
Show HN: An “ethical” YouTube auto ad skipper chrome extension - nstart
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-auto-ad-skipper/ibpnocgpjfpblfhciempjbmahomooiah
======
nstart
Hi HN. This is my first published chrome extension :). I always skip ads in
such a way that content creators get paid. But doing that manually especially
with playlists can be a little tiring. So I made this extension to do it for
me. It's open source as well

[https://github.com/spartakode/Youtube-Ethical-Ad-
Skipper](https://github.com/spartakode/Youtube-Ethical-Ad-Skipper)

------
shubh24
You wanna read my YouTube data, eh? No no!

~~~
nstart
Sadly I'm not in charge of the wording that Chrome puts out. Else it would
read "wants permission to see if your URL is a YouTube URL and then insert
some JS to control the mute and skip ad button" :D

If it helps, the source code is open so you can check out that no funny
business is going on :) [https://github.com/spartakode/Youtube-Ethical-Ad-
Skipper](https://github.com/spartakode/Youtube-Ethical-Ad-Skipper)

------
fil_a_del_fee_a
How is this legal?

~~~
nstart
Clicking on ads themselves wouldn't be legal. Since this doesn't circumvent
normal behaviour and actually waits 31 seconds before skipping an ad, it def
isn't illegal. There's no trickery involved either. It's just doing what the
user would ideally do under normal circumstances but doing it automatically.

------
bbcbasic
It's not entirely ethical because the advertiser gets ripped off. It increases
their cost and reduces what they are prepared to pay for ads. If everyone else
used it, content creators wouldn't get paid eventually. If YouTube was
independent from Google it would die.

~~~
nstart
Thanks for the comment here. I spent some time thinking about this topic. I've
done a write up here if you are interested - [http://blog.spartakode.com/an-
ad-skipper-for-youtube-that-pa...](http://blog.spartakode.com/an-ad-skipper-
for-youtube-that-pays-the-content-maker/#isitreallyethical)

The argument can be summarized as:

1\. Skipping ads quickly on every chance you get means you are watching the
video for "free". Which isn't fair to the creator

2\. Not skipping ads in order to support the creator isn't great for
advertisers either.

3\. That said, Google is moving towards deprecating 30 second unskippable ads
(unskippable ads will have to be 15-20 seconds or less). This means that users
in general view ads longer than 20 seconds to be intrusive which means that
the majority of people are likely skipping ads unless they are really
compelling.

4\. It's an unfortunate situation to be in but I choose to side with the
content creators since ultimately they drive the whole site. YouTube ads
should in the future normalise towards the better format of 15 seconds or less
and most of them will become unskippable. This will happen regardless of this
extension especially given that the majority of their traffic will come from
mobile anyway.

5\. Thus in the practical view of things, this chrome extension is likely to
be used by a maximum of 1000 users (being extremely generous here). The market
says that people just want to skip 5 seconds in. Not be ethical. And so I
resolve the ethics conundrum within myself by accepting that this isn't likely
to affect the YouTube eco system as a whole negatively, but it will at the
very least, play a tiny part in contributing to the creators well being over
time.

Last note: I really love YouTube Red. I broke borders using my VPN to get it
but the hassle of having to keep the VPN going to use it especially on the
mobile is a problem. Also I'm scared that YouTube will ban my entire Google
account for breaking ToS so I stopped. The day they make it available
globally, I'll be a happy person with a credit card at the ready :).

