
Go for it! I’m not holding that against anyone. I’m railing against the entitlement of saying it’s “not respectful of the viewer’s time” to have sponsored segments.
Like I said elsewhere, I think that stance is ironic because it’s not respecting the creator’s time and effort. “I want you to spend hours and hours making videos for me but I don’t want you to make money from it”
I don’t care for those, either.
If that was their reasoning, they should say that rather than vaccuously claiming that it “harms creators”
Well, it does harm creators, as they may get less money. The same goes for adblockers.
Then again I don’t really understand why would you care about being “shamed”, especially by a company that charges money for a frontend using YouTube’s (extremely expensive) servers for free.
To paraphrase Norm MacDonald: the worst part is the hypocrisy 😅