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Comment by MattBearman | Hacker News Reader

YouTube premium actually has its own version of sponsorblock called skip ahead, it works really well, so they’re not ideologically opposed to skipping sponsored segments

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I guess it makes sense, they have no financial incentive to keep people from skipping sponsors, they don't make YouTube any money

That doesn't just target sponsor segments. It's for stuff commonly skipped. Like annoying parts of videos. Some video game guy I occasionally watching thinks he needs to sing for some reason, very useful for skipping those sections.

I’m surprised they allow ads (sponsor segments) they get no cut from at all.

Sponsorships are the primary way YouTube creators make money. There aren't many things that could knock YouTube off its near-monopoly market position, but banning sponsorships is definitely one. Creators would revolt.

They pretty surely would not.

Creators are already starting to build their own platforms for hosting videos and many of these are quite successful unlike prior iterations from 10 years ago.

Do you have some examples? I am still a bit sore from my adventures as a creator on Viddler and Dailymotion.

I would point to platforms like Curiosity Stream and Nebula, which are creator driven. Though I would not exactly call them Youtube replacements, as they are more just platforms designed for supporting specific creators more directly (akin to Patreon). These platforms are often advertised as in-video sponsorships, so going back to the original point, I do think creators would be very vocal if such ads were banned.

Kick is one that's been poaching big names lately. I've also seen people starting to stream on X and Rumble.

They wouldn't have a choice, your average big youtube channel earns 95% of their revenue from sponsorship.

It would either be trying a revolt or stop youtube.

Why would they not allow them?

Yes, I discovered this recently and it's nice. I presume they are not opposed to it because it's not costing them any lost revenue.

Where ? Like I have sponsor block on a desktop but on my pixel I don't have it and would like to have the option. Have the yt premium but don't see the option to skip sponsors.

If you double tap to skip 10 seconds during an ad read, it should appear as a button in the bottom right. It does not pop up proactively. It's algorithmically-based on which parts of the video get skipped most often by viewers.

Firefox for Android supports desktop extensions, including Sponsor Block and uBlock Origin.

There's also Tubular, a YouTube client and fork of NewPipe with Sponsor Block built-in. If you don't mind installing apks from outside the Play Store: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

There's a famous mod for the YouTube app called Re-Vanced. It adds support for SponsorBlock, removes Shorts, etc.

I've got Youtube premium and have never noticed that popping up. Is this platform or browser dependent? Is it only on some videos?

It isn't automatic for me unless I try to skip a sponsored segment myself, then it will kick in and skip me to the end of that segment with a popup above the scroll bar saying they did so.

Might just be the channels you're viewing. This video should have a "Jump ahead" appear around 0:19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs5PfanIkC0&t=1s

On the TV app, if you hit the forward button it instantly skips over the entire "commonly skipped section".

That's a feature that learns commonly skipped over sections, ads or otherwise.

Plus it works on mobile and TVs.

Yes, they really dgaf about the creators.

Another example of that is their ridiculous strike system. Look at what happened to Gamersnexus recently.

How is this in a way related to that or not gaf about creators?

I pay €14/mo to not have ads on YouTube. It's good they have the skip feature for those sponsor segments, since they're just embedded ads.

Creators still benefit as my view has a higher $. Well... not anymore I suppose with the view attribution endpoint being blocked by my adblock.

Creators get way more money out of their in-video sponsors than from youtube ads.

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