A simple version using the auto-generated captions should be pretty straightforward - I'm sure a machine learning model can figure out how to detect "This video is supported by..."
Pay to watch is, of course, an option, but that leads to discrimination based on income – unequally distributed between parts of the world and individuals in the same part of the world. (Yes, I am aware that the sponsorship system leads the creators to cater to the more well-off within each bubble, so it's still a bit discriminatory.)
Any ideas or objections?
Earlier is better to expand something like this to $everything, like what happened to youtube-dl, precisely because the codebase is less mature and it's easier to rip things to bits earlier than later.
Similar to what happened to web ads in communities that tend to run adblockers: more and more obnoxious advertising (intersitial ads, animated ads, etc.), advertising incorporated into content (ads-as-content like on Reddit), cross-site tracking and retargeting.
I tend to manually skip sponsored segments (especially for snake oil like VPN services!), but I'm not sure if writing automated software for this is the right thing to do in the long term.
E.g., I pay some money -- $10/month. I can choose to pay more. A fraction of that is divided evenly amongst all the videos I've watched. Creators get a check at the end of the month.
This wouldn't rake in billions of advertiser money. But I think it would sustain a very decent business, and be better for society in general.
This does need to be voluntary: I need to be able to choose to not pay and not watch (or watch with ads, as an alternative). And you need to be very transparent about the rules from the get-go, as well as about how those rules get changed, and apply those rules equally, lest you sacrifice the trust of both your viewers and creators.
- It blocks all of the popular videos out there I've tried
- For the freshest videos, I find the UI to be super-easy to submit a new video; you press a button when the sponsor segment starts, another button when it ends, then pick the category and click "upload"
That said, Patreon seems to be working very well for a lot of people making high quality content.
Sponsors and advertisers should realize that nobody wants to hear about the same product on every single video, have pages with more ads than content and have their privacy compromised - there's a middle ground where both sides can be happy, but the problem is that one side is continuously overstepping its bounds, causing the other to develop powerful countermeasures.
This is great. I'm already spamming the right arrow key as soon as I realize a video has segued into a "I sold my soul to..." bit. I appreciate creators who quietly make such segments a consistent length and clearly cue them, so I can accurately guess how long to skip :)
As for "but why???", well, I believe advertising is fundamentally broken because it has no feedback loop. It's "throw money at the wall and see what sticks."
Analytics and THE COOKIE MONSTER YEETS ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION tries to handwave a feedback loop into existence (with measurability, the appearance of substance etc), but that doesn't really close the loop either.
IMO, the complexity of modern privacy invasion is solely a function of the ridiculously high flotation point advertising confers onto everything it touches. I argue that the apparent success of that complexity is partly due to the fact that we simply cannot reason about it end-to-end, and have to reduce our analysis down to simple numerical metrics such as "X is making 1 billion dollars a year" ("wow that sounds successful"); and partly due to the fact that throwing trillions of dollars at a problem will cause parts of that problem to move of the way regardless of how fundamentally unsolvable that problem is, which can give the appearance that the problem is tractable when it is not.
Advertising might be the single most attractive thing in the world (a meta-correlation I find endlessly amusing) right now, but I can't help but see it as infinitely wide and shallow. What scares me is that it's growing faster than people's attempts to properly probe its depths; this will eventually peter out and-- oops, someone just popped the balloon.
Perhaps I could acquire sufficient sponsorship to fund a move to Mars before that happens...?
In the meantime, because of the lack of a proper feedback loop, there's a massive disconnect between the fact that the ad industry is growing on one side, while uBlock Origin has "10,000,000+" users on the other.
Anyway the sponsors won't know (unless I'm mistaken) if a viewer skipped that segment, so the creator will get paid anyway.
Is it bad to be skipping a sponsor segment because you've seen it dozens of times? Is it bad if you're already a happy user of the advertised product? Etc.
I figure that $1 a month on Patreon is worth hundreds of times more to a creator than the ad revenue I'm depriving them of, and buying any merch probably thousands of times.
Look at the comments under "YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube"[1]. And this is on Hacker News, probably one of the more Google-friendly communities you'll find online.
This is how you kill a vibrant community of creators.
You can mitigate the privacy impact of ads with countermeasures such as ad-blockers or provide fake personal information if asked.
You can't easily do so with paid services because you need to provide real information for the payment to be processed. This requires mutual trust on both sides of the transaction.
This isn't always true. As several sibling comments already mentioned, this "native advertising" of embedded sponsor spot via the Youtube personality as spokesperson -- is often "paid based on performance" which means the affiliate url links mentioned in the ad are measured for clicks resulting in new customers.
I'm not commenting on morals of using a plugin but just correcting a misconception about arrangements of payment for content creators.
