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”?
Seems to me an overreaction to complain about a single checkbox suggesting that people who make YouTube videos make actual money from sponsorships where ads get them jack shit. They added Sponsorblock but just have a one-time warning, is that really big of a deal? It’s informational, and if you don’t like it, ignore it and move on with your day.
If they were more insistent like a popup every time you used it I could see getting upset about it.
Before getting Sponsorblock, I would always manually skip forward past the integrated advertisements. This tool does the exact same thing but faster and more convenient for me. My conscience is unaffected
Outside of his right to repair work I find most anything Rossmann gets involved in is questionable. He is a good example of someone that got popular for something they cared about and knew something about, then mistakenly got the idea that success meant they had valid opinions on other things they know nothing about.
Rossmann knows about laptop hardware repair and running a small business. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into being a knowledgeable voice in the software dev or large scale digital advertising industries.
He is just a mouthpiece for the company behind Greyjay, nothing more.
In case anyone is wondering, here is the “shaming” that is done in the app. (images attached)
You’re not being shamed anywhere in this text. You are being presented factual information. Any shame that you feel as a result of being faced with information is pretty much entirely on you.
I have no qualms turning on sponsorblock and adblockers, I support the creators that I enjoy via other means.
If you are taking issue with the “don’t freeload” then I guess you perhaps feel bad being told that you’re freeloading? I won’t pretend to know what’s going on in your own brain. But you’re posting this in a piracy community so I don’t imagine it should be any surprise to you that you’re freeloading, lol. If ye choose to sail the seas, do it with pride, me hearty. And support small businesses, yarr.
Blocking YouTube’s advertising is necessary for privacy, and it punishes YouTube for their bad business practices.
But sponsors aren’t underhanded like that and I feel like they’re the type of thing we should really be promoting as an alternative to privacy invading ads, and hopefully a way for creators to move off of YouTube eventually.
A lot of sponsors are very exploitative companies in their own right, and I don’t owe them my time or attention.
The point is that YouTubers pay for that with their own reputation, if I followed a YouTuber that promoted exploitative companies I would stop following that YouTuber - why would you want to watch their content anyway?
I’m confused about your stance on ReVanced. It’s about as open-source as you can get https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches
With ReVanced there is a core underlying app being patched which is not OSS. With GrayJay, the source of the whole thing is source-available
I understand that and wouldn’t have commented if you said that. Instead you said that, quote, ReVanced, end quote, is not open source.
My understanding is that it literally can’t be used in an open fashion since it critically requires a proprietary closed base.
Some source code is available but the entire thing is not open source.
I think you guys are just discussing semantics. Revanced as a project is the patches themselves, so Revanced is open source. But a YouTube app patched with the Revanced patches is not.
That’s a better way to frame it.
The patch is ‘about as open source as you can get’ but the actual application is far from it.
Exactly. Could have just said YouTube is closed source from the start when ReVanced is 100% open-source.
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.
They don’t respect my attention and time, thought
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
Shit, I didn’t realize the only way some people can eat is by making Youtube videos.
Shit, I didn’t realize there were 48 hours in a day.
Sorry, you’re right. Creators should work their 9-5 and then spend another 8 hours a day making videos for us out of the goodness of their hearts. I now think it’s disgusting that these people try to monetize their hard work
I think it’s ironic that the argument is both “sponsor segments don’t respect my time!” AND “I have no respect for the time of the creators”
Nobody needs YouTube videos nor is anyone compelled to make them. I’m guessing you don’t remember when YouTube was completely free and people just made videos for fun?
Now people quit jobs that support them to do something fun and try to make monry off that. Which is fine, but we’re not required to support their hobby. Stop acting like people have no other option in their life except to make reaction videos, video essays, meme compilations, etc.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I was kind of dissapointed when I read the new pipe team was having an issue with sponsor block, but tbh their reasoning makes a lot of sense:
https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/newpipe-and-online-advertising/
And even thought I am using the sponsor block fork now I only skip the non-music part in music videos, because I do agree that creators have to make money somehow. And while I don’t love ads most of the time (sometimes they are really well made) my main issue with ads on Youtube/the wider Internet is how intrusive they are and them not respecting my privacy.
If you really want to support someone on YouTube something like patreon is the way to go. Sponsored videos are life draining and a lot of extra work for paultry pay. But a legion of patreon subscribers can set someone up for a comfortable income from actually making things you want to see.
Depends on a sponsor. Some sponsors can pay crap loads of money to a big creator.
I may be wrong but from what I’ve heard from some “small” content creator on YouTube the money from the sponsored talks in their video is a much bigger part of their income than money from youtube coming from the YouTube-selected ads that play before/during the video.
Also, this part do not give any money to YouTube and do not use/collect any data on you.
How would anybody confirm whether the sponsor ads are being watched or not?
I believe YouTube provides analytics on this to the creator which may be shared with a potential sponsor before a deal is made.
The point remains, all Sponsorblock does is skip the video ahead. Something most rational people do anyway even without the extension. And creators to my knowledge don’t get paid based on the number of views their sponsored sections get.
They do and they don’t.
I am not aware of any creators who get sponsorships paid in impressions. Albeit, I don’t really talk to anyone who goes hard on tiktok or instagram so there is that.
But it is not at all uncommon for a sponsorship deal to include some metrics. They want to know retention rate, how often people skip past your sponsor bits, etc. And youtube DOES record that. Many videos will have a little chart if you mouse over the tracking bar that shows the most rewatched portions.
And if you can demonstrate that people tend to actually watch your sponsored segments? You often can get a MUCH bigger check. Its why a lot of mid-tier creators will do a skit for their sponsored segment. And why the really big ones completely phone it in because they know the vast majority of their watches are people who can’t go to sleep without having Ninja talk about how he can’t be around women who aren’t his wife.
Just use the NewPipe + Sponsorblock fork.
I don’t think newpipe works with recommendations or leaving comments does it?
Commenting on YouTube? Gross.
I do too and I’ve been wondering why we would need anything else 👍
