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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is the best version. I liked newpipe but their attitude to sponsorblock is tiring.

But I moved to libretube now. Newpipe kept throwing up errors when I jumped around a video.

I use sponsorblock on desktop, and sometimes I find the parts that they skip annoying. I don't fully agree with where and when they skip things. Watching Hot Ones today, they had a segment about how they have Hot Ones Hot Pockets now. and it skipped over it. But also, the hot pockets were a big part of the episode. For LTT videos, they skip the entire segue, instead of leaving the segue and then skipping the sponsor. The segues are a meme. They aren't sponsorship. Another channel I watch tests microphones and uses ad read to demo demo different mic quality. At that point skipping the ad read is skipping the actual content of the video. There's a few channels that mix the ad read into the context of what they are doing, and skipping those sections skips over important context for the rest of the video, and then i have to rewind into the sponsor part to see what is going on.

I actually agree with newpipe to some degree. There is very bad sponsorship, and there is light mentions of sponsorship or sponsorship adjacent content. not everything is black or white. Sponsorblock makes it all or nothing (they have different categories but I often disagree with what they put into the categories).

I wish I could turn it on per channel. because some channels I hate the 2 minute long brilliant ads, but on other channels Im fine with a 5 second "we're building this thing using X company parts because X company is sponsoring the video"

I still use it, but i find it just as frustrating as it is helpful sometimes.

You can configure sponsorblock with various options. End credits, sponsored sections, lots of things

Right. My issue is that I disagree with what they consider "sponsored sections" sometimes. "Only skip sponsor segments longer than 30 seconds" isn't an option. Long ads that make up most of the video: bad. A brief passing comment about "And thanks to our sponsor for supporting this video" dont need a cut.

that entirely depends on the user contributions. you know its people manually submitting these snippets of what to skip and not automatic?

Yes, I'm aware. I suspect the users who contribute tend to fall into the category of "The host saying 'and now a word from our sponsor' or explaining that 'today we are using product X so don't be surprised when the video is different' is part of the sponsorship" because I expect that people who contribute self select into people who are very anti-anything sponsor related ... I prefer having that left in, so that the sudden cut is at least expected.

My issue is less with the tool and more with the user contributions. But until there are alternative sources for sponsorblock that fit my preferences, it seems like the options are "don't use it at all" or "use it and be frustrated from time to time". I don't really care who is at fault, I'm not trying to point fingers, I'm just saying that I understand where NewPipe is coming from. Not everyone has to agree on whether all sponsor spots are good or bad.

hello, if you got some issue. It would be best to go their discord to contest it for the benefit of everyone who is going to use it in the future.

I've done it a few times too, and if ever the recent submission wasn't good they can lock the video from further submissions

Sponsorblock does allow you to whitelist specific channels. Should be in the settings somewhere, I've only ever done it via the ReVanced app but it should still be an option on desktop.

By "on desktop" I mean FreeTube (and simply not via NewPipe or on mobile). It has options for the different types of things to skip, but my issue is with disagreeing with how overly strict they can be about flagging things as sponsor segments.

Some of it is per channel settings (some channels have way too long of sponsor segments), and some of it is just disagreement about how granular to be (on LTT they cut out the entire segue to the sponsor, and not just the sponsor spot, i dont want the LTT sponsors, but not being serious is their whole thing, I don't mind watching the segues)

users mark the segments to be skipped.

What's the channel that does ad reads to demo microphone quality?

That's such a simple and genius idea

Not the channel that OP meant, but Tom Scott recently did a video on decibel and loudness, where he reads a sponsor message during a mic check: https://youtu.be/Is_wu0VRIqQ

The tom scott one was one example I was thinking of... With the sponsor segment clipped out, that video lacks a LOT of context.

The main one I was thinking of was Senpai Gaming. He does reviews of microphones and streamer equipment. He just released a video of the new Shure SM7dB mic where he does the sponsor read on the new mic.

Recently, he reviewed the new Elgato teleprompter. During which he read the ad read from the teleprompter as a means of demonstrating how the eyecontact looks/feels while reading text from the prompter. It feels like a legit test for a teleprompter to be able to demo it as such. The problem is. He says that he is going to demo 4 things about the prompter and the first one is simply reading text. And then he starts to say "And we're going to do that by sharing the sponsor of today's video"... But it sponsorblock cuts it as "And we're going to" and then it cuts to point 2. Had sponsorblock cut that after he said "sponsor" I would have at least known what was going on, but a random mid sentence cut... I feel like the Sponsorblock contributors self select to be the most rabid anti-sponsor people out there. Sponsorships are pure evil and we shouldn't have to even hear words next to the sponsorship. I understand why NewPipe disagrees and wants to differentiate between good and bad and not just "everything bad".

Sponsorblock depends on the users specifying which parts are which of course. It's not some kind of AI.

It's not perfect but I want to have the choice.

Wasn't trying to suggest it was AI. I'm aware it's crowd sourced. But in the end, I disagree with the crowd sourcing most of the time, so regardless of if it's a single person, crowd sourced, AI, or anything else... it doesn't cut things where I want it to in a lot of cases.

And I'm pretty sure that the type of person who would spend time submitting the timestamps is probably a person who also is aggressively anti-ads/sponsorships, so is probably aggressive in their timestamps, which is fine, but it makes me gravitate towards agreeing with NewPipe on "not everything is pure evil" more than the sponsorblock submitters.

I actually like it being aggressive, the fewer minutes of my life I spend on content of questionable value the better, I already watch too much youtube for my own good and never find rewinding back through a skipped section worth it

This is a good perspective.

What did you actually miss? Is your life worse for it?

Realised this when Reddit removed 3rd party apps I never installed the official one, my life is no worse and they lost a user. We are just animals driven by brain chemicals, I never thought app timers were for me but I use them now

Might as well skip the whole video!

In the limit: might as well tune out everything and skip life.

The other limit: all things must be consumed exactly as delivered, and we must consume everything we can. (I'll disregard selection / filtering algorithm.)

The healthy medium is to consume, analyze, and synthesize how it makes sense for your particular style of traversing the information topology. Climb the gradients you want. Go as deep or as shallow as makes sense to you.

If you can derive value from skipping video played at double speed, good. If you want to or need to watch the whole thing twice, also good. You do what you need to do. No one prescription fits the bill for all people and all circumstances.

This reminds me of a game jam where the guy I was working with was watching a tutorial video at like 2.5x. I was shocked at the time yet later realized the brilliance. He learned so much faster that way. Now I have a hard time with less than 3x when watching some creators.

While they are aggressive, it is optional and you are trying to avoid their revenue source. So there's reason to be so picky.

I just fast-forward or the the sponsorship segments out if they are too annoying.

which is exactly the same wuth sponsorblock.

SponsorBlock has a lot of configurability: segments can be marked as various different things, so it's not all-or-nothing. You can set it to skip certain types of segments, and show other types. As for where things start and stop, it's crowdsourced, so you're relying on some volunteer to get those time points correct. I think it's possible to upload your own corrections, but I haven't played around with it much.

I assuming people submitting sections for LTT videos are trying to get it to match the floatplane version, which I assume doesn't have the segues.

I prefer using it without auto-skip though.

> I liked newpipe but their attitude to sponsorblock is tiring.

What do they mean? They dont even want to provide it as an option?

Yes, also including the "restore downvotes" functionality

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