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”?
Simply put: Companies pay creators to include advertisements wherein the creator speaks positively about the company’s products or services. The expectation is that consumers watching the content created by those creators will see the advertisement spot, and buy the product or service from the company.
Of course, companies do not want to pay if someone did not watch their advertisement. If that advertisement is skipped, modern internet-based video platforms like YouTube can tell, and advertisers will not pay the creator for that video view. Because these companies are paying creators directly, rather than buying the ad spot through YouTube or other content platform, that is money taken directly out of the creator’s pocket.
You do not have to accept ads crammed down your throat by corporations, but it is good to do whatever you can to directly support the people creating the content you consume.
This is not how ot works though.
Modern internet-based video platforms like YouTube do NOT tell this information to advrrtisers, because the sponsor block ads have no contract with YouTube directly. They are paying the content creator, not youtube.
There’s no way for sponsor block advertisers to tell how many people skipped their ad.