To the larger discussion brewing: I honestly don't understand all the pushback on here. Why should I have any type of moral imperative to support revenue streams I find bad for the industry/society/brains? Simply because the creator decided it was the right choice? People decide things I disagree with all the time, if I have I the power to choose differently, I do. Not liking that I reversed a video creator's choice is one thing, but the accusations of theft (or general moral failings) are another.
Truthfully, if I had the power to make baked-in adverts unprofitable for all Youtube/podcasts/whatever, I would. If anything, I feel some obligation to keep ads out of as many spaces as I can. There are lots of way to make money, selling viewer's eyeballs/ears to the ad industry doesn't have to be the default one and shouldn't be protected like some deep creative choice.
Of course, I want my favorite creator to make money; people have to eat. Alternative sources, such as asking for patroonships or donations, I'm amenable to. I even support a couple smaller channels I think make special content. Unlike baked-in ads, donations are non-compulsory and in my control.
At a more base level, you don't get my eyeballs without my computer, internet, etc. I have a stake in viewership and I choose to modulate what is in my control. If that modulation offends the creator, they do not have to allow it and I will stop watching, but that (currently) means taking their content off mainstream (vs premium) YouTube and lowering viewership. I generally pay for content, but even if I didn't, I can't imagine going out of my way to pirate videos of people fixing old C64s (something I genuinely enjoy).
Morality is complicated.
OECD per-capita spend on all publishing runs about $100/person, roughly the same as per-capita ads spend within the same countries, itself a tax of sorts.
A natural gateway exists --- not a perfect one, but good enough at the level of the ISP provider.
Aggregation, not disintegrations, is the general trend in payment systems. Both buyers and sellers benefit from predictable flows, income or revenues.
Regionally-pro-rated payments allocate costs according to ability to pay, which for information goods is a net social benefit.
Rolling an information access fee into fixed line and mobile internet service, with an indexing of content accessed and a tier-and-bid based reimbursement schedule for publishers, seems to me the most viable path forward to something vaguely resembling a content tax, without actually going through a content tax mechanism. It would ensure universal access to readers and the public, compensation for creators, and the ability for those actually engaged in the process of creating new works to access the materials they need, legally and lawfully, answering in part the "why should I pay for information I don't use" objection: the inforation you do use is itself predicated on information you don't access directly yourself. The other answer to this rather tired objection is that you live in the world created by information access or denial of access, and in general, access to high-quality, relevant, useful information should be a net positive.
I'd proposed this years ago (and many others have similar suggestions), though noting ISPs as a logical collection tollgate is a new realisation.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...
Show HN: SponsorBlock – Skip YouTube Sponsorships, Intros, Outros and More - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23533858 - June 2020 (2 comments)
An open-source browser extension to auto-skip sponsored segments on YouTube - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743196 - Dec 2019 (101 comments)
Show HN: SponsorBlock – Skip sponsorship segments of YouTube videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778926 - Aug 2019 (137 comments)
- if ROI for ads drop, ad sellers (eg. youtubers) have to reduce the price charged to advertisers
- given that ad budgets are more or less constant (companies will always need to reach customers) there will simply be more ads, since each ad view is now worth less.
- if ads become completely ineffective (eg. reddit) ads will simply become disguised as content to get past people's filter (aka content marketing, submarine articles etc)
*Protects you from malicious attacks through 3rd party ad networks.
*Keeps your browser fast from trackers.
*Stops intrusive ads that literally take up 30% of your screen and move the website around making it difficult to read an article.
But sponsored segments built into the video itself? It has none of these issues. A lot of creators do what they love, but they still need income. If you value the content they create these sponsored posts allow them to keep doing that or you can chip in a few bucks to pay for an ad-free feed.
Video is a lot of work.
Source: made my own DevOps video course that I had to video edit + now part of a video D&D podcast that I thankfully do not have to edit or subtitle.
When you use YouTube you accept the terms and conditions (at least the parts that apply in your jurisdiction) which (probably) should state that you are not allowed to circumvent ads. If you do so you are in violation. Not sure what the consequences of that are though.
Sure, overall "inventory" would go down, but I would expect for ads that actually make it to users, per-ad engagement/ROI (and thus "value") to go up.
----
Unless ad networks are charging advertisers for ad units that aren't actually shown to anybody, which smells an awful lot like grift to me!
(effectively charging for hidden ad units to inflate numbers)
You don't though. You have the right to not watch whatever you want, but if content is published with the value proposition that the ads and/or sponsorships are the price of admission, then it's hard to argue that you have the right to access the content anyway. Some publishers try to enforce restrictions like that, mostly ineffectively, and it's probably only because of technical challenges that more don't.
To add a datapoint, I've used adblock forever, but in places where I do see ads I've never had the thought to click on them, just get past them as quickly as possible.
Other people in my family however have bought things through Instagram/Facebook ads, so there are at least SOME people buying things through ads. They also have never bothered to install adblock.
