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Honestly, I do not understand why one should use this. I have recently seen some high quality YT videos, each of a length of 30-60 minutes. In those videos wher

by micw 3y ago

Honestly, I do not understand why one should use this. I have recently seen some high quality YT videos, each of a length of 30-60 minutes. In those videos where some sponsors mentioned which took only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me to support the creators. I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of vids will die.

Bishonen88 3y ago
So what are we paying premium for if the creator pushes their own ads? Anyhow, when I was watching TV year's ago, I hardly ever stayed on a channel during the ads break. I won't sacrifice my time being sold on mostly rubbish which I wouldn't buy anyway (vpn, brilliant etc.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ndriscoll 3y ago
I see two scenarios: 1. The computer doesn't know whether you skipped the ad, and won't feel bad when you do. 2. The computer does track whether you watch the ad segment, and that information makes it back to the advertiser. Personally, I wouldn't want to support "creators" spying on me in this way. In either case, the creator has no costs for you watching, and youtube has lower costs if you skip the sponsored segment. If you choose not to watch the video in the first place, it can only hurt their sponsorship.
- gsich 3y ago
  At least for Youtube the 2nd statement is true. You can see it in videos with the spike after an ad segment.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > In either case, the creator has no costs for you watching, and youtube has lower costs if you skip the sponsored segment. I'm pretty sure the youtuber gets money from google for views even if you don't view their sponsored content section (if someone knows better please let me know) and Google makes money by collecting data on what you watch, how often, when, using what device, from what IP address, etc.
endisneigh 3y ago
People want content without any inconvenience, it’s that simple. If they use ads they will block. If they ask for payment they will pirate. Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no content to begin with
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > If they ask for payment they will pirate. If the price & convenience is right, a significant chunk (enough to offset the impact of freeloaders) will pay. Movie piracy used to be the norm before Netflix came along, yet movies were still made. Music piracy was the same until Spotify came along, yet there's more music than ever being produced.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no content to begin with The vast majority of people do not pirate, and most people who pay would probably find piracy unethical to begin with.
    - southerntofu 3y ago
      > The vast majority of people do not pirate I would be happy to see a serious study about this. What you call piracy has been the norm for centuries and millenia for spreading culture and reinterpreting music/shows produced by other people. In the vast majority of the world (including in the global north), the budget you have for culture is low (if any) and when you have people with a computer, copying stuff is very common. For example El Paquete in Cuba was well documented, but even growing up in France i remember so many examples of just sharing with friends (before the Internet but still). Even for the newer generations, Youtube & Spotify started as pirate services hosting a myriad of copyrighted content. I don't know about Spotify, but i still see people watching whole movies/shows pirated on Youtube rather often when going to places with shared computers. Sharing is the norm. Restricting sharing is delusional desire for control. Still, it's important that people making art & science make a living, although it's not just them who need to make a living in this crazy world and we'd be all better off with UBI or abolition of private property (one can dream). So you may find it interesting that HADOPI, the law that criminalized non-profit file-sharing in France actually ordered a study on piracy and media consumption back in the early 2010s, and their own study acknowledged that there was no economic loss from piracy (as people don't reduce their budget due to pirating) and the bigger pirates were also the bigger buyers. I dare you to find a single person who "does not pirate" in any sense of the world and actively respects copyright laws. If only, someone who doesn't sing "happy birthday" song because that's actually copyright infringement. Or doesn't watch music videos on Youtube because they might be pirated. I bet that person doesn't exist, or at least that they are not the "vast majority".
mcpackieh 3y ago
Besides skipping sponsor segments, it has many other useful features such as marking/skipping intros and outros, filler/jokes, and marking the timestamp of the video highlight which is useful if you want to skip 20 minutes of filler and jump to the part the thumbnail promises.
Nextgrid 3y ago
