Louis Rossman/FUTO's YouTube app, GrayJay, now supports Sponsorblock... and shames you if you use it
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"?
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.
In that case it won't matter to anyone that I skipped them.
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.
My man Windscribe always forgotten about
Localscriptman also does really creative ones.
And Some More News
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
They don't respect my attention and time, thought
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.
And show it to millions of people... So per capita... I put in more time then they did.
Apologies. You are the true hero. Thank you for your service
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.
Then they fucked up.
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.
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
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"
Yeah, I see video monetization as running on a similar model to that of free to play games. The majority of people either don't make you any money or only very little money, but they boost your engagement and popularity metrics so that you get more 'whales' that do things like donating on Patreon, choosing to watch sponsors and use affiliate codes, and buying merch.
Ads are only the worth the actual amount of business they generate. I know that a lot of people don't realize that even if they never intentionally buy something from an ad, the familiarity of seeing things in an ad makes them more likely to pick it over something else down the line. However, this still only works if you have any disposable income and don't immediately hit mute, close your eyes, and count to 30 when an ad comes on. A lot of people using ad blockers would just devalue the ads themselves if they were forced to watch them. The people with the money just pay for Premium.
No people think everything should be free.
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.
If nobody needs them then why are they complaining? Just don't watch it. Your problem is solved!
Videos on YouTube are so much better than the era you're remembering. If nordvpn or whoever sponsoring videos is the way for creators to continue making great things on a regular schedule, I'm not gonna make a huff when they take a minute to acknowledge them. I skip most of them, too, but I'm not venting about what a terrible inconvenience it is.
And sorry for not specifying that I wasn't speaking about reaction videos and meme compilations when I said "high quality", I thought it that would be pretty damn clear but I guess we watch different things on YouTube
Stop acting like it's morally wrong to get paid for your work. If there's a market for it, why shouldn't people do it full time? Should Hollywood work for free, too?
Okay let's get this straight: No Ads. Ever. Period. Capisce?
Create, don't create, steal, don't steal, jerk off, don't jerk off - don't care. NO. ADS. THE END.
Seriously, this. Advetising based economy is hell. what's next? a punch in the face every 5 minutes of watching? And don't you dare cover your face, because the creators deserve compensation and punch-a-face insertion by big corporation is the only way they got!
Ok
It is.
I don't care for those, either.
I skipped over therlm for years before using sponsorblock anyway.
If that was their reasoning, they should say that rather than vaccuously claiming that it "harms creators"
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.
To paraphrase Norm MacDonald: the worst part is the hypocrisy 😅
"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.
Vaccumoulsy
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.
You are right! I used to hate on sponsors but now I understand that they are way better than targeted ads.
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.
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
Precisely! The sponsors have to be aware that some subset of the audiences watching the sponsorees will skip ahead anyway. They can't seriously believe that they are entitled to our attention.
They are aware of it I guess, but probably don't deal with the issue in an effective way.
There's a French channel I look at, they make sponsor sequences as well but I don't skip them because they make those in such a bizarre, ridiculous and remotely funny way I'm even curious to see how bad the sponsor sequence is gonna be.
They alone are the only reason why I set up my sponsorblock to not skip sponsor sequences, but to skip everything else
The Wadsworth Constant was a thing even from the earliest days of Youtube.
Shame is an artificial construct that I am choosing not to opt into. Thanks for letting us know that sponsorblock is in, I'm turning it on now.
Yeah I agree, I just thought it was funny... Not "haha funny" but a bit jarring
Shame is a mismatch between ego and ego-ideal, whereas guilt is a mismatch between ego and super-ego. The ego-ideal in shame does depend on social norms. But that is by no means “artificial”.
If I'm not buying the crap that sponsors them anyway then how does it affect the creator if I skip the section? I assume the success of the sponsor is based off referrals but again, I'm not buying their crap or using referral links.
Precisely. Basically every company that markets themselves using YouTube sponsorships is a scam anyway.
Nah, I watch a lot of videos about cars and most sponsors are legitimate businesses and some that I've bought from before.
