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.
My man Windscribe always forgotten about
Localscriptman also does really creative ones.
And Some More News
The most replayed section won’t count your view anyway since you’re watching through an unofficial app that doesn’t send tracking data to YouTube
It’s true that YouTube does track the most watched portions of a video, but in the case of clients like NewPipe or this one the way the video is parsed it doesn’t send the analytic data necessary, so it likely doesn’t even count views, let alone watched segments.
I wish there was an add-on that could fake a view for the sponsored segment for the creator but skip it for the user. I.e. every time the user skips a sponsored segment, the extension adds a view for the sponsored segment for the creator, so they get paid whilst we skip their segment.
Well, they can see whether you watched them or not. So technically still tracked. At least in the official youtube app.
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
No not even close. You did not put in more time.
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.
Then they fucked up.
I completely agree with you, and that’s the reason I block them as well. I was just trying to give an explaination for the app’s behaviour.
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
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!”
Instead of not watching them, you can just use SponsorBlock!
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”
Yeah, I see video monetization as running on a similar model to that of free to play games. The majority of people either don’t make you any money or only very little money, but they boost your engagement and popularity metrics so that you get more ‘whales’ that do things like donating on Patreon, choosing to watch sponsors and use affiliate codes, and buying merch.
Ads are only the worth the actual amount of business they generate. I know that a lot of people don’t realize that even if they never intentionally buy something from an ad, the familiarity of seeing things in an ad makes them more likely to pick it over something else down the line. However, this still only works if you have any disposable income and don’t immediately hit mute, close your eyes, and count to 30 when an ad comes on. A lot of people using ad blockers would just devalue the ads themselves if they were forced to watch them. The people with the money just pay for Premium.
No people think everything should be free.
You are right! I used to hate on sponsors but now I understand that they are way better than targeted ads.
It’s also under control of what the creator placed in the video. Youtube can insert commercials into your video, even if you chose not to monetize it.
On one hand true, on the other, a lot of those sponsorships advertise dubious things at best. I love the channels that just shill their own merch, but being entirely fair, you need to be at a certain revenue threshold to afford making said merch.
The problem with those, 3rd party sponsorships is that they’re usually just either mobile games, F2P(P2W) MMOs, overpriced basic products or software advertised in the FUD way. Sorry, I don’t care for Raid Shadow Legends, War Thunder, Manscaped or NordVPN. Especially the last one and the ones like it grind my gears because the sponsorships for that kind of product are borderline misinformation.
All of them, in some way, can be considered somewhat predatory. I’d rather buy a silly hat or a plushie, thank you very much.