If you watch YouTube enough you'll basically become aware of all the sponsors pretty quickly (and may even be a customer of some already!), so any exposure beyond that is a waste of time for all involved - if I didn't buy the product after seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th either.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >if I didn't buy the product after seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th either. There is still value to the sponser in keeping a brand fresh in your mind
  - smegsicle 3y ago
    well then fuckem
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Oh I'm so sorry, in that case I'll watch every single NordVPN sponsorship spot.
  - SkipperTool 3y ago
    People forget that over-advertising can be more damaging than no- or under-advertising. Take Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile. I genuinely love his acting (to each their own for sure) but after being constantly bombarded with commercials for Mint Mobile, I legitimately am tired and lately avoid not just him, but Mint Mobile, Ryan Reynolds, and anything associated with him. The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to care about what they are doing when any reasonable user can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad content.
    - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
      > The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to care about what they are doing when any reasonable user can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad content. From what I heard, Google’s sells ad space via an auction system. They collect information about a viewer then when said viewer watches a video/visits a website, all the ad space on the video/website goes on auction with the viewer’s characteristics attached in real time. Advertisers will look at the viewer characteristics and decide if they want to bid. The winner of the auction gets the ad spot and has their ad shown. All this is of course fully automated and over in just a few milliseconds. What this means is, advertisers have full control over what ads you get. Ad space goes to the highest bidder. If you have money, you can spam a specific demographic to death with your ads. Google does not in anyway try to protect the quality of life of its users. Google’s system is both amazing and disappointing at the same time. It’s an amazingly efficient way to maximize the value of ad space but disappointing in the Google doesn’t do any kind of advance user behavior modeling to see what ads the user would be most receptive to (i.e. would not frustrate the user, high probability of engagement with what’s advertised, …) instead they leave it to the “free market” (i.e. the advertisers) to figure that out.
bozhark 3y ago
This kind of sponsor*
trolan 3y ago
Sponsorblock can also skip theme songs, recaps, and other parts of content you may not want. I also enjoy being able to show my children certain content from regular YouTube without having them subjected to the ads or me scrolling around.
londons_explore 3y ago
Try using sponsorblock for a few weeks and then report back... I think it's one of those things like shoes... Nobody thinks they need shoes till they try them, and then they tend to wear them all the time.
posterboy 3y ago
it'll lead to more hidden advertisement
poink 3y ago
If you’re not going to buy the sponsored product you’re just wasting time and bandwidth by watching the sponsor segment
happytiger 3y ago
Really? They will die? Are you suggesting that long form video didn’t exist before YouTube sponsors? Innovation requires disruption, which requires competition, which YouTube has none of. If you want long form video content to survive in the medium to long term it needs to be possible to make a living in a diversity of ways and not be dependent on just one provider. So in that sense supporting the existing system only serves to reinforce the failure of long form content, as eventually a system without substantial competition will move to reduce cost and eventually focus only on the more profitable short form content (which is what’s happening). The current war between YouTube and its users wouldn’t be possible if there were any viable alternatives at all. I would think if you really cared about long form creators you’d support platforms that paid properly and didn’t keep 45% of their revenues. Even Apple only keeps 30% and they get deeply criticized, but whenever YouTube comes up people come out defend them. And all of this happens before subscription revenue, and it doesn’t include any of the other revenue Google takes off the top like landing page ads, sponsored promotion, etc. Long form is in danger because of YouTube’s shift towards short form video. We should be pushing for competitors and not allowing them this insanely dominant position to an entire Internet content type.
- darkwater 3y ago
  Are you saying that YT takes 45% of the money a YouTuber negotiates directly with a sponsor to talk about them for 1-2 minutes in a long-form video?
pretzel5297 3y ago
