SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube

With sponsorships I think people are just annoyed by them being repetitive. There are maybe ten companies that seem to sponsor every YouTube channel and podcast, and there's only so many times you can get pitched the same wallet or VPN before you develop the instinct to skip ahead.

But before we skip ahead, let me tell you about this comment's sponsor, Squarespace. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Use code "eyeroll" to get 10% off your first order.

If I’m going to skip it manually anyway, may as well let the machine do it. The whole point of computers is to automate busywork.

No sales will be lost either way as I’m already a customer of the website builder and am absolutely not in the market for a VPN and never will be.

It's because it's an annoyance with ads and even if people want a free web to exist something something prisoners dilemma.

Also these ads are in videos even if you're e.g. paying for YouTube premium so it's not just the free web.

It's not necessarily an either-or situation. It can be privacy, annoyance, and a general lack of effectiveness.

Advertising isn't just the art of selling a product, it's the art of getting past our normal social defense that someone is trying to take our money, our attention, and our time. Advertising is necessarily adversarial, and everyone's tolerance for it is going to be unique depending on how heavily they rely on free resources, but it is a necessary unpleasantry at its best.

If I could even recall the exact number of times an advertisement of any type appealed to me in the last 20 or more years, it would amount to less than the fingers on my hand. I used to welcome all of Google's advertising tracking and relevance-seeking as the best version of advertising out there, but even that resulted in unimpressive and less than meaningful ads. If Google can't advertise something useful to me, then I have zero qualms about walking by, palm facing them in refusal.

Because of these product failures, and because it is unwise to trust a big company with all of your personal data, I rarely desired to be advertised to at all.

Individual content creators have the opportunity to give me a chance with something unique that they know that their viewers would be interested in because they (hopefully) relate to their audience much more than a faceless corporation, and can present a product in its best, most relevant light.

But if that content creator is trying to sell me a Scandinavian VPN service or a game of legendary shadows, you can bet I have zero interest.

All this may change as GenAI-driven methods may key in on relevant interests based on what I wish to share about myself. I'm hoping that Apple's Intelligence systems will end up preserving privacy as well as driving a more effective ad model.

You still get these ads even when you go and buy YouTube premium that should be actually your way to an experience free of ads.

I wasn’t gonna buy the thing being advertised to me, so why not save us all some bandwidth and time? Or if you think that I was gonna buy it but I didn’t know it, then you’re admitting you want to manipulate me, which only strengthens my argument for my right to block it.

Advertising is creating consensus without consent. It’s information warefare, propaganda, psychological manipulation… whatever you want to call it, in any other context the immorality is clear. If a guy buys a woman a vodka soda at a hotel bar, can she accept it and return to her table, or does she need to listen to his offer to come up to his room before she can drink it?

I get where you're coming from but consider this: using an adblocker like ublock isn't only about digital privacy. Many people, myself included, dislike being advertised to in general.

Especially in the real world I think ads are a blight, and so do the Swiss [1].

I do use sponsor block myself, though I have it disabled on certain channels because they actually show decent sponsors, like things that their audience might actually be interested in and they're not complete lies. But there is absolutely no positive impact on my life from seeing the 624th ad for a VPN to "protect myself online".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41075766

Yes, it has nothing to do with privacy. The opposite is maybe true in that case (i.e. google can probably see my usage of sponsorblock in the access logs, which makes it simpler for them to identify me).

But I do use it. I don't watch video clips very often. When I did, most of the times it was disappointing waste of time. Conference talks are the most obvious exception that come to my mind, and they don't interrupt their talk with sponsor ads.

Once something is in YT (or any other big tech silo), I'm completely outside of charity or goodwill mode. It's basically like sth broadcasted by a random tv station for me. I maybe consume it, but I'll not start thinking how I can support them. The 'free web' that I'd explicitly try to support does not happen in big tech's walled gardens.

Btw: Are there any 'good' sponsors in YT? I suspect, a company that sponsors YT channels is by definition suspect. Just because the target audience doesn't really ask for more. They spend hours each day in a loop of mostly pointless 'subscribe, like me, follow me, comment below, $SPONSOR, ...' and always the big show without any actual substance in the end.

Sure, there are always a handful of exceptions...

