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Comment by natpalmer1776 | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with this at all.

Sponsored segments are typically produced by, or use the same production values as, the creator who is providing the content you intended to consume. The sponsored segments are an accurate reflection of the content you're consuming and typically do not detract from the overall experience.

Like the normal web ads we see, they are intended to pay the bills of the individual(s) or company that is providing this content to us for free, so they may continue doing so.

By blocking the sponsorships, you're denying them the right to make profit from their work in a manner that doesn't execute unexpected code, intrusively collect your information, or otherwise violate mutual trust.

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I don't fully agree with you. There are some channels that do sponsorships well: Jay Foreman, Tom Scott, etc.

There are some that do it terribly: Kursgesagt recently, Wendover productions (I hate deceptive segues), etc.

You can see more about my thoughts on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20780728

I guess it's a personal choice, but I prefer tracked ads that are properly labeled and not deceptive to integrated sponsorships and product placement any day. The real fear is that an extension like this will encourage even more deceptive and hard to skip sponsors (embeded product placement).

- Developer

I dunno, I find LTT and Wendover’s sponsorship segues to be pretty ham-fisted and obvious. They’re always like, “… and that’s why X is like riding a bike. And speaking of riding bikes…”

EDIT: I think they delibterately do them that way to be charmingly cheesy, and I mostly appreciate it becuase then I always know when to close the video.

This kurzgesagt video is what made me start work on this extension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfgT6zx4k3Q

No mention of sponsor, doesn't say "supported by" accept in the top comment that was added later (not at the beginning). The description one wasn't there originally either.

It literally says "because we want you to have nice things, you can get a 30 day free trial". You can't get more deceptive than that.

- Developer

Kurzgesagt makes wonderful content, but this is not the first time I’ve seen them be called out for dark patterns. There was that YouTuber spat of the refugee crisis and drug addiction videos, where they were accused of covering their butts in an unethical way. Be cool, like your videos, Kurzgesagt!

Yea, that turned out to be mostly the other guy's fault, but yea. That wasn't their first video where they did a sponsor like that, but it was the first I'd seen (I never watched their mars base one for some reason).

Oof, I will say, that particularly kurzgesagt video was pretty bad. I do think kurzgesagt is generally much better than that though.

I agree, this is what made me hit the tipping point however. I love kurzgesagt, they are amazing.

I mean… the description starts with a plug for Dashlane.

That wasn't there I'm pretty sure, and even still, it doesn't say sponsored anywhere, just a plug for it. Yes, it is obvious to us what it is, but to an outsider or child? It is manipulative to those people.

On that note, I miss the time when descriptions were, you know, actual descriptions of the video and not a dumping ground for the exact same trash on every video that nobody cares about like social media, Discord, etc (those things should go in the channel's about page as they are not specific to a single video).

90% of my YouTube "consumption" is on a Roku which doesn't show video descriptions, comments, etc.

Someone has to pay for the content. I don't agree with video ad blocking because it doesn't hinder my experience in the same way that loading and executing 40 tracking.js scripts does. I like to look at even a video like this with the air of, "haha you got me, clever". Also, it makes me remember a legitimate point about the topic.

After browsing through your site I see that you're a kid, and see how you might be inclined to classifying certain creator-narrated-advertising to be amoral. The video you cite has high production quality, with a ton of time put into it's creation. I don't agree with your assessment that the dashlane ad, which is obviously out of place in a video on electromagnetic pollution, can be construed as content versus an ad by the average user, average being the operative word.

You are free to not consume content, but automating revenue stripping en-masse from otherwise high quality content is more unethical than the supposed sketchy advertising tactics.

Unfortunately, you don't walk away from this as the moral victor.

lol okay. And, I was a kid a few days ago, not anymore :)

In my reddit post complaining about this, people there actually thought this was part of the video and one of the "other things people should be worrying about". This isn't some made up thing, people actually do fall for it.

Specifically with LTT, I love how they make it incredibly obvious when something is leading to or coming out of a sponsorship spot. As soon as I hear the trademark pause after the opening, doubletapping the screen to skip 10 seconds or pressing right arrow a couple times on your PC just skips right through the sponsor spot and you don't have to see anything.

ElectroBOOM does the absolute best segues -- makes me laugh every time!

He's whitelisted on mine :)

- Developer

Wendover has the most obvious, telegraphed segues. On top of that, the sponsorship is left at the end of the video. Linus on the other hand I completely agree with.

I haven't watched wendover in over a year since I was sick of his sponsorships, but I remember never knowing when the end of a video was, because the sponsors were part of the same sentence.

LTT does it extremely well. The sponsored section is clearly marked and adds to the experience.

True, I shouldn't have included them in that list, they are edited out now.