VPNs and apps on the other hand...
I'm a big fan of my ridge wallet that I heard about through various YouTubers. I actually lost mine on a busy road and it got run over by a bunch of cars and when I relocated thanks to my tile tracker that I also heard about from YouTubers it was still perfectly fine other than some scratches. I swear I'm not sponsored lol .
Thing about those modern sleek more compact wallets just make me feel like I couldn’t use them because they wouldn’t fit every use case I have for my wallet. Like I guess if you only have a couple debit/credit cards plus ID and otherwise use like apple or android pay and I guess hardly ever or never use cash. I mean use in a typical everyday transaction, sure they can hold like folded up bills neatly but did everyone forget change exists? In every use of cash id have to stuff coins in some free pocket and a lot of circulating bills aren’t exactly as crisp and foldable as a stock certificate lol
I have 8 cards in mine and could probably fit another one or two . And have put a couple hundred dollars of 20s in my wallet. For change it mostly just goes in the center part of my car. Plus there is no Penny's since I'm in Canada. Lonnie's and quarters all go in my laundry change holder when I get home. So it works perfect for my usage atleast.
Yeah, VPNs, mobile games, subscription services...
But yeah, some smaller and more niche channels might advertise real useful products, but that's very much in the minority
Edit: FWIW I have bought exactly one product which I learned about from a YouTube sponsorship. It was a set of Sleephones I heard about from an ASMR maker. They've made a huge difference for my sleep and the company that makes them is pretty good about selling replacement parts
That's a bit of a blanket statement. The way people talk about ads and sponsorships makes it sound like you want the people making the videos you are watching to fail and stop making videos. Or do you contribute to the channels you watch another way to ensure they can keep making money ?
I use Patreon and Nebula yes. But I don't think creators should feel entitled to people watching the ad section of their videos. And advertisers shouldn't feel entitled to have their ads be seen.
Can already summarize the following conversation:
"I donate to patreons of creators I like so I refuse to watch ads"
"Okay. So you found the Patreon of the random dude who recorded himself swapping out a bathtub spout and made the single most useful video in human history?"
"I donate to patreons of creators I like so I refuse to watch ads"
"Also, I assume you only have a few in rotation. Does that mean you only watch videos by four or five creators and space them out?"
"I donate to patreons of creators I like so I refuse to watch ads"
It is no different than "If the game is worth buying, I'll buy it" back in the day. It is people who feel the need to ethically justify their piracy making up random and nonsensical conditions, that are often refuted by the creators themselves, as to why they can't even be bothered to alt tab out of a game to fast forward through learning that hello fresh have DISRUPTED tv dinners.
I will skip through sponsor spots if they are really long but I also have YouTube premium because I want to support the YouTubers that I watch alot without seeing ads . I'm just always surprised by the amount of people that will put a lot of effort into making sure they don't see any ads of any kind but will also refuse to pay anything .
Personally? I am excited for when one of these "alternate youtubes" start charging a fee. And people pay it
Like, fuck reddit for a lot of reasons. But I still find it completely insane that people were paying a third party to not view ads on reddit.
I bought sync for Reddit a few years ago but as a one time fee and it wasn't really to get rid of ads but to support the developer. I wouldn't pay a monthly fee . I have sync for Lemmy now but don't pay any fees because there was no one time fee option.
Sponsorblock simply jumps the video ahead automatically. If you're okay with doing it manually, you should have no objection to a simple labour-saving device in the form of a browser plugin
People are lazy and labor makes a big difference.
For example. There are some youtube channels with REALLY predatory and messed up sponsorships that I always skip. The videos are interesting enough, but I am not dealing with that. Thus, I'll watch them on a side monitor while I work but not while I play a video game.
Contrast that with other creators where I don't mind leaving the sponsor segment running.
And while I have never understood the rationale of it, I know there are a lot of people who will just leave a youtube playlist on while they go to sleep. Which... has potentials for subliminal advertising but also means the creator gets some free metrics saying their viewers don't skip ads.