I first started to block ads for privacy and to prevent those that takes over the screen, but once you have blocked ads once, you start to enjoy the actual peace and ability to concentrate.

Plus ads are for shitty products, since good products end up selling through recommendations and reviews.

It is not a free web if the creators I watch are being paid off to promote and never criticize corpos in their industry.

Block all ads of all kinds. I do not want to watch advertizer os sponsor friendly creators. I want people talking to me honestly like they might off camera.

We must switch to micro transaction pay-per-view model like LBRY to eliminate all ads and ensure creators get paid better without having their integrity compromised by corpo sponsors.

>I want people talking to me honestly like they might off camera

The you'll have to wish for a while since no one on YouTube is "as honest as if the camera is off".

Microtransactions won't fix this, for the same reason that paid cable channels and newspapers still show ads. The temptation to double-dip is too great.

Oh god lol don't give companies who buy ad space any ideas!

Even without such a hardline stance on advertising: there is simply no other way to avoid sponsored YouTube segments despite being a YouTube Premium subscriber and sponsoring a channel directly. Maybe not everyone agrees with the former but I've not seen a single debate against the latter.

Somebody is buying though. Advertising absolutely works.

How do those recommenders find out about a product in the first place? Advertising and PR is how that happens unless a person happens to be friends with the owner.

Advertising facilitates discovery, reviews and recommendations facilitate sustained growth.

This is a terrible argument.

First, it can be unproductively applied to any monetization system - you can always say that the temptation will still exist to double-dip.

Second, because it's ignoring the fact that if you want to get rid of ads, you have to replace them with something else.

And third, it's only partially true - microtransactions will make the ad problem better, because ad display by small creators is partially driven by the need to make a living. Once that living is met, the pressure to also display ads gets significantly reduced.

> First, it can be unproductively applied to any monetization system - you can always say that the temptation will still exist to double-dip.

That's capitalism. The Uber app was a straightforward experience, until they started loading it up with ads and tip screens. Paid Hulu and Netflix tiers have ads too, when previously they didn't.

If that's a "terrible argument", there should be numerous counterexamples of companies doing the opposite.

YouTube (and Google's advertising platform as a whole) literally advertises investment scams, allows deepfakes, and has been known to have ads that link to fake bank websites and contain malware.

There is no advertising on the internet that doesn't have potential issues because at least the dominant advertising platforms (Google, Meta) work at a scale that cannot satisfactorily filter for the kind of things I've mentioned above.

Do you want your kids or parents or grandparents exposed to that kind of advertising?

Also, the "free web" is a thing that already existed. Advertising was an add-on, not a core component.

As creators oft disclose, buying from sponsors is a way to help support channels.

> That's capitalism.

That's an utterly meaningless statement. You haven't even defined "capitalism", let alone what it means for something to "be" capitalism. This is political dog-whistling, the opposite of any rational argument.

> The Uber app was a straightforward experience, until they started loading it up with ads and tip screens. Paid Hulu and Netflix tiers have ads too, when previously they didn't.

This is intentionally deceptive and misleading. Uber is the only one of these that is actually correct, and it's a morally bankrupt company in the first place. Hulu and Netflix, on the other hand, have tiers that don't have ads, which is objectively not double-dipping.

> If that's a "terrible argument", there should be numerous counterexamples of companies doing the opposite.

First, no, that's false. There are many reasons why counterexamples would be rare or nonexistent - most obviously, because customers used to getting a free product tend to be extremely unhappy if you now tell them that they have to pay.

You also ignored every one of my points, which soundly rebutted your argument, and explained why it was bad - that your argument is utterly unrelated to microtransaction systems in particular, that you still have to have a alternative monetization system for when ads are removed, and that microtransactions will make the ad problem better.

Second, there are numerous counterexamples of companies that charge consumers directly without double-dipping - Google One, Dropbox, Remember the Milk, World of Warcraft, LegendKeeper, ChatGPT, most video games, Notion, Slack, etc.

Third, there are specific examples of companies moving away from ad-supported models to paid subscription models (without keeping ads), which is likely what you were trying to claim that "double-dipping" was: Medium, Evernote, and the New York Times, despite the aforementioned extreme aversion of consumers to starting to pay for something that they previously got for free.