I have it configured to not skip ads on a few creators who: 1- Makes good, useful content that I watch often. 2- Doesn't abuse sponsorship sections. Sponsor segment at the beginning of a video? Auto-skip. Half the video is about the sponsor? Auto-skip. Constantly gets sponsorship from spam/fraudy/irrelevant companies? Auto-skip. For all the channels that doesn't fall into these categories: tough luck.
nfriedly 3y ago
Despite the name, it actually blocks a lot more than just sponsors. It can be set to automatically skip intros, outros, recaps, like and subscribe reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other "fluff". It significantly boosts the signal to noise ratio, and makes YouTube a much better experience.
- deadfece 3y ago
  That sounds very useful on the non-ad improvements, and oddly enough I might try it for these areas. The sponsor mentions don't really bother me and I just skip them if they're not relevant. Sometimes it's kind of neat to see one and think "Oh, this creator got sponsored by <big deal tech product>, that's cool, get paid!", or if they're sponsored by bs snake oil companies, then I may discount the creator's input a great deal on account of them not having any discernment. It's a small data point about the content, so it can sometimes be helpful if I'm trying to decide who to pick amongst forty different 2hr lectures on the same thing.
  - crashmat 3y ago
    Maybe they accept the bs snake oil sponsorships because they need the money and assume their audience is smart enough to not get tricked.
ropable 3y ago
The human ability to rationalise blocking out sponsored advertising is basically infinite.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Why would people watch things they don’t like?
- ekianjo 3y ago
  The human ability to justify ads is apparently also infinite but has much less valid arguments
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> I do not understand why one should use this. Because we don't want to be advertised to. There is no need for any further justification. > I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of vids will die. Let them die.
dawidpotocki 3y ago
On my laptop alone SponsorBlock has skipped 5225 segments, which equals to 1d 20h. That's a lot of time I would waste by watching all of these. Also, if you are fine with sponsor spots, you probably would have to also be okay with watching ads, so no adblocking either then.
ekianjo 3y ago
> In those videos where some sponsors mentioned which took only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me to support the creators. There is no good reason to force ads on anyone. I dont care if the creator needs to make a living out of youtube. Thats their problem and they should use stuff like patreon instead.
capybara_2020 3y ago
In most cases sponsored content has the same problem as traditional ads but because it is coming directly from someone people see as more reliable viewers might fall for it quicker. With the added disadvantage of those ads having no real regulation and opaque quality checks, if any by the creator. One example that comes to mind is how a lot of financial creators pushed crypto products.
Roark66 3y ago
I really don't care about sponsor block (I mean I don't mind these parts of the videos), but adblock on YouTube is absolutely essential. And these apps usually when they have adblocl this includes sponsor block.
adrusi 3y ago
I do not understand why one should use this I don't care to sit through sponsor reads, nothing more to it than that. When I'm viewing on a client that doesn't support sponsorblock, I'll manually seek to the end of the segment. Supporting the creator is great; I pay for YouTube Premium, though thanks to uBlock Origin I wouldn't see the add if even if I stopped paying. To a couple creators, I send a regular donation. If I could spend another $10/mo to make up for any revenue my sponsorblock usage loses other creators, I'd do that, but I'm less enthusiastic about regularly listening to sales pitches for the same products over and over again. Also: I'm not sure how common it is for YouTube sponsorship contracts to have payment contingent on the view count for the section of the video with the sponsored segment, and I'm not sure if the way sponsorblock skips such segments is visible to YouTube's analytics. With at least some of the most prolific sponsors of creators I watch (Audible, Brilliant, etc) the payout is based on how many viewers sign up for a trial through the affiliate link. And YouTube has no incentive to make it easy for creators to share their detailed analytics with third-party sponsors, since independent sponsorships cut YouTube out of the deal. YouTube would prefer creators replace their independent sponsor reads with mid-roll ads.
Funes- 3y ago
>I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of vids will die. Then so be it. I miss when people uploaded videos for the sake of it, not to make money by way of exploiting the users' cognitive vulnerabilities. I remember the days when I could search for a video on how to replace my dirt bike's carburetor and it was less than two minutes, didn't include any ads, and was straight to the point, all first person POV; you wouldn't even see the guy's face. Nobody was trying to get rich off it. It was all about sharing it with other people.

