SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

I get the technical justification for doing this: You own your player, so you should be able to control it in whatever way you want. But as consumers, how do we expect the uploader to get paid for their work if we use both Adblock and Sponsor-skip (for the lack of a better word)?

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?

I am curious if direct revenue shares are a sustainable model.

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.

Advertising is bad and I will oppose it in all its forms. What other system for financing the content does or doesn't exist is irrelevant to the my decision to block as much advertising out of my perception as I can.

That said, Patreon seems to be working very well for a lot of people making high quality content.

Personally I do pay for YouTube Premium, so videos I watch do make money (and do not have ads for me). As for in-video sponsor segments, I doubt the actual sponsors get any analytics about when they're skipped or not.

That is literally how YouTube Premium works today, but people seem to feel entitled to watch without paying any money and blocking the ads.

They surely get analytics on how well a sponsorship works since they use dedicated URLs. And if a sponsorship does not produce a return on the investment, the sponsor will stop giving money to the content creator.

Will the sponsored bits be skipped if you pay for Youtube Premium? Or would you get to both pay AND be shown the sponsored segments?

> As for in-video sponsor segments, I doubt the actual sponsors get any analytics about when they're skipped or not.

LOLLLLL

Ultimately there's only one inevitable consequence of this - YouTube will move to using Widevine on all YouTube streams to stop it happening.

> But as consumers, how do we expect the uploader to get paid for their work if we use both Adblock and Sponsor-skip

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.

As far as I understand Widewine "protects" (quotes because piracy websites are proof of the contrary) the video content but wouldn't prevent the player being controlled to skip past ads.

Ads and sponsorships are two ways that creators can earn a living, but there's additional ones; YT subscriptions, Patreon and selling merchandise comes to mind.

Anyway the sponsors won't know (unless I'm mistaken) if a viewer skipped that segment, so the creator will get paid anyway.

I can't blame people for not giving money and personal information (signing up to Premium requires creating a Google account and provide true personal information for billing purposes) to a hostile company that makes its money on stalking users.

the sponsors will have metrics to measure the conversion rate from ad-rolls in their sponsored videos. They will pay initially, but over time, less and less as the ads become less and less effective.

So, basically, ads are more private than subscriptions?

I would also guess there's some watch time data access through the YouTube API, too. Plus tracked links in those cards at the corner of a video.

By your logic, high-income viewers (such as most of the HN users) are currently paying *more* for viewing videos than the average viewer since their attention is worth more.

Maybe. But Google has sacrificed trust.

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880582

When it comes from a hostile company, yes.

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.

Great question and we all know the answer.

YouTube does show the creator/uploader engagement throughout the video, so you can tell if there are less viewers for sponsor segments. My point is that info isn't necessarily shared through to the advertiser

That reads an awful lot like: “If a content creator’s patronage is not in the form I prefer, I deserve to circumvent that patronage and consume their content anyway. It’s irrelevant to me how & if they are compensated.”

Personally, I just pay content creators as directly as possible. If they have a YouTube subscription option available I'll do that, but most of them seem to have a Patreon instead. If I like someone's content, a couple of bucks a month (or a video, or whatever) is more than worth it to me.

I have the right to watch or not whatever I want , in the same way publishers have the right to add sponsorship content on their videos, same applies to ads , if you don’t want to see ads use an adblocker or skip the sponsorship part with an app like this one. If creators don’t like it , they should find another way of monetizing their work. Shaming people into watching ads is disgusting and wrong.

I think it strongly depends on your legislative region whether you are allowed to watch whatever you want on your own terms if the content has been published under different terms.

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.

Does YouTube share a part of your premium/fee to the creators based on what you watched? That is actually pretty neat.

Correct.

> I have the right to watch or not whatever I want

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.

Well technically you could only send the data to be buffered up until the sponsored content and only continue sending the stream after the content was supposed to be finished. Or a bit earlier to ensure smooth playback. If the sponsored content is blocked at least the player will not be able to continue until the time for the content or ad has passed.

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?

No. If content is published for 0€, it's free. If you want money, charge for it. That's the only business model that ensures that businesses serve their customers and thus the only legitimate one.

Of course. I'm entitled to block ads and I'm entitled to watch things that are offered for free without paying. If you want to be paid for something, don't give it away for free.

Does Youtube track if I skip the ad segment? Or better: do the uploaders know how many users saw the ad?

I fully agree with that statement.

That is my assumption and it would be shocking if that were not the case. This is the case for ad revenue. Youtube premium replaces ad revenue with a fee.

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.

Yes.

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?

> (and do not have ads for me)

The sponsor segments are ads. You're getting doubled-dipped.

And that's why I've been using this sponsor block plugin.

SponsorBlock would work fine with Widevine. In fact, I am planning on expanding it to some other sites that have DRM.

Creators are paid "a majority" of revenue from YouTube premium based on watch time.

I pay for Youtube Premium with the expectation that the content creators will get a cut of the monthly fee that I pay towards Youtube.

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!

Yes that’s exactly how I feel.

I do though. You can't force people to watch your content the way you like. You can hope, encourage, or maybe even incentivize. I do not have the right to watch a video, but I do have the right, once the video is publicly available, to watch the parts of the video I want. In the same way I have the right of changing channels during tv ads breaks. You can't dictate how people use their time.

It’s more like “if a content creator doesn’t use multiple revenue streams, they don’t deserve the money they left on the table”

> 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. I don't think so. Can you provide a link to the section of the ToS that says that?

>terms and conditions

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.

Honestly, I do not expect most youtube "content creators" to get paid for making those videos. I only want those who are in it for the passion to make videos.

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.

What I mean is, it's entirely possible for sponsors to ask for channel data.

Do demonetized channels get their share? A couple of channels I watch swear a lot, and are demonetized. It's a bliss to watch YouTube without ad interruptions. I don't mind product placement by the content creators. I would be happy to pay if I knew they are paid too.

Not sure why you would expect people to act any differently when given freely reproducible content. The only solution here would be making adblock illegal and ramping up surveillance.

Doesn't matter. I'm going to skip through it anyway. It won't make a difference to Skillshare, SimpliSafe, Audible and NordVPN if I'm skipping their stuff manually or automagically. Hell, it doesn't truly make a difference if I'm sitting watching their segments because I'm not going to sign up and become a customer of theirs anyway.

Yes. Content consumers being "lost customers" is a problem if your business model requires them to do something that they are incentivized to avoid doing.

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.

Let me try to say in a more nuanced way what other replies have said more bluntly.

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.

I thought about using that plugin, but I'll be missing out on the creative sponsored ads done by some YouTubers like Daniel Thrasher (plus his sponsored section is at the end so I can always skip them anyway).