SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube

As a YouTuber, I’m conflicted about this. My main channel (non-tech) is small, but is monetised, and YouTube see fit to throw me a _very_ variable amount of money every month. CPMs are down right now so revenue has tanked along with it, it’ll pick back up at some point, but the variability is itself the pain point. My videos are relatively expensive and time consuming to make, but people seem to find them useful, and even enjoyable. The occasional (relevant) sponsor read or similar has been a huge help in providing some stability in the past, and I know for many channels it’s the main source of income since YPP revenue share can be so volatile.

I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and it’ll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that’s never really sat right with me personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile storm brewing).

On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of “the usual suspect” sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos and it’s a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.

> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole

That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.

Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.

And I'll agree with you the day we all decide to pay a monthly fee that is big enough to support various websites and creators.

Why? As a HN-er/content creator, I don't see why it would be taken for granted that people need to be paid for their hobbies. In fact many people post online for enjoyment.

I’m sort of amazed this has to be explicitly stated:

Because most YouTube creators (even the hobbyists) are at least partially motivated by money, and if you take away all the money they will likely make less content or stop altogether. I understand that it’s fun to get things for free, but that’s usually not sustainable.

The point is that's fine, and it is perfectly sustainable for people to do things they enjoy for free. It'd perhaps not be sustainable for someone to play video games as a full-time job, but maybe that's okay (or even desirable from a societal resource allocation standpoint)?

Simply make rent, housing, and food free. Then people need not make money for the majority of needs.