I have to disagree about Sam's segues, they're legitimately one of the best parts of Wendover Production's and Half as Interesting's videos. Unless you're paying attention he gets you every time, and suddenly it's like you're back in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.

> Unless you're paying attention he gets you every time

That's exactly why I dislike them. Ads should be clearly separated from the actual content, visually and audibly, imo.

For me it's like getting Rick Rolled, it's amusing for the same reason a magic trick is amusing.

Yes, but for an outsider not part of the joke, like a child or old person, they don't know about that

I'm sure some people are okay with them, but they drove me to never watch his videos :/

Maybe I will try watching his videos again with this extension, I don't know.

But the issue is that most of the sponsored products are absolute trash. The only legitimate one that I can think of is Squarespace (and even then, I’m already aware of them - does that still make me bad if I skip their sponsored segments despite knowing them already?). But the rest are usually dubious VPN services spreading FUD (no, a VPN does fuck all to your privacy if you still browse while being logged into Facebook and Google because they are the main threats, not your ISP) and the low & unsustainable price of their plans suggests they might actually be doing something nefarious. Worse, on Eastern European channels it’s not just VPNs but actual financial scams like binary options and obvious “too good to be true” investments. And last week I saw some fake AirPods being advertised on meme videos.

I disagree with you. Sponsored content can burn in hell.

Thats fine but the revenue needs to come from somewhere. The common argument in tech circles is that people aren't opposed to ads, just to abuse like tracking. Yet here we have the most benign possible advertisement and people still seek automation to remove it.

Personally I don’t like ads not just because of the tracking but also because most advertisements are trash or malicious in some way (scams, malware, etc). Truth is, most people already have good products and those don’t need heavy advertising - only trash does.

Also, even if we assume these ads are benign aren’t they still an inconvenience? And if so, isn’t this totally normal that people will find ways against it? Isn’t the whole point of computers to make our lives easier by automating away boring tasks?

Well, obviously people who aren't opposed to ads per se won't use extensions like this. I, personally, believe that the whole point of ads is to manipulate you into making purchasing decisions that are irrational, i.e. decisions that aren't in your own best interests. Therefore I think all ads are unethical.

I realize that's a minority position, but it's an example of one way in which someone could come to the position that all ads are bad and should be blocked.

Note - someone might respond that in theory an ad could be designed to be genuinely useful by helping you make a more informed choice. I'm not denying that that's possible, just that you're imagining a very different world than the one we in fact live in.

>I, personally, believe that the whole point of ads is to manipulate you into making purchasing decisions that are irrational,[...]. Therefore I think all ads are unethical.

If I invent something I truly believe will improve the lives of others that they might pay for, how would I let the world know about it other than ads?

Examples...

I'm wearing $350 noise-isolating earphones at this moment because I learned about the product from an ad 20 years ago. There was nothing else on the market that combined audiophile sound quality with 25+ dB ambient noise reduction. (It was a small company that specialized in hearing aids that expanded their product line into consumer hifi.) I wouldn't have learned about them through "word of mouth" because nobody I knew had them. I loved them so much that I've bought 3 replacement pairs over the last 2 decades as they've worn out. That ad for earphones saved my hearing and sanity at noisy offices.

I applied to the high-paying job that paid for my house because of an ad the company ran looking for my particular technical skills.

I went to performances of classical symphonies and piano recitals because of ads highlighting the local orchestra and the upcoming season's schedule. I also went on memorable helicopter tours because of ads.

Yes, _most_ ads (including most Youtube ads) are harmful/intrusive/irrelevant but saying _all_ ads manipulate you against your best interest can't be right.

>in theory an ad could be designed to be genuinely useful

It's not theory though. In my case, my earphones/job/concerts were genuinely useful to me. Unfortunately, it's the minority of cases where ads connect me to products that improve my life. Therefore, I do block all ads at the DNS level but I'm still receptive to ads relevant to my interests like 3d printing, home building & construction, aviation, etc.

Yea, I agree. However, companies need to advertise to get there product out there. Well, even I did by posting about this extension on hacker news.

I think there are ways to make ads more ethical than the average ad out there, and I appreciate those that do that.

- Developer

Why do you sign every comment with “- Developer” at the end? Just post a comment to your submission stating you’re the developer?

As far as I know, there is no easy way to tell who the OP is on this site.

Some people have different opinions. I oppose deceptiveness, and am not too opposed to tracking.

VPNs aren’t for protecting yourself from your ISP. They are to separate your IP address from your identity. Your IP address is used by data brokers to track users.

Yes, but only as a very small part of a much larger portrait. Cookies, tracking pixels, and browser fingerprinting are much more reliable, especially given that a lot of ISPs don't even assign most of their customers static IPs. Mine changes about once a week.

I respectfully but completely disagree.