What that ALSO means is that channels with better skits or less shitty sponsors get watched, whereas the worse don't. As opposed to everything getting skipped no matter what.
Jesus christ
Exactly, I wouldn’t be buying anything sponsored anyway, and I’d just skip ahead myself if SponsorBlock didn’t exist.
Same for me, and it's not even just about sponsors as there are many other categories. How does it help the creators to tell me for the umpteenth time to subscribe or something about a bell, when I don't even have a google account?
Sponsorblock is a wonder, I wouldn't watch certain channels without it anymore.
I think it depends on the deal they have made. If YouTubers only get paid when someone actually buys a product, then NordVPN pays cents to each Youtuber
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.
It's not a big deal, just something I thought was odd. I'm not gonna claim checking a box is ruining my life or anything.
Yeah. I use NewPipe myself just to be able to enjoy videos with my screen off, that Youtube has locked behind a subscription for no good reason.
That said Rossman is someone who sticks to his principles and the FUTO group is an extension of those principles. At heart he's a New York businessman so he knows that people need money to live, but he also isn't trying to stop people to do what they like with tech that they supposedly have purchased.
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.
Sponsorblock does not harm creators. Youtube has no method of detecting when a sponsored segment is skipped, so the creator still gets their sponsorship money. A person who is using sponsorblock is extremely unlikely to use the sponsored products even if they did watch the ad, so the creator isn't losing out on any affiliate money either.
YouTube absolutely can see which parts of videos people are actually engaging with. So can creators. And sponsors can request engagement metrics as part of their sponsorship deals.
Advertisers care about impressions and engagement. A person simply watching a sponsored segment is an impression. If people's impression metrics for sponsored segments start dropping, they become less attractive to sponsors as they knew they're going to get fewer impressions as part of the deal.
It may, or may not, be a very small impact but it is an impact nonetheless.
If nobody is watching sponsored segments (which we've established: YouTube itsself, creators, and sponsors can track) then companies don't have any incentive to sponsor videos, and creators no longer get revenue from sponsorships. Sure, this is a very end of the line example, because there's always going to be someone who doesn't have sponsorblock installed and can't be bothered to skip the segment.
Just FYI for all the people who keep repeating this ad-nauseam it doesn't apply to third party apps like Newpipe and grayjay which DO NOT send analytics data. If anyone wants to make arguments against sponsorblock they also can't support apps and front-ends which strip the Analytics from the video because without them you add no watch time or metrics, so it's a hypocritical argument.
I mean, it applies equally here. Using apps that strip metrics and analytics, has a similar effect to using sponsorblock. I don't think I was arguing against sponsorblock I was saying facts about it. I use sponsorblock, I use grayjay, and I pay content creators.
The thread is about grayjay saying that using sponsorblock on grayjay will hurt creators. If grayjay doesn't send metrics, then any metrics sponsorblock might mess up are already messed up by watching on grayjay.
Advertisers that care a lot about engagement use CTR instead of CPM. CTR enables advertisers to keep track of engagement and lie about real engagement numbers to save costs. If advertisers rely on video segment statistics, creators can fake the statistics to earn more money. So advertisers rarely measure their payout based on unverifiable information. And people that use SponsorBlock wouldn't buy it, even without SponsorBlock. Or in other words: Most creators can ignore SponsorBlock.
I agree with you that clickthrough rate is a far more useful metric for advertisers, and is probably more widely used in sponsorship deals.
Creators faking impression metrics would be followed by the advertisers seeing weirdly low clickthrough ratios, seeing that somethings up, and the creator losing future deals from that advertiser, so it's not something I would expect creators to do unless they think they're smarter than multi million/billion dollar companies advertising departments.
Where does this assertion come from that people that use sponsorblock are somehow never going to buy products? People keep saying it but I just don't get it. We live in a world where people buy things. Some products are relevant to some people and some aren't to other people. I use sponsorblock and adblock, and if I were to somehow see an advert for a product that seemed like it perfectly fit a need that I had, I'd definitely consider getting the product.