by micw 3y ago

Bishonen88 3y ago

So what are we paying premium for if the creator pushes their own ads? Anyhow, when I was watching TV year's ago, I hardly ever stayed on a channel during the ads break. I won't sacrifice my time being sold on mostly rubbish which I wouldn't buy anyway (vpn, brilliant etc.)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ndriscoll 3y ago

I see two scenarios: 1. The computer doesn't know whether you skipped the ad, and won't feel bad when you do. 2. The computer does track whether you watch the ad segment, and that information makes it back to the advertiser. Personally, I wouldn't want to support "creators" spying on me in this way. In either case, the creator has no costs for you watching, and youtube has lower costs if you skip the sponsored segment. If you choose not to watch the video in the first place, it can only hurt their sponsorship.

gsich 3y ago
At least for Youtube the 2nd statement is true. You can see it in videos with the spike after an ad segment.
autoexec 3y ago
> In either case, the creator has no costs for you watching, and youtube has lower costs if you skip the sponsored segment. I'm pretty sure the youtuber gets money from google for views even if you don't view their sponsored content section (if someone knows better please let me know) and Google makes money by collecting data on what you watch, how often, when, using what device, from what IP address, etc.

endisneigh 3y ago

People want content without any inconvenience, it’s that simple. If they use ads they will block. If they ask for payment they will pirate. Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no content to begin with

Nextgrid 3y ago
> If they ask for payment they will pirate. If the price & convenience is right, a significant chunk (enough to offset the impact of freeloaders) will pay. Movie piracy used to be the norm before Netflix came along, yet movies were still made. Music piracy was the same until Spotify came along, yet there's more music than ever being produced.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no content to begin with The vast majority of people do not pirate, and most people who pay would probably find piracy unethical to begin with.
  - southerntofu 3y ago
    > The vast majority of people do not pirate I would be happy to see a serious study about this. What you call piracy has been the norm for centuries and millenia for spreading culture and reinterpreting music/shows produced by other people. In the vast majority of the world (including in the global north), the budget you have for culture is low (if any) and when you have people with a computer, copying stuff is very common. For example El Paquete in Cuba was well documented, but even growing up in France i remember so many examples of just sharing with friends (before the Internet but still). Even for the newer generations, Youtube & Spotify started as pirate services hosting a myriad of copyrighted content. I don't know about Spotify, but i still see people watching whole movies/shows pirated on Youtube rather often when going to places with shared computers. Sharing is the norm. Restricting sharing is delusional desire for control. Still, it's important that people making art & science make a living, although it's not just them who need to make a living in this crazy world and we'd be all better off with UBI or abolition of private property (one can dream). So you may find it interesting that HADOPI, the law that criminalized non-profit file-sharing in France actually ordered a study on piracy and media consumption back in the early 2010s, and their own study acknowledged that there was no economic loss from piracy (as people don't reduce their budget due to pirating) and the bigger pirates were also the bigger buyers. I dare you to find a single person who "does not pirate" in any sense of the world and actively respects copyright laws. If only, someone who doesn't sing "happy birthday" song because that's actually copyright infringement. Or doesn't watch music videos on Youtube because they might be pirated. I bet that person doesn't exist, or at least that they are not the "vast majority".

mcpackieh 3y ago

Besides skipping sponsor segments, it has many other useful features such as marking/skipping intros and outros, filler/jokes, and marking the timestamp of the video highlight which is useful if you want to skip 20 minutes of filler and jump to the part the thumbnail promises.

