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Louis Rossman/FUTO's YouTube app, GrayJay, now supports Sponsorblock... and shames you if you use it (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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"?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Where does this assertion come from that people that use sponsorblock are somehow never going to buy products? People keep saying it but I just don’t get it. We live in a world where people buy things. Some products are relevant to some people and some aren’t to other people. I use sponsorblock and adblock, and if I were to somehow see an advert for a product that seemed like it perfectly fit a need that I had, I’d definitely consider getting the product.

I use SponsorBlock. Ads have an influence on me, but usually with a negative impact on whatever they sell, so it's beneficial for them that I don't see their ads.

If I was looking for a fantasy-themed, turn-based role-playing gacha game, and a specific game annoys the fuck out of me with their massive marketing budget, they're automatically on my blacklist. I'll proactively ignore the game in my market research and exclude the game, the game's company and publisher from my Google search results with the uBlacklist browser extension.

If it's a SaaS and they charge a premium for SSO, they get a once in a lifetime opportunity to land on a public wall of shame that some sysadmins use to preemptively filter out software vendors from their purchasing process. So it's a really shitty idea to advertise crap to the wrong people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, sure, that's a nice story about yourself, but like, this doesn't address the core of your assertion that people who use sponsorblock won't buy products if they see ads for them. It doesn't seem like the two are actually inherently related at all. (People who don't want to watch adverts) are not necessarily (People who don't buy products).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why do they have to prove that? You backed up the assertion that sponsorblock hurts creators with the mere unlikely possibility that sponsors might be able to see metrics, how does their single anecdotal bit of evidence that people using sponsorblock are the kinds of people that won't click ads anyway not pass the same muster?

Admittedly they're both bad evidence, so why are we treating yours as better?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, sure, you can say I made a bad argument, I don't entirely disagree given the context was originally about grayjay, but at this point I'm not even making my argument anymore I'm just trying to figure out why it seems to be a shared view. I want to understand, y'know?

And I don't really think it's fair to say my assertion was only backed up by that unlikely possibility, but I don't fully stand behind my original argument in this context anymore anyway

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

People who use sponsorblock or other kinds of adblock are the kinds of people who get annoyed by watching ads. I suppose it's possible some of those are short because the ads are working and they keep spending money, but in my experience and the experiences I've seen discussed elsewhere, it seems to generally be that they are annoyed because they're not interested in what the ads are selling and wouldn't be sold on them anyway.