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Louis Rossman/FUTO's YouTube app, GrayJay, now supports Sponsorblock... and shames you if you use it (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by bionicjoey@lemmy.ca to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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"?

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[-] Merwyn@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

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.