I use SponsorBlock. Ads have an influence on me, but usually with a negative impact on whatever they sell, so it's beneficial for them that I don't see their ads.
If I was looking for a fantasy-themed, turn-based role-playing gacha game, and a specific game annoys the fuck out of me with their massive marketing budget, they're automatically on my blacklist. I'll proactively ignore the game in my market research and exclude the game, the game's company and publisher from my Google search results with the uBlacklist browser extension.
If it's a SaaS and they charge a premium for SSO, they get a once in a lifetime opportunity to land on a public wall of shame that some sysadmins use to preemptively filter out software vendors from their purchasing process. So it's a really shitty idea to advertise crap to the wrong people.
Okay, sure, that's a nice story about yourself, but like, this doesn't address the core of your assertion that people who use sponsorblock won't buy products if they see ads for them. It doesn't seem like the two are actually inherently related at all. (People who don't want to watch adverts) are not necessarily (People who don't buy products).
Why do they have to prove that? You backed up the assertion that sponsorblock hurts creators with the mere unlikely possibility that sponsors might be able to see metrics, how does their single anecdotal bit of evidence that people using sponsorblock are the kinds of people that won't click ads anyway not pass the same muster?
Admittedly they're both bad evidence, so why are we treating yours as better?
I mean, sure, you can say I made a bad argument, I don't entirely disagree given the context was originally about grayjay, but at this point I'm not even making my argument anymore I'm just trying to figure out why it seems to be a shared view. I want to understand, y'know?
And I don't really think it's fair to say my assertion was only backed up by that unlikely possibility, but I don't fully stand behind my original argument in this context anymore anyway
People who use sponsorblock or other kinds of adblock are the kinds of people who get annoyed by watching ads. I suppose it's possible some of those are short because the ads are working and they keep spending money, but in my experience and the experiences I've seen discussed elsewhere, it seems to generally be that they are annoyed because they're not interested in what the ads are selling and wouldn't be sold on them anyway.
YouTube gets metrics on which parts of videos are being played. You can see this in the player where it'll display things like "most played segment" on the timeline.
See my other comments on the matter they don't, not when using apps like this, it's literally by design as they are meant to be privacy friendly so they naturally won't send analytics data.
In theory the sponsor could demand access to the statistics showing watch time and pay differently because of that.
I doubt it happens though.
YouTube is unbearable without it.
I block all advertising myself, but sponsors I think are ok. The creator can control who they sponsor with, they can write a funny ad skit that is entertaining (the best ones I have seen are the ones by squishy boi) and the creator gets paid directly without fucking us with an algorithm.
I'm happy to watch those kinds of ads as I know the creator is getting paid from them, and e.g. YouTube isn't taking a cut.
But scammy sponsors are very common. Most of the promoted products are just trash because the company behind them puts way too much money in advertisement.
How dare you besmirch Shadow Raid Legends VPN like that!
Raid specifically pays BUCKETS
Can't fault any content creator for needing to eat
I can only assume they're some sort of front for a cartel because I've never met anyone that actually plays it.
Yeah, personally I enjoy seeing adverts for things I think are dumb because it's like a shitty game company is paying my favourite creators to amuse me and they're doing it by collecting money from rubes that'd only be wasting their cash on something worse anyway.
It feels like the sort of thing a chaotic hero would do in a cyberpunk romance.
Yes but you watching the ad doesn't make money for the creator.
Ot does if its a good ad / sales pitch and I actually buy the product which is not gonna happen if it is automatically skipped.
This is such a bizarre concept to me.
Why would I want someone to convince me to buy something with a "good pitch" ?
Hey I respect the hell outta this guy for manufacturing desires in me, lemme now buy this shit I didn't want before he manipulated me. Good job guy!
/s
Someone I watch was sponsored by a PCB fabrication company and the way he described their service I realized I could save a lot of time and money doing it that way.
I don't think advertising always has to be manipulation, it could just be making you aware of the advantages of a product. Though most adverts are nothing but lies and bullshit.
