this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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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"?

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[–] [email protected] 158 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I manually skip all sponsored segments except for the Internet Historian ones.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My man Windscribe always forgotten about

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Localscriptman also does really creative ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And Some More News

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They don’t use trackers,

Well, they can see whether you watched them or not. So technically still tracked. At least in the official youtube app.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They can see the percentage of people who watched that part of the video, as part of the video analytics. This doesn't track the user, though, at least not if you have history turned off, or are using another front end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And I'd guess that's done in the backend instead of the frontend. They should be able to know how many times their server steamed a part of a video.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well when a video is buffered it's loaded in memory but not viewed yet, they can't count loading the video as a view or they'd count the whole video as viewed if you simply buffered it in full, it would also screw up that watched timestamps feature to see which part has been played back most.

So yes they can count how many times it has been streamed but they also need to know you've watched it because sitting on pause while the video buffers all the way through isn't a view, it isn't watching those segments, but it does stream them from the servers, in the same way Newpipe and Grayjay does. Which is how a video can register no views despite being watched on something like NewPipe.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

They don't respect my attention and time, thought

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

they put in 10-100x the amount of time it takes you to watch that video to make it.

And show it to millions of people... So per capita... I put in more time then they did.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Apologies. You are the true hero. Thank you for your service

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No not even close. You did not put in more time.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

Then they fucked up.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No people think everything should be free.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't care for those, either.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I skipped over therlm for years before using sponsorblock anyway.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If that was their reasoning, they should say that rather than vaccuously claiming that it "harms creators"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, it does harm creators, as they may get less money. The same goes for adblockers.

Then again I don't really understand why would you care about being "shamed", especially by a company that charges money for a frontend using YouTube's (extremely expensive) servers for free.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Then again I don't really understand why would you care about being "shamed", especially by a company that charges money for a frontend using YouTube's (extremely expensive) servers for free.

To paraphrase Norm MacDonald: the worst part is the hypocrisy 😅

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

"extremely expensive" is a bit of an overstatement.

Youtube proper, not the rest of Google, is tens of billions in the black, annually.

They reached this level of control over the market by running without video ads for a long time, forcing competitors to close out or not even open into the market without similar money backing. Turning around now and forcing tracking and ads should open them up to antitrust suits.

It's all arbitrage. If you can afford YouTube Premium's price, and don't mind the tracking, go for it. But all this ad blocking and alternative front ends MIGHT come to half a billion annually. uBlock has around 15 million installs, each installed user- assuming all separate and unique and blocking YouTube- would have to deny YouTube $1000 annually for it to be affecting their revenue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You are right! I used to hate on sponsors but now I understand that they are way better than targeted ads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.