The revenue to creators of in-video sponsorships are neither predicated by nor affected by whether or not I or anyone else watch the embedded advertisement. Because there is no way to effectively edit or remove the sponsorship, nor a way for anyone to monitor with a high degree of accuracy or certainty if and how much such an ad is viewed, creators are almost always paid a single lump sum to include the sponsor's message in the video. The amount they are paid is contractually based on viewership numbers achieved before they are paid for the ad or post the video, and any future sponsorship opportunities are simply affected by whether or not people watch the video with the included sponsorship and what click through rate is achieved.

The only people who conceivably "lose out" on anything here are the advertisers. But since I personally tend to look disfavorably on intrusive advertising, even this is not true in my situation.

... unless this practice becomes pervasive, in which case advertisers generally will stop seeing sponsoring this kind of content as worthwhile, and it will no longer be cost-effective to produce it. Your approach depends on most people continuing to view the ads, or at least to be perceived as viewing the ads (doing the "work" to make them cost-effective) while you avoid doing so. It's a classic free-rider problem.

According to some guy on reddit, they do have pretty detailed viewer retention graphs.

https://i.imgur.com/LSobAV4.png

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/cl5t45/i_made_an_a...

- Developer

True but I don’t really think there’s any downside to being a free rider, the cost of people just manually skipping the ad is already accounted for and an extension like this will always be super niche like similar tools for podcasts. You with your fancy automated thing that works sometimes is a fraction of a fraction of the viewership that doesn’t see the ad because the viewer wasn’t paying attention or went to the bathroom or fridge.

Life is too short to worry about business models changing like this. If you have to watch the ad out of fear that if you don’t you’ll be forced to watch the ad then you might as well not watch the ad.

> sponsored segments are an accurate reflection of the content you're consuming

For every example of a relevant sponsorship[1], there’s 10 completely unrelated sponsorships from blogging/web site creation services, online learning sites, and the rest.

There are good arguments against skipping sponsorships (manually or automatically...), but I don’t think relevance is one of them.

1. Like Doug DeMuro creating a list of cars specifically for a given video, then mentioning it: https://youtu.be/kpfAY3LqmXk?t=120

Do you also sit through commercials on tv?, or read the advertisements on the paper/magazines? How do you feel about pop-ups? All of those will have good production values and help pay the bills.

There are a couple of people that might do something interesting or funny with their sponsored segments, but plenty are just "hey guys, let me tell you about this toothbrush".

So don’t use it. I won’t use this, but I _will_ continue skipping most sponsored segments in videos. I feel no moral obligation to watch sponsored segments, sometime I will and sometimes I won’t.

Would you be interested in an option in this extension to not actually skip the sponsors, but just show them in the seek bar? Then, you can be prepared for them, but choose yourself whether to skip them.

Follow this issue: https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/131

Maybe an option similar to Netflix's "skip introduction" by which you can press a button to skip the intro or (default) watch it.

Yea, or like YouTube's skip ad button.

Sure. Difference being it is present the instant the ad starts (or a few sec prior) instead of after X seconds of the ad has played.

That would indeed be a nice option to have.

Follow this issue: https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/131

> otherwise violate mutual trust

Getting sponsored means getting paid to say something that you otherwise wouldn't. It calls everything else that they say or recommend into question.

There a subtle but important variant to this. When you are getting paid to provide ad space, even if you are not explicitly deceptive, you’re incentive are still such that the ad space takes priority. It will lead to choices compromising on quality for quantity diluting the very reason for putting the video message out there in the first place.

Yes, some things take time, effort and resources to produce, and we do want to make sure such things are available to those who know how to crate value from them. But ad-revenue cannot be some kind of default, let’s do better.

That is sad but true. That is why proper separation make sponsorships so much better and more ethical.

I'm probably not going to use this extension, I largely watch YouTube on my Chromecast, but I pay for YouTube Premium already so that I don't get ads, so it's a little annoying that the creators are getting paid from my subscription revenue and still putting ads in their content.

Your Premium subscription gives them the revenue they would have received from the ad you would've watched, but most creators have found that YouTube's monetization is too little and too unreliable to count on. You're paying YouTube far more than the creator, unless you're paying them directly.

That's not completely true. They are making a majority of the money (creators), but it's not directly related to what you watch. The entire pool is split by watch time (watch time from people even not subscribed to youtube premium) on all videos on the platform. So, more of your subscribers getting youtube premium does not benifit you.

Yea, or if you are supporting them on patreon. It is like CGP Grey's "adblock absolution"

You know they don't get paid unless you buy the product, right? Would you sit through a minute long advert for a vpn even though you already have one? Because that's pointless.

They can provide a way for people to pay to view their content.

How many people just manually skip these sponsorships?

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