Seriously this was very surprising. I’ve been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it’s a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn’t “true open source” but it’s a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.
I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me “turning this on harms creators” and made me click a box before I could continue.
Bruh, you’re literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I’m “harming the creator”?
Sponsorblock does not harm creators. Youtube has no method of detecting when a sponsored segment is skipped, so the creator still gets their sponsorship money. A person who is using sponsorblock is extremely unlikely to use the sponsored products even if they did watch the ad, so the creator isn’t losing out on any affiliate money either.
YouTube absolutely can see which parts of videos people are actually engaging with. So can creators. And sponsors can request engagement metrics as part of their sponsorship deals.
Advertisers care about impressions and engagement. A person simply watching a sponsored segment is an impression. If people’s impression metrics for sponsored segments start dropping, they become less attractive to sponsors as they knew they’re going to get fewer impressions as part of the deal.
It may, or may not, be a very small impact but it is an impact nonetheless.
If nobody is watching sponsored segments (which we’ve established: YouTube itsself, creators, and sponsors can track) then companies don’t have any incentive to sponsor videos, and creators no longer get revenue from sponsorships. Sure, this is a very end of the line example, because there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t have sponsorblock installed and can’t be bothered to skip the segment.
Just FYI for all the people who keep repeating this ad-nauseam it doesn’t apply to third party apps like Newpipe and grayjay which DO NOT send analytics data. If anyone wants to make arguments against sponsorblock they also can’t support apps and front-ends which strip the Analytics from the video because without them you add no watch time or metrics, so it’s a hypocritical argument.
I mean, it applies equally here. Using apps that strip metrics and analytics, has a similar effect to using sponsorblock. I don’t think I was arguing against sponsorblock I was saying facts about it. I use sponsorblock, I use grayjay, and I pay content creators.
The thread is about grayjay saying that using sponsorblock on grayjay will hurt creators. If grayjay doesn’t send metrics, then any metrics sponsorblock might mess up are already messed up by watching on grayjay.
YouTube gets metrics on which parts of videos are being played. You can see this in the player where it’ll display things like “most played segment” on the timeline.
See my other comments on the matter they don’t, not when using apps like this, it’s literally by design as they are meant to be privacy friendly so they naturally won’t send analytics data.
In theory the sponsor could demand access to the statistics showing watch time and pay differently because of that.
I doubt it happens though.
YouTube is unbearable without it.