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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

I feel more bad about using this than a regular ad blocker. With a regular ad blocker it's blocking ads for which the lion's share is probably going to $facelessabusivecorporation, whereas sponsorships go 100% into the pockets of content creators who typically aren't exactly rich.

It feels less like downloading pirated music and more like sneaking into an indie concert without paying.

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I would be happy to pay content creators the money they deserve for high quality content. But no matter how good the video is, it's not worth sitting through pitches trying to convince or manipulate you into spending money. At that point I would rather receive lower quality content with no ads.

It's not that people don't want to financially support creators. It's that the targeted advertising business has become so manipulative and hostile that some people do not want to see ads for any product in any context.

> I would be happy to pay content creators the money they deserve for high quality content.

You can do that with YouTube Premium + Sponsorblock. Or pay them in other ways while blocking all ads.

Nah can't feel bad using Sponsorblock - it tells you when it skips a chunk, and makes it very easy (just press Enter!) to skip back, check what they're going to talk about - and if it's of no interest just tap Enter again to resume. That way I can see if my favourite Youtube channels are promoting something I might actually be interested in, but Raid Shadow Legends, Raycon and Ridge Wallet can be skipped every time.

This is like fast forwarding through an ad, but done automatically. I don't feel bad at all, some videos have 50%+ or more removed, and with some settings, you can remove also all the self-promotion, "like and subcribe" and other useless crap from the videos.

> whereas sponsorships go 100% into the pockets of content creators

They get paid ad revenue based on ads served, they already got paid for the sponsorship.

Personally I feel that this is the wrong way round (however I'm totally morally ok with blocking ads of all kinds, I'd be a hypocrite otherwise, ads suck)

They get paid for the sponsorship based in part on how many people watch the sponsorship sections of past videos. That can be and is measured, and has a material effect on the amount companies will pay.

Sounds like they're still being paid then. There's zero pay when blocking ads.

There's zero pay if 100% of their viewers blocked ads. There would also be zero pay if 100% of their viewers used SponsorBlock.

I'm not saying that on the balance it's wrong to use SponsorBlock (I'm a heavy ad blocker myself, and most of the arguments against SponsorBlock also apply to ad blocking in general), just that you can't justify it by pretending that you using SponsorBlock doesn't cost them anything.

Wasn't justifying anything. I ad block to block ads, I don't think about it beyond that.

Are you sure about this? Is this a service that YouTube provides? Otherwise they wouldn't know except for the usage of promo codes.

I know that the content creators have access to this information, and anecdotally I've heard that it's part of the negotiation process, but to be fair I don't know that for sure.

Aw man, I knew that was bollocks! Haha

I've not come across this as a negotiation thing directly or anecdotally, gave you the benefit of the doubt as maybe it was a super new thing that's not hit my radar yet.

We'd be giving ChatGPT the business for hallucinating, my theory is it learned to do that from internet forums :P

It's something I'd skip manually via the arrow keys or seek bar anyway, so why not automate the process?

And anyway you can white-list creators you like. SponsorBlock is actually more useful for me to skip filler intro and ending content than to actually skip sponsors, which you can configure it not to skip if you so choose.

Sponsorships rarely go 100% into the pockets of creators. The share varies but it can be anywhere from 25% to 75% because these sponsorships typically come through agencies and management takes a cut too.

It really depends on the video, and the brand sponsoring for me.

I had enough of Raycon, Raid Legend and other bullcrap VPNs. Especially when those sponsors got greedy by asking a 2 minute and on a 8 minutes video. That's a quarter of it.

So I don't feel bad anymore for sponsorblock.

You can support most of them with Patrion if you want.

Other than that making the video is a sunk cost, the only company you cost money is Google.

They already made the money, they don’t get paid for shilling by you watching.

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