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Comment by 2Gkashmiri | Hacker News Reader

i use https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe which is super amazing. sadly the PR to implement sponsorblock in the main newpipe was worked on for almost a year but unfortunately the youtube-dl fiasco happened around the same time and that spooked the devs who refused to import the PR.

That forced the PR author to set up the fork which is working surprisingly well. People were imagining that the fork would not survive but i have been using it since day 1 and can't imagine newpipe or libretube without sponsorblock.

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+1 for sponsor block fork. Its available through Izzydroid repo [1] that can be added to F-droid. The author should release it soon as well. Its amazing how well it works

[1] https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...

Izzysoft is doing valuable effort.

Another fork with SponsorBlock support plus a few extra video platforms is the bravenewpipe

https://github.com/bravenewpipe/NewPipe

Just curious, because my intuition is that anyone who finds sponsorblock to be crucial is likely consuming a decent bid of media... What are your strategies for compensating the creators you enjoy?

compensation for what?

paint me ignorant but you read dozens of articles linked on HN daily. I do too, how many times have you compensated them?

people who blog for fun, or have a hobby or whatever. tomorrow they start streaming or recording and whatever so why should i compensate them?

why are we normalizing the idea that someone can suddenly start a youtube channel and now its the "responsibility" of subscribers to feed them?

its not a zero sum game. i understand that but the current model works or not, i dont know because i do not contribute.

Compensation for their time and energy. Imagine if your boss asked you the same question after a month of hard work: "Compensation for what?"

I do like to make use of donation buttons when provided. I buy books and merch for the sole purpose of supporting creators across several mediums.

For much of my life I was extremely impoverished and had to rely on piracy and other means to fulfill my consumption habits. However now that I can afford it, I try to return the favor by compensating creators and subsidizing the new generation of broke nerds.

> why are we normalizing the idea that someone can suddenly start a youtube channel and now its the "responsibility" of subscribers to feed them?

Why are we denormalizing the idea that people shouldn't be rewarded for the hard work that they do for their communities? No one is twisting your arm; ethical consumption is clearly an opt-in model in the current internet.

You are free to continue pirating content or viewing it without ads. Especially if you consume a wide berth of content, which is hard to financially support at scale, or have political stances against locked-in platforms (I sure do). You are also free to be considerate of the time and energy people spend on these projects which often times become their life's work.

None. They put their content out on a platform that does not require my contribution. YouTube was, and is, never about "compensating content creators" and I am under no obligation to do so, but they get paid anyway. Some get paid to add a segment from a sponsor, I choose to automatically skip that segment, but they still got paid for putting it in anyway.

Would I watch it if they were behind a subscription fee? No.

This argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny. YouTube employs an ad model to pay creators, and tools like NewPipe and ad blockers (which I myself use, for good reason) circumvent this process. To not supplement it with alternative is to disrespect the time and energy required to make a video.

Some content is relatively cheap to produce, be it vlog format or whatever. And some creators don't care about compensation because they have existing revenue sources. But many creators do this full-time and depend on generating an income stream from their hard work. The rule of thumb is an hour of work per minute of video for many creators.

It is a matter of ethical consumption, which yes, you are not obligated to adhere to. But you should consider your consumption habits and review whether you are being fair to the people who work hard to inform or entertain you.

YouTube pays contributors a tiny fraction of their ad revenue in order to make more ad revenue. Sponsors pay them to include their products.

So yes, it does hold up to scrutiny. YouTube and sponsors are paying them. I am not obligated, ethically or otherwise, to watch adverts.

That makes zero sense. Most creators don't get significant sponsorship money. And they don't get paid for ads that aren't seen.

You don't get to resolve yourself of ethical obligations simply by saying you don't have them. Just be honest with yourself in that you like to exploit the time and energy of creators for your own entertainment without compensating them in some form. That's fine. But the ethics of the situation are much more nuanced than you choose to believe.

It makes all the sense. There is no subscription fee. There is no premise nor expectation of payment by the viewer. They get paid as a consequence of people viewing, ahead of time by sponsors, or as a payment in lieu by ad monetisation - or if lucky/good enough voluntary donations. Keyword voluntary. This expectation of donorship is a recent fad that is just banal and asinine at the same time.

By extension do you feel obliged to buy the products being advertised because they have incurred the expense to buy the ad space and/or sponsorship?

> This expectation of donorship is a recent fad

Actually, patronage was the default form of compensation for the arts during most of human history. You should question your world view.

> do you feel obliged to buy the products being advertised

Irrelevant to the conversation, let's dispense with straw man arguments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage

The expectation (that every singke viewer is obliged) is the recent fad, not the concept of donations. Are you deliberately obtuse or just incapable of distinguishing the two?

Not irrelevant nor a stawman, but does show the fault in your argument. Somewhat ironic of you to accuse that given the above. Oh well.

When at any point have I expressed that every single viewer is obliged to pay for the media they consume? I have not, and that is another straw man. I only pointed out that the ethics are much more nuanced than you are willing to accept.

At this point you are being disingenuous as well as devolving into insults, so I will end this discussion here. Please use good faith when engaging in discussions on this platform.

> You don't get to resolve yourself of ethical obligations

Forming an argument with the unfounded pretense that everyone is obliged to donate is somehow not claiming everyone is obliged to donate. Yet somehow I'm the disingenious one.

yeah. my understanding is this.

netflix/amazon prime are PAID only services. either you pay and get access or you do not pay and dont get access.

I am FINE with this. i have never paid for either and i do not plan to which means i cannot consume this media, again, fine by me.

when you put something on public internet, i am under no obligation to "compensate" anyone. put a paywall and prevent me from accessing your "service" like netflix.

Many people are patreon or other subscribers. Not needed to watch ads. I would rather pay than waste my bandwidth while on train.

I do support creators on patreon, but I find it is too expensive to scale to every creator whose content I enjoy.

I wish there was a tip jar under each video and that it integrated with alternative frontends such as NewPipe, but I also don't want to hear "don't forget to like and subscribe, make sure to hit the bell, and consider leaving a tip" in every single video.

> but I also don't want to hear "don't forget to like and subscribe, make sure to hit the bell, and consider leaving a tip" in every single video.

I don't know why youtube forces people do that, but it'd be nice if they fixed their algorithm so that it wasn't needed.

just white noise at this point for me

I don't use sponcerblock, but I do download all youtube videos before watching them and I manually fast forward past the ads. I'm sure that doesn't help them either.

As others have stated there's no obligation to give youtubers your time/attention/money/engagement, but when you've found a channel you enjoy it's natural to want to help them continue to put out good content.

Ultimately though my options for supporting youtubers are limited, because I'm not signing into youtube so I can't even comment/like/subscribe/ring bells or whatever else most people do.

I have in the past donated to youtubers directly. Mostly though I support them by spreading the word and watching their videos. Maybe one of the people I show the channel to will comment and hit the like button and buy a billion nord VPN subscriptions.

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