
An open-source browser extension to auto-skip sponsored segments on YouTube - phiresky
https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
======
crazygringo
Ah ha -- this isn't to skip ads, it's to crowdsource the time segments in
YouTube videos where sponsored content is part of the video itself, to skip
the segment itself.

I love it technically... but sadly I have hard time believing it will ever
work in practice, though maybe I'm just a cynic. :(

Simply because it needs a dedicated base of people always keeping up with all
the videos coming out each day who actually will go to the work of rewinding,
tagging, fast-forwarding, tagging again, continuing when all they really want
to do is just sit back watching a video.

Crowdsourcing for things like adblockers or Wikipedia work because the content
changes slowly and is evergreen. But popular YouTube videos rotate very
quickly and then sink into a long tail.

I'd love to be proven wrong, however. :)

(One way of possibly increasing adoption, however: I'd love if the extension
automatically ended videos when they jump into the "subscribe now!" trailer at
the end, especially for talk show segments, and immediately jumped to the next
video in the playlist if there is one. They're always the same length for each
show, so very easy to keep up-to-date.)

~~~
ALittleLight
Perhaps this is just phase one, to build a dataset out of YouTube videos and
sponsored promotions. Phase two could be training a classifier on the dataset.
Then, the classifier watches a few minutes ahead of the user, skipping any in-
content ads.

~~~
ajayyy
Sponsorblock developer here. The best part is that I made the database
completely public, so someone else can do "phase 2" without me even having to
be involved :)

------
jraph
This had to happen, right?

It reminds me of Adblock Radio [1, 2], which blocks ads on radios using
several techniques (it has nothing to do with the Adblock browser extension).

Maybe they could share some knowledge, especially on things based on sound
analysis? Seems hard to do for sponsored content though (nobody would be able
to talk about $PICK_A_POPULAR_VPN on YouTube anymore, ah ah).

[1] [https://www.adblockradio.com/](https://www.adblockradio.com/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057684)

~~~
Nextgrid
Well this wouldn’t happen if creators were more picky with their sponsors and
there was more variety. As it stands, there’s only a few legitimate sponsors
(so you would’ve already heard of them from other videos) and the rest is
dubious garbage like VPNs and pay-to-win mobile games).

~~~
ajayyy
Exactly. I made this only because I couldn't stand how deceptive many modern
sponsors are. If that didn't happen, I wouldn't have wasted time making this.

\- sponsorblock dev

------
FBISurveillance
I'm a happy uBlock Origin user but this one just seems unfair to content
creators.

~~~
gpm
You don't have a right to make money by manipulating impressionable people
into buying things that they don't need.

Or maybe you do because of free speech, but you definitely don't have a right
to have other people not try and stop you from succeeding.

~~~
umvi
And you don't have a right to have your cake and eat it too.

It's astonishing how many people on HN believe it is okay to shaft the
sponsors of the content they enjoy and consume. What ever happened to "don't
bite the hand that feeds you?"

~~~
iicc
I object to someone trying to influence me, just because they're paid to.
Don't you?

~~~
wongarsu
Then don't watch sponsored channels?

~~~
tetris11
And if the only fast video sharing site is teeming with these kind of videos?
What would a sane man do?

~~~
umvi
Support the content creator with Patreon and then skip the in-video
sponsorship with a clear conscience.

~~~
ajayyy
Maybe my extension will convince some youtubers to offer non sponsored videos
on patreon. That would be the dream result of this extension.

Even nebula (CGP Grey and Kurzgesagt's steaming platform) sadly doesn't
enforce this.

------
wandererx2a
I like the idea of crowdsourced effort to build useful datasets. Nevertheless,
with growing popularity, I can imagine a whole lot of potential abuse of the
voting API, e.g: blacklisting competitors channels.

~~~
ajayyy
Yea, I'm scared of it too now. I never expected growth this fast.

------
Nextgrid
Finally something to deal with the deluge of questionable VPN providers using
fear-mongering to sell their stuff. I'd love to use this if there was a Safari
version.

~~~
ajayyy
I'd love is someone ported it to be a user script. It is definitely possible.

\- sponsorblock dev

------
danShumway
What is the practical difference between blocking an ad, manually skipping an
ad, and watching an ad and then ignoring the product? In all three cases
you're mostly worth the same to the creator: zero. This is especially true in
worlds like podcasting, where promo codes are the primary tracking metrics to
find out how successful the ad campaign has been.

Advertising isn't magic. Your creator is getting paid because they are
encouraging users to either spend more or to direct their spending at a
specific product (regardless of that product's actual value). I don't see how
you're supporting a creator just by listening to ads. The people who _buy_ the
products are supporting a creator, and they're subsidizing you. Even to an
advertiser, ultimately, your ears aren't valuable. Your money is valuable. A
_conversion_ is valuable.

There's this idea that if we all tolerate certain kinds of advertising,
creators will get paid and nobody will have to lose -- but it just doesn't
click with me, no matter how much I think about it. The money isn't free, it
has to come from somewhere. Somebody has to have their spending habits
manipulated against their will for this to work. The propaganda has to be
effective for some people, or they wouldn't pay this much money to distribute
propaganda.

And it's very difficult for me to imagine a scenario where introducing
multiple massive middlepeople into that transaction will make the transaction
ultimately end up costing us _less_ money than if we just payed creators
directly for their content.

We _are_ paying for ads; or at least more vulnerable people are paying on our
behalf. I strongly suspect we would collectively pay less as a society if we
just gave creators money.

------
meowface
I like the channels that let me do this myself. The video ends, there's a
clear transition (important), and then the spiel starts. I just turn it off.
This is fine.

The bad ones are the ones that dedicate the first 3 minutes to some horrible
mobile game (JonTron, etc.), or do mid-video cuts (New Rockstars, etc.), or,
by far worst of all, do a very smooth and clean transition into the ad before
you even knew the video was over, so for the first seconds you don't even
realize you're watching an ad (Kurzgesagt).

I know creators need to get paid, so for all but the last, I don't mind them
_too_ much and just skip ahead (but will definitely be using this extension).
Ads that are hard to distinguish from content are abominable, though.