It's part of the reason why many say the ad-funded internet is on it's way out, the idea of ad-revenue is based on the idea that people are going to buy YOUR product when there are 1000 other products making the same exact claim, and 1000 other of the same ads they ignore. Advertisers and Ad-funded companies have a lot of cope when it comes to this fact and make claims like "oh it'll get in eventually" but the fact of the matter is this isn't stable, it's based on the promise of making money, this bubble will burst eventually, it's not a matter of if but when.
Because I didn't know of it before?
If you didn't know of it, then you didn't need or want it.
That's just false. For example I didn't know Nebula existed before all those sponsored segments on the creators videos but I like the service now and am happy I got it...
I guess there are exceptions, it's unknowable but one wonders how long it would've taken you to discover nebula some other way.
Set it to manual skip if you think you might be interested, that way if you are you keep watching, if not hit the skip button.
Just make sure when you click that affiliate link that nothing is stripping the tracking code or they'll get nothing from you whatsoever.
Eh, at least they added support for it. Good for them. Still looking at this app with some skepticism but so far seems to be doing what it sets out to do.
Real sponsors pay up front, or only add an additional bonus for affiliate link sales, if a creator accepts a deal on affiliate link money only, it's their own fault. So if you always fast forward through sponsors and don't care, you might as well enable it to save the bandwidth and power.
Skipping sponsors automatically means you definitely won't be influenced by the marketing, so it hurts the creator because the sponsor might not work with them again because of low sales impact.
Anyway, I'll continue to use NewPipe x SponsorBlock and the Firefox addon.
Do these particular advertisers asks the influencers to show their statistics?
I mean, wouldn't the creator have to take a screenshot and send that info in? How do the advertisers even know people are skipping through sponsored segments?
Also I've never understood. I'm not going to buy a subscription service because someone I watch is offering it. If I want it I'm going to buy it regardless whether I've seen its ad or not, and the creators are just offering a discount code that can help them as well.
Lost views is not lost sales. That's just stupid.
That's why the ad-funded internet is referred to as a bubble and people are saying that the bubble will burst. It's money-making based on the promise it'll make the company paying the advertiser money, without any guarantee. You can't make money out of nothing, people have tried and failed for years if not decades, it always comes crashing down, either through crypto scams, pyramid/ponzi scemes or though worthless investments like the Dot-com crash, it'll always blow up in your face sooner or later. Which is what is slowly happening with the ad-funded internet, it is becoming overvalued similar to the dot-com investments.
Just use the NewPipe + Sponsorblock fork.
I don't think newpipe works with recommendations or leaving comments does it?
Commenting on YouTube? Gross.
correct, newpipe has no account integration be design for privacy
I wonder if one could design an extension that would do a rough recommendation algorithm locally. I use recommendations a ton, so I can't really switch to newpipe.
FWIW I've found Piped (LibreTube on Android) has decent recommendations when you are inside a video. Main feed is just standard, but once you go into a video the suggestions are roughly the same in my experience.
Did not know this fork exists. Thank you for enlightening my day, Internet stranger.
I do too and I've been wondering why we would need anything else 👍
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.
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.
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.
Ah TIL. Thanks for the details.
Take it with a grain of salt, as I can't provide any sources and I'm not a YouTube content creator. I just remember some channels sharing than.
Can confirm. I upload YouTube videos and it shows me stats on which parts of the video people watch.
He’s still bitter someone Sponsorblocked his cat segment :-)
That's unironically the reason I don't use Sponsorblock, I don't have any control over what people choose to mark as sponsored, what if they make me skip important content like cat segments?
Sponsorblock has categories and you can choose which to skip.
Also it's important to report incorrect submissions since if enough people report them they get removed and the users who do this reprimanded.
But which category is the cat in??
Not having seen the video I would think it is in filler/off topic
You also don't have to set it up to skip automatically, it will play through with a popup option to skip.
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.
Well they won't make any money off you watching them on NewPipe because the way it parses videos doesn't register views or watched timestamps, the things that sponsors take into account when paying creators.
