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Comment by n0vella | Hacker News Reader

Hi, I have a task to check SponsorBlock API to see if this can work for podcasts. In the other hand I doubt a bit because I don't know if that could harm podcasters in any way. But I think something like SponsorBlock eventually will be a feature. PD, awesome idea other people are doing using Whisper.

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One of the challenges that are always going to be present when trying to skip podcast ads is that the vast majority (especially on larger shows) of ads are inserted dynamically even those that are read by the host. That means that not everybody gets them (geo targeted) and they may not be served to every listener at all times. Makes it a more challenging problem than the baked in sections of YT vids that Sponsorblock targets.

Exactly. The SponsorBlock system would need to be updated to support marking ad block stop and start points by audio signature (much more complicated than simple timestamps) or transcription (compute intensive).

Uh, that could be a problem, I was thinking on sponsors made by the podcaster itself, but some plattforms do insert extra adds (I saw them at the beggining or end) and makes sense that they are country-specific and not the same every time.

Yeah, I would recommend this be VERY low on your priorities list because of all of the challenges involved.

There is a reason none of the major podcast apps have even attempted to do anything with ad blocking.

My naive attempt at removing podcast ads with an LLM worked on my first attempt. LLMs make many seemingly impossible tasks easy.

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