LegendKeeper will never have ad placements because of how ugly they are. Personally I wouldn’t be able to tolerate an ad messing up the flow of our designs and user focus, lol. Idk how others do it; we also never relied on ads in the first place so maybe that makes it easier.

(LegendKeeper mentioned!! 8))

> Unless blocking ads has nothing to do with privacy and is just an annoyance with ads...

there were some comments in another post that went so far as to want all advertising banned. So for some people it truly is just "skip all annoyances, consume for free". And I see takes in this thread about how apparently everyone should be making videos as a passion/hobby.

It's either brash overrreactions, naivete on societal structures, or simply being stuck in a tech bubble (where our labor only indirectly produces value, compared to the visualizations or art or other content leveraged by tech. Hence why many can give it away).

LOL, it's awesome to see a LegendKeeper dev here! I don't TTRPG but I have a friend who does and is using your tool.

I love the UI, did you model it off Notion?

>there are numerous counterexamples of companies that charge consumers directly without double-dipping - Google One, Dropbox, Remember the Milk, World of Warcraft, LegendKeeper, ChatGPT, most video games, Notion, Slack, etc.

That's really your best list?

- Google constnatly double dips. They were cuaght not too long ago scanning Drive folders for potential Gemini use. Slack just had this discussion as well.

- WOW charges subscriptions and for cosmetics in game. That's how more and more video games are trying to recoup costs. DLC, microtransactions, battle passes, NFTs, etc. You can avoid most of that if you're indie, but that's the AAA market.

- ChatGPT is in market capture mode right now in a very hot market. It's going to pull a google in 5-10 years if it's still dominant. I would bet my bottom dollar on that one.

>there are specific examples of companies moving away from ad-supported models to paid subscription models (without keeping ads)

And they are double dipping on their own services by selling to AI to train their data. It won't be ads for you today. It probably will be tomorrow. If the goal is to minimize annoyance, this is honestly worse than double charging.

We're doomed without a fundamental shift in how society consumes content.

>Once something is in YT (or any other big tech silo), I'm completely outside of charity or goodwill mode.

real shame to publish the creators stuck in a monopoly when they will be the first to fall, and Google last.

> That's really your best list?

There are dozens more that you can find easily with a quick search, and these alone support my point.

> Google constnatly double dips

Sure, maybe they're not the best choice. Let's use Apple instead.

> Gemini

> And they are double dipping on their own services by selling to AI to train their data

Other forms of double dipping than ads aren't on topic, relevant, or productive for this thread which was specifically about micro transactions not replacing ads because of double dipping. (yes, the problem is real - see later)

> WOW charges subscriptions and for cosmetics in game

Also off topic, but here I don't even see a problem. Unlike ads being involuntarily shoved down your throat, you're not compelled to buy cosmetics.

> It won't be ads for you today. It probably will be tomorrow

This is very speculative, and not supported by the hundreds of SaaS products that do not, even those that have been around for years.

> We're doomed without a fundamental shift in how society consumes content.

Like microtransactions?

Moreover, none of this addresses my points that if you get rid of ads (or user data harvesting), you still have to replace it with something else, and that utx will reduce the pressure to do these other things.

Sure, ultimately you'll need regulation to get rid of user data harvesting, and maybe ads too, but I'm confused as to why "double dipping" is being brought up as an argument against utx after those things are gone - they're almost orthogonal.

I simply hate being advertised to and sold stuff when I'm not shopping. In any shape or form. But especially on my own devices and in my own home.

It works on an easily manipulated minority, which means everyone else has to suffer, right.

That's great to hear! Always happy to see LK usage out in the wild.

Definitely Notion-inspired! Over the next few months we'll be putting more of our own spin on it, though.

Apparently the average distance between any two Facebook users is less than 5, and that distance is presumably lower when you restrict to smaller localities like a country or city, so assuming that's a good measure of social connectedness, I'd expect news to travel fast if there's something interesting to say.

Somehow I doubt uBlock Origin or SponsorBlock run ads, for example, yet here we are all knowing about them, and allegedly somewhere around 1/3 of Internet users have an ad blocker.

In an ideal world that would be the case but it’s not realistic.

Money needs to be made somehow, even if it is just to break even on the cost of making the video. Maybe you needed to buy something.

We see people complain about paywalls on websites, so if that started to seriously happen for videos I doubt it would go well.