Nextgrid 3y ago

If you watch YouTube enough you'll basically become aware of all the sponsors pretty quickly (and may even be a customer of some already!), so any exposure beyond that is a waste of time for all involved - if I didn't buy the product after seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th either.

charcircuit 3y ago
>if I didn't buy the product after seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th either. There is still value to the sponser in keeping a brand fresh in your mind
- smegsicle 3y ago
  well then fuckem
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Oh I'm so sorry, in that case I'll watch every single NordVPN sponsorship spot.
- SkipperTool 3y ago
  People forget that over-advertising can be more damaging than no- or under-advertising. Take Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile. I genuinely love his acting (to each their own for sure) but after being constantly bombarded with commercials for Mint Mobile, I legitimately am tired and lately avoid not just him, but Mint Mobile, Ryan Reynolds, and anything associated with him. The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to care about what they are doing when any reasonable user can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad content.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    > The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to care about what they are doing when any reasonable user can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad content. From what I heard, Google’s sells ad space via an auction system. They collect information about a viewer then when said viewer watches a video/visits a website, all the ad space on the video/website goes on auction with the viewer’s characteristics attached in real time. Advertisers will look at the viewer characteristics and decide if they want to bid. The winner of the auction gets the ad spot and has their ad shown. All this is of course fully automated and over in just a few milliseconds. What this means is, advertisers have full control over what ads you get. Ad space goes to the highest bidder. If you have money, you can spam a specific demographic to death with your ads. Google does not in anyway try to protect the quality of life of its users. Google’s system is both amazing and disappointing at the same time. It’s an amazingly efficient way to maximize the value of ad space but disappointing in the Google doesn’t do any kind of advance user behavior modeling to see what ads the user would be most receptive to (i.e. would not frustrate the user, high probability of engagement with what’s advertised, …) instead they leave it to the “free market” (i.e. the advertisers) to figure that out.

bozhark 3y ago

This kind of sponsor*

trolan 3y ago

Sponsorblock can also skip theme songs, recaps, and other parts of content you may not want. I also enjoy being able to show my children certain content from regular YouTube without having them subjected to the ads or me scrolling around.

londons_explore 3y ago

Try using sponsorblock for a few weeks and then report back... I think it's one of those things like shoes... Nobody thinks they need shoes till they try them, and then they tend to wear them all the time.

posterboy 3y ago

it'll lead to more hidden advertisement

poink 3y ago

If you’re not going to buy the sponsored product you’re just wasting time and bandwidth by watching the sponsor segment

happytiger 3y ago

Really? They will die? Are you suggesting that long form video didn’t exist before YouTube sponsors? Innovation requires disruption, which requires competition, which YouTube has none of. If you want long form video content to survive in the medium to long term it needs to be possible to make a living in a diversity of ways and not be dependent on just one provider. So in that sense supporting the existing system only serves to reinforce the failure of long form content, as eventually a system without substantial competition will move to reduce cost and eventually focus only on the more profitable short form content (which is what’s happening). The current war between YouTube and its users wouldn’t be possible if there were any viable alternatives at all. I would think if you really cared about long form creators you’d support platforms that paid properly and didn’t keep 45% of their revenues. Even Apple only keeps 30% and they get deeply criticized, but whenever YouTube comes up people come out defend them. And all of this happens before subscription revenue, and it doesn’t include any of the other revenue Google takes off the top like landing page ads, sponsored promotion, etc. Long form is in danger because of YouTube’s shift towards short form video. We should be pushing for competitors and not allowing them this insanely dominant position to an entire Internet content type.

darkwater 3y ago
Are you saying that YT takes 45% of the money a YouTuber negotiates directly with a sponsor to talk about them for 1-2 minutes in a long-form video?

pretzel5297 3y ago

I have it configured to not skip ads on a few creators who: 1- Makes good, useful content that I watch often. 2- Doesn't abuse sponsorship sections. Sponsor segment at the beginning of a video? Auto-skip. Half the video is about the sponsor? Auto-skip. Constantly gets sponsorship from spam/fraudy/irrelevant companies? Auto-skip. For all the channels that doesn't fall into these categories: tough luck.