It's why their argument is garbage, because they designed NewPipe the way they did for the purpose of privacy, which also defeats any method of making money through analytics yet they think Sponsorblock in this case stops them from making money, as if they could make money off NewPipe users at all in the first place.
How sure are you that your view through NewPipe is getting counted on YouTube statistics so that the channel is getting a proper measure of reach?
Because I am not so sure the view is being counted, and much less the (not)viewing of the sponsorblock segment.
Views don't get counted on Newpipe and if they do somehow it's not accurate, as in it won't count watch-time or parts of the video watched, the way it parses the video these analytics don't get sent.
I know my klick on the link is counted if I am interested in the product they are selling.
It's still loading the page internally to extract the video link. I don't think newpipe after that looks different than say a smart tv,. So it's up to YouTube to do the counting.
It looks like any other web browser, the problem is that without the Analytics being sent back it looks like a paused video buffering all the way through then the user leaves without watching the video. The analytics include how much and which parts of the video they watched, but videos can be loaded without watching them (that's what buffering does).
There's no reason in watching the sponsors through NewPipe, because the view doesn't count, especially segment-based view.
The YouTube channel (and their sponsor) will never detect that you actually watched the sponsor. So, why bother watching it in the first place?
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.
damn y’all get all the cool shit on android :(
Piped works on iOS. Invidious perhaps as well?
Piped works mediocre at best and the quality settings and buffer is finicky depending on your settings. It’s not worth the hassle imo because it doesn’t even have Sponsorblock. Sadly on iOS I usually just stick to default YouTube app mostly with no Sponsorblock. But soon I want to try some of the modified youtube apps from Altstore.
On Android TV on my sony bedroom tv I recently switched from the default YouTube app to Smarttube which is GOAT tbh I had no idea what I was missing. I wish I could get that but on iOS yaknow?
It does have SponserBlock. You have to tick the box to enable it. Is it great? No, but it served me well enough whilst traveling so as the only option it works. I won’t use the default app. I don’t really watch too many videos on my phone. I wait to watch on a pc at home where I have better quality and control.
i keep sponsorblock on but i pretty much have it set on manual skip by default. i mostly use it for critical role (whom i also subscribe to on twitch) shows to skip the intermission or for twitch vods on youtube to skip the beginning and after parts where it's just the streamer talking to chat.
but i also don't understand how skipping in video sponsored segments loses them money like it's not a youtube thing it's a creator thing like television adverts. how would they know if it's been skipped wouldn't they already get the money to do the sponsorship before the video is posted?
Youtube tracks how much of a video each person watches. These metrics are used by youtubers to strike deals with sponsors.
The amount of money the sponsor pays will be based on how many views the sponsor's message part of the video gets.
They get paid more if people use the affiliate links or coupon codes from the sponsored sections of the video.
For me, terms and definitions are very important. Just like right to repair is often misrepresented to the detriment of consumers, it's important to only talk about open source if the license actually respects your freedom [1].
Open source has a lot of positive connotations and calling some project open source while only being source available feels like taking advantage of it.
It's similar to how large corporations talking about being eco friendly with their packaging whilst making the actual devices as hard to repair as possible.
You're right, the ReVanced project is open source, but the resulting app is not, since it's modifying the official YouTube app.
[1] https://opensource.org/osd/
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.
Well the app it creates on your device is not open source. The patch is, but the actual software being run isn't.
Also you can just use actual quotation marks my dude, no need to say "quote end quote" like some kind of Dan Carlin impersonator
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.
Exactly. Could have just said YouTube is closed source from the start when ReVanced is 100% open-source.
Well I'm glad that's settled then.
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.
no it's not. the modifications are open source, but the base client is the same old closed source Youtube app.
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?
Raid: Shadow Legends anyone?
+1
I guess there's a moral reason behind it.
YouTube is a behemoth of a company so you'd expect most of the ads money to go to the creators but you can be sure it's not.
They also demonetize videos for stupid reasons more and more, and they use their quasi monopole on the video hosting to push ads down our throats in many ways with less and less control over the type, placement or duration of the ads they greenlight because what are we gonna do? Go on vimeo or dailymotion?