Conversion rates for ads are super small in my experience anyway so driving conversion up should(?) balance the price out the price of people using adblock who would not see anything, and would not click if they did.
Stops intrusive ads that literally take up 30% of your screen and move the website around making it difficult to read an article. But sponsored segments built into the video itself? It has none of these issues.
any ad disrupts the viewing experience and makes a video difficult/annoying to view.
a̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶p̶o̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶t̶a̶l̶ ̶v̶i̶e̶w̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶v̶i̶d̶e̶o̶,̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶a̶r̶d̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶.̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶ ̶a̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶e̶s̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶v̶i̶e̶w̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶b̶s̶o̶l̶u̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ (whereas adblock not loading an ad may reduce the exposure count) (correction: apparently youtube does show engagement over time, so it may be possible to figure out how many people skip ads)
I can imagine people on a radio would be fine to have sound muted automatically during ads. But how many will wait for a video to continue after 30s of nothingness?
Super happy it's a thing and have thoroughly enjoyed some of the Nebula originals.
I don't think that's true at all.
1. There are video analytics to measure what parts of the video were watched.
2. Even if you generally dislike ads, there is a chance that you will see an ad you are interested in that you will check out, which will contribute to the ad's effectiveness, and can be measured. If you automatically block ads, the effectiveness becomes 0 in all cases.
No, the role of "content creator paid by impression and dependent on people not being able to skip intrusive segments of videos that they watch" has no intrinsic right or need to exist. There are lots of other ways for civilization to develop.
https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/4159
https://forum.antennapod.org/t/ability-to-skip-ads-in-the-po...
> 7-day free trial
> then $5 per month or $50 per year
The interesting question I'd like to know the answer to is if creators get more money per ad impression or per premium subscriber view.
There's no "if" here. This type of advertising exists across all platforms and content distribution channels, and has existed for centuries. Whether or not ads are blocked does nothing to stop it.
I also buy almost all my books used. Sometimes I flip past two-page-spread ads in magazines without looking at them. I use ad-blockers. Back when I watched TV with ads, I'd go take a whizz during ad breaks. I'd fast-forward past trailers in front of VHS movies.
Thug life, then?
The sponsor segments are ads. You're getting doubled-dipped.
Is that any different to skipping a sponsorship segment?
I think paying for sponsor-free videos is the best way out.
All the data is public, so anyone can try!
I still think this will remain human-made for the foreseeable future, as an AI will probably never be able to make the millisecond-precise segments that it currenty has
Here's one from the LegalEagle guy: https://curiositystream.com/legaleagle/
The price on the website has to be higher as to encourage you to use a referral, and to always make you get a "deal" from the sponsorship.
This will do just fine.
I care about the time spent on sponsored segments. You don't care that they're there.
All this is just different preferences. You're not better than me. I'm not better than you.
Ever.
I hate ads with a passion.
I get the fact that content creators need to make money, but there needs to be a better way.
Youtube needs to give content creators a way to put ads in their own content in a manner that gets automatically hidden if people pay for Youtube Premium.
Worst case scenario, I would even pay for a higher tier of Youtube Premium that let me hide that type of sponsor ad.
Is that not the case?
I'm really not a fan of the double-dipping that content creators are all doing now with their own unblockable inline ads.
I've actually stopped watching a number of Youtube channels because I get so annoyed by ads. I HATE HATE HATE ads!
Ideally the terms of any such new higher pricing tier would preserve creator profitability (versus whatever arrangement they have now), but not sure how realistic that is once it all comes under Google’s purview.
I note that a lot of the best creators seem to put their private sponsorship arrangements at the back end of their videos, so at least you can switch away after the content is over.
There's always some fearmongering about people stealing your data on public networks, but no actual substance about feasible attacks that could happen in reality.
In the UK, similar ads have been banned by the advertising regulator for being misleading, and it's about time that spurious claims in YouTube videos got more scrutiny.
Nothing else was said about the sponsor's product. There should be more sponsors like that.
I honestly wonder what makes me different to you? I definitely don't have self control like that in other aspects of my life. Maybe it's I'm skeptical and figure ever ad is trying to swindle me out of my money maybe?
Mad respect for him, and if he ever suggest a paid product in the future i'd trust him. Conversely i really dislike when they clearly don't use the product, or are shilling a product that i KNOW is bad - looking at you raycons. I can't help but lose respect and definitely distrust every sponsorship they have.
tl;dr integrity matters, raycons are really not that great, and i'm tired of hearing the same copy over and over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb58b7ob2yQ
Now of course they should be doing their own due diligence, but this is the state of podcast advertising right now (and has been for a while, see: BetterHelp controversy)
The bullshit is coming straight from the VPN providers themselves, fear mongering for profit.
