Comment by Fogest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fogest | Hacker News Reader

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Part of the problem for me is that sponsor spots in videos are so common now that I feel forced to run SponsorBlock. If I'm already having to run one extension just to enjoy the experience, then I may as well also use Adblock and not even bother with Premium. But since premium doesn't give that full ad-free experience (referring to sponsors), I just don't see as much benefit.

The amount of my life I save by using adblock + sponsorblock when watching YouTube is such a huge amount of time. Maybe I am just cheap, but I also feel it's a bit on the expensive side of things for what you get.

I do however still like to support creators that I watch a lot, so I'll use things like Patron, or in the case of Linus Tech Tips, Floatplane. I feel like directly supporting the creators I spend a lot more time watching makes more of an impact on supporting the content I enjoy. Creators don't seem to get much out of YouTube Premium viewers.

I hate ads, but I'm largely ok with sponsor reads. They are by far the least evil and least annoying.

They are not targeted (everybody watching the video sees the same ad... for now). They don't invade my privacy. They are usually fairly short. They're usually somewhat relevant to the creator, and therefore my interests. Of course, it depends on the creator. Some have more integrity, others less.

If between Youtube Premium, Patreon, and sponsored segments or episodes creators can make a living, that sounds great to me. Better than TV, radio, or the increasingly expensive and ad-ified streaming services. I'll take it.

Yeah, I'm pretty okay with sponsored segments. By and large, the people I watch only accept sponsors that appear to be legitimate, and the read is generally "here's this service and what it does, give it a try and thank them for feeding me this week!" Or "I've been using this service since they started and I think it's pretty cool"

They're generally not low quality scammy products or designed to extract money or spy (with the exception of VPN ads, but that's a different issue).

I'm alright with them. I tend to skip them more these days because I can only hear about Brilliant and Squarespace so many times in a day

YT kind of started a soft assault on sponsor spots, with mobile users getting two-tap fast-forward, and encouraging creators to use chapters, making them choose to either fake their audience out with inaccurate chapters, or to include a sponsor chapter and assume x% of viewers are not going to see the sponsor spot.

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