On the other hand, sponsors pay the creators directly or through affiliated links, they work even if the video is demonetized, creators can decide whether or not they agree with the sponsor content and remain somewhat in control of how the sponsor sequence is gonna be in their video since they're the ones making them.
Morally, you can decide you hate YouTube and its ads while still wanting to support the creators (or not) but all users are not on the same level of technological knowledge and might not know what sponsorblock is gonna block exactly (despite the name) or how to set it up.
For those users, I think it's not a bad idea to have such a warning/opt-out step in the setup process.
This ignores the fact that these apps don't have the functionality to tell YouTube a video or segment of a video has been watched, therefore they literally can't make money off these users period, it's just the way these clients work, they don't send analytics data to YouTube, so they don't count views. It's as if the person paused the video, let it buffer all the way then clicked off without watching.
People can argue semantics about watching or not watching or what it means philosophically but in the end the views aren't counted by the software on these apps, it doesn't matter how much or how long you watch something it just doesn't count the view, because they never receive any tracking data. So in that regard there really is no sense in shaming SponsorBlock usage, if it seems like a problem you shouldn't be using these apps in the first place because they defeat the money-making part of the segments in and of themselves.
I'm fairly certain they didn't want to include it but felt it was the only way to offer the same/better service over revanced.
I'm sure as hell happy about that. I understand the creators need their sponsors but at the same time, I cannot stand ads. Like this I'm keeping his app and frequent it more often.
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.
I'm inclined to agree. I respect the work he's done for R2R, but I find his videos on New York commercial real estate to be incredibly cringe. Nonetheless I think GrayJay is a decent YouTube frontend and will probably continue using it until it gives me a reason to stop or until something I prefer comes along.
So he's basically Elon Musk.
Grayjay doesn't block ads. It simply doesn't load them in the stream. There is a difference.
Grayjay also doesn't send analytics data back to YouTube, so watching the sponsor or skipping it look identical to YouTube's servers. One can't make the argument that you are supporting creators by watching their sponsors if the sponsors have no way to know that the sponsor part of the video was watched.
As far as I'm aware, creator sponsorships rarely care about whether or not you watch the segments, but about how many people follow the link or whatnot. So you could make the argument that sponsorblock makes you never follow the links, but that really assumes you would otherwise, which...
Yeah, and there are no products that I care about that get advertised by youtubers so I would never click on those links. I don't shave, I don't need to build a website, I don't need a VPN, I don't need a food delivery service, I don't listen to audio books, I don't need earpods, I don't play mobile games...
Listening to these sponsors literally loses me time. I reinstalled revanced 2 months ago and sponsorblock already has skipped 50 minutes worth of sponsors. (oh these sponsorblock stats also seem to be missing from grayjay. Grayjay doesn't seem to have any sponsorblock settings besides allowing you to manually skip instead automatically)
I think they said that they technically don't block ads. They just don't implement them. If youtube were to somehow pack ads into the video stream, they wouldn't go around it. Though I'm sure that in such case an adblock extension would pop up very fast.
Since the app has ties to creators, I get why they disapprove of sponsorblock, but... Why did they implement it if they don't like it?
Certainly there was big demand for it. I was hoping they'd eventually implement it as I'd been testing the app out
The app strips analytics and watch data preventing views from being counted. So the argument doesn't logically make sense. They're trying to make a moral argument out of something that doesn't and can't have any impact because the data used to justify watch-time and engagement isn't provided.
How do you turn it on? I'm on Grayjay v 195 but I'm not seeing the option in settings.
You have to go first to "sources" and then it's in the YouTube options
Are they even able to see when their baked in ads get skipped over?
Kinda. YouTube has stats about which times of a video are watched more proportionally for a single view. You can ironically usually use this data to see when a sponsor spot ends (to skip to it) since there will be a peak in the watch time curve.
Probably, I'm fairly certain they get told which parts of the video get skipped and which get rewatched.
Only applies on official apps and frontends with analytics. Without them it's just buffering the video.