nfriedly 3y ago

Despite the name, it actually blocks a lot more than just sponsors. It can be set to automatically skip intros, outros, recaps, like and subscribe reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other "fluff". It significantly boosts the signal to noise ratio, and makes YouTube a much better experience.

deadfece 3y ago
That sounds very useful on the non-ad improvements, and oddly enough I might try it for these areas. The sponsor mentions don't really bother me and I just skip them if they're not relevant. Sometimes it's kind of neat to see one and think "Oh, this creator got sponsored by <big deal tech product>, that's cool, get paid!", or if they're sponsored by bs snake oil companies, then I may discount the creator's input a great deal on account of them not having any discernment. It's a small data point about the content, so it can sometimes be helpful if I'm trying to decide who to pick amongst forty different 2hr lectures on the same thing.
- crashmat 3y ago
  Maybe they accept the bs snake oil sponsorships because they need the money and assume their audience is smart enough to not get tricked.

ropable 3y ago

The human ability to rationalise blocking out sponsored advertising is basically infinite.

skydhash 3y ago
Why would people watch things they don’t like?
ekianjo 3y ago
The human ability to justify ads is apparently also infinite but has much less valid arguments

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> I do not understand why one should use this. Because we don't want to be advertised to. There is no need for any further justification. > I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of vids will die. Let them die.

dawidpotocki 3y ago

On my laptop alone SponsorBlock has skipped 5225 segments, which equals to 1d 20h. That's a lot of time I would waste by watching all of these. Also, if you are fine with sponsor spots, you probably would have to also be okay with watching ads, so no adblocking either then.

ekianjo 3y ago

> In those videos where some sponsors mentioned which took only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me to support the creators. There is no good reason to force ads on anyone. I dont care if the creator needs to make a living out of youtube. Thats their problem and they should use stuff like patreon instead.

capybara_2020 3y ago

In most cases sponsored content has the same problem as traditional ads but because it is coming directly from someone people see as more reliable viewers might fall for it quicker. With the added disadvantage of those ads having no real regulation and opaque quality checks, if any by the creator. One example that comes to mind is how a lot of financial creators pushed crypto products.

Roark66 3y ago

I really don't care about sponsor block (I mean I don't mind these parts of the videos), but adblock on YouTube is absolutely essential. And these apps usually when they have adblocl this includes sponsor block.

adrusi 3y ago

I do not understand why one should use this I don't care to sit through sponsor reads, nothing more to it than that. When I'm viewing on a client that doesn't support sponsorblock, I'll manually seek to the end of the segment. Supporting the creator is great; I pay for YouTube Premium, though thanks to uBlock Origin I wouldn't see the add if even if I stopped paying. To a couple creators, I send a regular donation. If I could spend another $10/mo to make up for any revenue my sponsorblock usage loses other creators, I'd do that, but I'm less enthusiastic about regularly listening to sales pitches for the same products over and over again. Also: I'm not sure how common it is for YouTube sponsorship contracts to have payment contingent on the view count for the section of the video with the sponsored segment, and I'm not sure if the way sponsorblock skips such segments is visible to YouTube's analytics. With at least some of the most prolific sponsors of creators I watch (Audible, Brilliant, etc) the payout is based on how many viewers sign up for a trial through the affiliate link. And YouTube has no incentive to make it easy for creators to share their detailed analytics with third-party sponsors, since independent sponsorships cut YouTube out of the deal. YouTube would prefer creators replace their independent sponsor reads with mid-roll ads.

Funes- 3y ago

>I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of vids will die. Then so be it. I miss when people uploaded videos for the sake of it, not to make money by way of exploiting the users' cognitive vulnerabilities. I remember the days when I could search for a video on how to replace my dirt bike's carburetor and it was less than two minutes, didn't include any ads, and was straight to the point, all first person POV; you wouldn't even see the guy's face. Nobody was trying to get rich off it. It was all about sharing it with other people.