A couple examples from Linus Tech Tips when I compare the video times with all these segments skipped versus nothing skipped:
Original: 14:10 SponsorBlock: 12:38
Original: 14:11 SponsorBlock: 12:04
Original: 19:31 SponsorBlock: 17:40
I'm saving almost 2 minutes in each of these videos and there are many creators who are much worse in this regard. I've had some shorter videos where they basically are half as long once all the crap is cut out of it. It's also nice for when I don't have my hands on the keyboard/mouse such as if I've got my laptop connected to my TV. I will get some videos queued up and set my wireless keyboard down to the side and just watch. With AdBlock + SponsorBlock I don't have to touch the keyboard or mouse through multiple videos and can just enjoy things without issues. I don't have to worry about skipping past ads, sponsor segments, intros, outros, self-promo's, etc...
Overall it just makes my viewing experience so much better. At one point I had YouTube premium but it felt like I was paying so much to basically just get rid of ads but not completely get rid of them. Even with ads gone I still have sponsor segments. And if I'm having to use a tool to skip sponsor segments it starts to make me just not care to even pay for the product anymore.
I personally wouldn't use the remove feature, but being able to flag and timestamp all sponsored/ad sections in my archives is a delightful feature to have.
Thank you ajayyy for such a great tool.
But I guess it makes it easier to refer to than "proxy for all protocols."
These things bring value to my life. How else would I know about them?
Modern cases for a VPN:
1. The few countries/regions with severely corrupt governments/ISPs.
2. Accessing region-locked services; eg. another country's Netflix.
I'm sure all sorts of sites have magic words that claim I cannot block their ads. Meanwhile, some of them may have ad blocker detectors even if they don't have magic words. Either way, it's on them to show me or not show me whatever content they want, and on me to block ads or not and view their content or not.
Will it result in vastly lesser free content to watch? Yes. I don't see a problem with that. I did not have Youtube growing up, I am sure we will survive without it. Maybe we will spend time on more productive things, than watching pewdiepie reacting to memes.
Tired of getting VPNs, audiobooks and mobile games getting flogged to me by people who are reading a script and come across as disgenuine all because they have a big enough audience that can be monetised.
I don't like being monetised.
Overlapping options for content creators (many of which do or do not apply depending on various factors, mostly forms of privilege) include picking a different business model, having a different means to support yourself, giving up, and realizing that your existing business model is compatible with free viewing.
Depending on consumers to be selfless by donating or choosing to consume ads is not the only business model in town; there are more paths to take than "expect selflessness or give up". Selflessness isn't typically a basket worth all your eggs.
What you're talking abut is something else entirely. If I'm watching something on Hulu, and the show stops to show me an ad for a Marvel movie coming out in a couple months, that's intrusive. If I deliberately go to YouTube to watch the trailer, that's a free choice. They're such completely different experiences from the user's point of view that it's a misnomer to refer to both as "advertising".
Likewise, my parents have solicited mailers from local groceries because they want to know what vegetables are in this week. There are all sorts of websites and other mechanisms for letting people know about events and opportunities going on in their area. Me sitting down to watch some sports or something and getting bombarded by ads (by Arby's, not a "local farm") is not the same situation.
If you want a bright line, imagine a world with no profit motive. Would we still have movie trailers and fliers to let you know about local farm produce? I think so. Would there still be television advertisements and lies about VPN services on YouTube videos? Obviously not.
It's not a matter of deserving, it's a matter of supply and demand and technological capabilities. To ignore the latter, let's pretend YouTube is capable of 100% effective DRM, such that you only watch the content if you see all the ads and sponsorships, eyeballs on screen, in the style of "15 Million Merits".
Even in this case, it's unmistakable that the supply of entertainment overwhelmingly exceeds the demand. This is why all the traditional Hollywood companies are all entirely focused on making blockbusters: it's the one thing they can do that no one else can (because of the initial investment required). But they're the exception. The vast majority of content creators, including people trying to do it full time, are making basically nothing or just enough to get by. There are thousands and thousands of Twitch streamers scraping by on 12 hour days where they average a hundred or so viewers.
In other words, even in this DRM hellscape, the push of the market is going to be towards less and less remuneration for each creator, because the total market capacity of entertainment as such is not enough for each entertainer to live off of. There is quite simply not enough money in it. If I'm forced to watch ads, I'll switch to content providers that don't use ads. The result is worse for the creator, because the vast majority of them are suffering from lack of visibility. So they make their content more palatable by reducing ads, and the downward spiral continues. This is already happening, because most creators are not making enough to live off of.
The only way to solve this problem is for us to decide socially that artistic creation is good as such even if there's not a marketable demand for it, and that therefore creators deserve to be compensated. The fact that it's society that would have to come to this conclusion means that it's society upon which the burden of providing this compensation would fall, not individual consumers. In other words, the solution isn't sponsorships or watching ads, it's something like universal basic income.