I block ads with uBlock, and I don’t feel that bad about it: tracking, performance problems, general obnoxiousness, etc…
But I don’t find sponsor spots that odious, at least in the videos I watch. These creators do actually have to make money somehow. I’ll happily sit through a short sponsor spot if that pays their bills so that I can enjoy the content.
While I also don’t find these sponsored segments annoying, they do get very repetitive over time. Audible, Nord VPN, Brilliant, etc. it’s always the same. No I’m not interested in audio books, no I have my own non-logging VPN and no I have enough things to learn from my studies already, I don’t need these products.
I like the way some podcasts get around it, which is to do a new segment on the sponsor each episode. That way you know it’s a sponsor but listen to it anyway because it’s also content.
I use a VPN over Sweden, so most of my youtube ads are in Swedish. Since I don’t understand much Swedish it always feels a bit like I’m on holiday. So no, I don’t mind those ads.
This seems like it would be pretty easy for google to defeat once they become aware of it. I typically use something like hooktube.com (or IIRC there being something better now?), which seems to circumvent the google ad stuff entirely.
I don’t think Google has any incentive to try to attack this extension. YouTube earns nothing from sponsored ad reads in videos. Content producers will probably be upset if this becomes popular, but they don’t have much sway when it comes to how YouTube operates.
As this works only for people who use browser to watch YouTube, it might be useless for me watching videos as videos should be watched (mpv/smplayer/iina (for mac) and youtube-dl just for URL extraction in my case).
But it’s also useless for anyone using mobile clients as well. You can say “why do you want to use mobile client app if you already don’t like ads?” and it’s fine. The thing is that official YT client on Android for example, is very “patchable” and there are some forks of it who already lock down the ads. Also there’s a NewPipe which does more or less the same thing I do on my desktop/laptop (mentioned above).
Going to the conclusion I would like to see that to be offered not in a form of “extensions” (i mean, single bullet you install & forget) but more like public API where you can register (or even better just use it anonymously with these hashed IPs mentioned on the website) and then read/add/vote on “sponsor” data. Adding a support for mpv (which has Lua scripting built in) or NewPipe or even patched YT (both made in Kotlin IIRC) would be just a few lines of HTTP requests.
The whole project is open source and you are free to download the sqlite database of sponsorship timestamps, so I bet you could make a sponsorblock plugin for mpv or similar video players. Since youtube-dl names files with the id from youtube, you could lookup the video in the database that way.
This doesn’t just block the ads in YouTube videos, it skips the sections within a video where the author does a sponsorship announcement. I don’t think uBlock Origin or EFF Privacy Badger can do that.
I block ads with uBlock, and I don’t feel that bad about it: tracking, performance problems, general obnoxiousness, etc…
But I don’t find sponsor spots that odious, at least in the videos I watch. These creators do actually have to make money somehow. I’ll happily sit through a short sponsor spot if that pays their bills so that I can enjoy the content.
While I also don’t find these sponsored segments annoying, they do get very repetitive over time. Audible, Nord VPN, Brilliant, etc. it’s always the same. No I’m not interested in audio books, no I have my own non-logging VPN and no I have enough things to learn from my studies already, I don’t need these products.
I like the way some podcasts get around it, which is to do a new segment on the sponsor each episode. That way you know it’s a sponsor but listen to it anyway because it’s also content.
I use a VPN over Sweden, so most of my youtube ads are in Swedish. Since I don’t understand much Swedish it always feels a bit like I’m on holiday. So no, I don’t mind those ads.
Thanks, works great! 👍
This seems like it would be pretty easy for google to defeat once they become aware of it. I typically use something like hooktube.com (or IIRC there being something better now?), which seems to circumvent the google ad stuff entirely.
I don’t think Google has any incentive to try to attack this extension. YouTube earns nothing from sponsored ad reads in videos. Content producers will probably be upset if this becomes popular, but they don’t have much sway when it comes to how YouTube operates.
Ah I didn’t realize youtube/google earns nothing from sponsored ads in videos.. thanks for clarifying.
As this works only for people who use browser to watch YouTube, it might be useless for me watching videos as videos should be watched (
mpv/smplayer/iina (for mac)andyoutube-dljust for URL extraction in my case).But it’s also useless for anyone using mobile clients as well. You can say “why do you want to use mobile client app if you already don’t like ads?” and it’s fine. The thing is that official YT client on Android for example, is very “patchable” and there are some forks of it who already lock down the ads. Also there’s a NewPipe which does more or less the same thing I do on my desktop/laptop (mentioned above).
Going to the conclusion I would like to see that to be offered not in a form of “extensions” (i mean, single bullet you install & forget) but more like public API where you can register (or even better just use it anonymously with these hashed IPs mentioned on the website) and then read/add/vote on “sponsor” data. Adding a support for
mpv(which has Lua scripting built in) or NewPipe or even patched YT (both made in Kotlin IIRC) would be just a few lines of HTTP requests.The whole project is open source and you are free to download the sqlite database of sponsorship timestamps, so I bet you could make a sponsorblock plugin for mpv or similar video players. Since youtube-dl names files with the id from youtube, you could lookup the video in the database that way.
With uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger haven’t seen these for years.
This doesn’t just block the ads in YouTube videos, it skips the sections within a video where the author does a sponsorship announcement. I don’t think uBlock Origin or EFF Privacy Badger can do that.