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SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

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Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#51

Post by rPlayer6554 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #34
rPlayer6554 wrote: post #2

I understand people don't like ads, but at some point doesn't someone have to pay creators for content? This feels just like stealing: I don't know how you can justify it: sponsor spots don't track you and they don't slow down your computer. Yes they are a minor inconvenience but they make the content you watch possible.

The problem with sponsor spots is that they're the same every single video, there's just not enough diversity on the market. Is it bad to be skipping a sponsor segment because you've seen it dozens of times? Is it bad if you're already a happy user of the advertised product? Etc.

I don't think manual skipping is bad. If you take the time to manually skip you probably weren't going to buy the product anyways. It's automatic skipping that I have an issue with. It doesn't give the creator even a chance to pitch the product and their affiliate code (which makes them money)

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#52

Post by Raed667 »

jasode wrote: post #49
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not stealing because the creators will get paid anyway. Second, said creators have minimal expenses because YT pays for the hosting. Third, ad and sponsorship blocking represents only a small fraction of users. It's a fraction to, say, people sharing their netflix account.

>It's not stealing because the creators will get paid anyway. This isn't always true. As several sibling comments already mentioned, this "native advertising" of embedded sponsor spot via the Youtube personality as spokesperson -- is often "paid based on performance" which means the affiliate url links mentioned in the ad are measured for clicks resulting in new customers . I'm not commenting on morals of using a plu…

I would have never clicked on an affiliate link. So no harm done by that logic.

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#53

Post by soganess »

It is great to see this getting more traction!

To the larger discussion brewing: I honestly don't understand all the pushback on here. Why should I have any type of moral imperative to support revenue streams I find bad for the industry/society/brains? Simply because the creator decided it was the right choice? People decide things I disagree with all the time, if I have I the power to choose differently, I do. Not liking that I reversed a video creator's choice is one thing, but the accusations of theft (or general moral failings) are another.

Truthfully, if I had the power to make baked-in adverts unprofitable for all Youtube/podcasts/whatever, I would. If anything, I feel some obligation to keep ads out of as many spaces as I can. There are lots of way to make money, selling viewer's eyeballs/ears to the ad industry doesn't have to be the default one and shouldn't be protected like some deep creative choice.

Of course, I want my favorite creator to make money; people have to eat. Alternative sources, such as asking for patroonships or donations, I'm amenable to. I even support a couple smaller channels I think make special content. Unlike baked-in ads, donations are non-compulsory and in my control.

At a more base level, you don't get my eyeballs without my computer, internet, etc. I have a stake in viewership and I choose to modulate what is in my control. If that modulation offends the creator, they do not have to allow it and I will stop watching, but that (currently) means taking their content off mainstream (vs premium) YouTube and lowering viewership. I generally pay for content, but even if I didn't, I can't imagine going out of my way to pirate videos of people fixing old C64s (something I genuinely enjoy).

Morality is complicated.

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#54

Post by eska »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #2

I understand people don't like ads, but at some point doesn't someone have to pay creators for content? This feels just like stealing: I don't know how you can justify it: sponsor spots don't track you and they don't slow down your computer. Yes they are a minor inconvenience but they make the content you watch possible.

I watched a video by a successful streamer giving advice to new streamers on how to build a career in that industry. He said that all these ads and partner programs aren't even worth it, unless you're one of the top 1%. The pay is relatively low (the platform takes a large cut) and you often have to sign over exclusive rights. He said that donations (using external services) and most importantly Patreon are the best way to go. So I just block all ads and sponsor segments, and donate a few bucks here or there.

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#55

Post by dredmorbius »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #2

I understand people don't like ads, but at some point doesn't someone have to pay creators for content? This feels just like stealing: I don't know how you can justify it: sponsor spots don't track you and they don't slow down your computer. Yes they are a minor inconvenience but they make the content you watch possible.

It's an error to see "ads or creators don't get paid" as the only option here.

OECD per-capita spend on all publishing runs about $100/person, roughly the same as per-capita ads spend within the same countries, itself a tax of sorts.

A natural gateway exists --- not a perfect one, but good enough at the level of the ISP provider.

Aggregation, not disintegrations, is the general trend in payment systems. Both buyers and sellers benefit from predictable flows, income or revenues.

Regionally-pro-rated payments allocate costs according to ability to pay, which for information goods is a net social benefit.

Rolling an information access fee into fixed line and mobile internet service, with an indexing of content accessed and a tier-and-bid based reimbursement schedule for publishers, seems to me the most viable path forward to something vaguely resembling a content tax, without actually going through a content tax mechanism. It would ensure universal access to readers and the public, compensation for creators, and the ability for those actually engaged in the process of creating new works to access the materials they need, legally and lawfully, answering in part the "why should I pay for information I don't use" objection: the inforation you do use is itself predicated on information you don't access directly yourself. The other answer to this rather tired objection is that you live in the world created by information access or denial of access, and in general, access to high-quality, relevant, useful information should be a net positive.

I'd proposed this years ago (and many others have similar suggestions), though noting ISPs as a logical collection tollgate is a new realisation.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#56

Post by dang »

Past related threads:

Show HN: SponsorBlock – Skip YouTube Sponsorships, Intros, Outros and More - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23533858 - June 2020 (2 comments)

An open-source browser extension to auto-skip sponsored segments on YouTube - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743196 - Dec 2019 (101 comments)

Show HN: SponsorBlock – Skip sponsorship segments of YouTube videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778926 - Aug 2019 (137 comments)

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#57

Post by antiterra »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #18
vages wrote: post #9

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…

Advertising 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.

That 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.”

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#58

Post by zeta0134 »

vages wrote: post #9

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…

Personally, 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.

Re: SponsorBlock – Skip over sponsorship segments on YouTube

#60

Post by Jack000 »

- the more people that use adblock/sponsor block, the less effective ads are in general (lower advertiser ROI for each ad)

- if ROI for ads drop, ad sellers (eg. youtubers) have to reduce the price charged to advertisers

- given that ad budgets are more or less constant (companies will always need to reach customers) there will simply be more ads, since each ad view is now worth less.

- if ads become completely ineffective (eg. reddit) ads will simply become disguised as content to get past people's filter (aka content marketing, submarine articles etc)

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