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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
by vages 5y ago
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?
- donw 5y agoI 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.
- Mindwipe 5y agoThat is literally how YouTube Premium works today, but people seem to feel entitled to watch without paying any money and blocking the ads.
- franciscop 5y agoWill the sponsored bits be skipped if you pay for Youtube Premium? Or would you get to both pay AND be shown the sponsored segments?
- axiosgunnar 5y agoGreat question and we all know the answer.
- Nextgrid 5y agoI 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.
- throwaway3699 5y agoSo, basically, ads are more private than subscriptions?
- Nextgrid 5y agoWhen 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.
- donw 5y agoMaybe. 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880582
- anoncake 5y agoOf 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.
- cyborgx7 5y agoAdvertising 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.
- antiterra 5y agoThat 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.”
- ddevault 5y agoCorrect.
- tittenfick 5y agoI fully agree with that statement.
- intergalplan 5y agoYes. 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?
- rychco 5y agoYes that’s exactly how I feel.
- ccsnags 5y agoIt’s more like “if a content creator doesn’t use multiple revenue streams, they don’t deserve the money they left on the table”
- hi_im_miles 5y agoNot 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.
- ThatPlayer 5y agoPersonally 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.
- DeusExMachina 5y agoThey 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.
- throwaway3699 5y agoI 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.
- ThatPlayer 5y agoYouTube 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
- throwaway3699 5y agoWhat I mean is, it's entirely possible for sponsors to ask for channel data.
- Mindwipe 5y ago> As for in-video sponsor segments, I doubt the actual sponsors get any analytics about when they're skipped or not. LOLLLLL
- spockz 5y agoDoes YouTube share a part of your premium/fee to the creators based on what you watched? That is actually pretty neat.
- Mindwipe 5y agoUltimately there's only one inevitable consequence of this - YouTube will move to using Widevine on all YouTube streams to stop it happening.
- Nextgrid 5y agoAs 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.
- spockz 5y agoWell 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?
- ajayyy 5y agoSponsorBlock would work fine with Widevine. In fact, I am planning on expanding it to some other sites that have DRM.
- Nextgrid 5y ago> 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoAds 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.
- chii 5y agothe 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.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoBy 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.
- zeta0134 5y agoPersonally, 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.
- qshaman 5y agoI 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.
- spockz 5y agoI 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.
- qshaman 5y ago> 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?
- MiddleEndian 5y ago>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.
- gsich 5y agoDoes Youtube track if I skip the ad segment? Or better: do the uploaders know how many users saw the ad?
- t0mbstone 5y agoI 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!
- perryizgr8 5y agoHonestly, 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.
- moogly 5y agoDoesn'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.