~~~
ajayyy
This extension was built because of Kurzgesagt. I love them, but it really
frustrates me that this happens.

Wendover is 100x worse, but I stopped watching his channel all together for
that very reason over a year ago.

------
StavrosK
I thought this is to skip ads, but no, it is to skip sponsored content
_inside_ the video file. I loaded a Veritasium video to check
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI)),
the video started playing, I looked at the bar and saw no yellow markers, and
figured the extension is useless for me.

Then I clicked "unskip" and realized it had already skipped over the
Veritasium sponsored content straight to the start of the video.

Magical.

------
ar-nelson
I see a lot of people saying this is unfair to content creators. I understand
that sentiment when it comes to blocking normal ads, since revenue is based on
ad views; that's why I don't run AdBlock on YouTube. But when it comes to in-
video sponsored sections, can the sponsors actually tell whether viewers
watched that _particular segment_ of the video? If not, this seems like the
most ethical kind of adblock: creators still get paid, but you don't have to
watch the (usually scammy) ads.

~~~
meowface
The problem is eventually this or something like this will probably catch on,
and then sponsors will pressure YouTube into creating a system to provide
metrics on who watches certain parts of videos. It doesn't sound that hard to
do on a technical level, and I believe this is already available to creators
in some way. Way less work than automagically detecting copyrighted audio and
video, which they already do with Content ID.

~~~
ajayyy
This already exists. You can see realtime (per second of the video) engagement
statistics. It shows drops in sponsored sections normally and it pickup back
up right after.

~~~
meowface
Right, but can sponsors themselves access this data via an API or something,
currently? Asking the creator to email engagement metrics screenshots every
week isn't too practical.

~~~
ajayyy
It is private. I don't think they would really care and would more care about
link clicks.

~~~
meowface
True. The people who use these blockers/skippers would essentially never visit
those links in the first place, so it may not really make a difference in the
end.

------
samstave
I recently switched to Brave Browser and been keeping everything on Lockdown.

Added this.

Brave has made my experience so much better in general - looking forward to
seeing how this works for me.

------
swinglock
What about privacy? Will this extension send a query to a server, identifying
each video opened on YouTube?

~~~
al_chemist
I really hate this kind of nit-picking. You're afraid to give this information
to student who said it's not stored, and yet you don't mind to give the same
information to the biggest marketing machine who not only uses it, but also
sells it.

~~~
swinglock
It's naive to assume only the current author has or will have exclusive access
to your data.

~~~
ajayyy
Yes, that's why I don't store data I don't need.

But of course, I agree with you. Don't trust anyone.

~~~
al_chemist
Don't agree with him. It's your project and your time. If you trust yourself
and know you don't log, then why make an effort to appease paranoid users who
never checked source code of your extension? k-anonymity will increase load of
your server and your cost while you know it's pointless.

On the other hand, user can use VPN, Tor, browser containers to achieve the
same. If they really are as paranoid as they say - they already do.

~~~
ajayyy
Yes, but in general I do agree it is important to be weary of services. Not
specifically mine.

------
chippy
One of my first memories as a child in the early 80s was a conversation in the
school playing ground about VHS players that could automatically skip adverts.
We thought the idea was so awesome

------
martin_a
I think this is helpful and will give it a try.

Greedy content producers will not stop including sponsors in their videos.
"This video could not have been made without $sponsor..." Yeah, yeah, what a
BS: Lots (like several 100k) of subscribers, Patreons, ads on the videos,
affiliate links in the description and sometimes sponsored hardware with a
well visible brand logo and you still come around and tell me you couldn't
make ends meet without even more sponsorships?

Especially with all the more-or-less shady VPN providers, "JLCPCB" on
electronics videos or Skillshare on the rest of the videos, YouTube feels more
and more like linear television.

~~~
mathw
And for all the channels which really are relying on that revenue? Are you
paying for YouTube Premium? Are you signing up to support the creator on
Patreon? Are you paying channel memberships?

What's left to fund your favourite content when none of this happens?

~~~
asaddhamani
Does some part of my YouTube premium membership fee go to the content
creators?

~~~
Brozilean
I remember seeing something about a very low percentage of viewers being
YouTube premium, but accounting for something like 40+% of revenue.

~~~
Mirioron
That depends on how much ads pay, how many users watch ads/use adblock, how
much they watch etc. Videos that get few ads or low-priced ads might indeed
have the membership be a large portion of the revenue. Generally it's more in
the 10-20% range though.

------
bigmit37
This seems excessive if it’s going to hurt content creators. Content creation
is not easy and some YouTubers need the sponsor money to continue creating
work for the channel as ad money pays very little. Most channels I have
visited tell you they are sponsored by so and so, which was making it easy to
know which videos were sponsored and I’m assuming those are the ones this NN
will pick up. Now the sponsors could potentially ask creators to become more
creative and more deceptive.

On the other hand something like this inevitable and I will check out the
project.

------
rinchik
Is this extension even relevant? I haven't ever seen those on youtube. uBlock
+ pihole do the job.

Smart TV, on the other hand, manages to bypass my pihole (as if adds were
burned into the vid), that's where I need to figure something out.

~~~
wmf
This isn't about the ads that are inserted by YouTube. This is trying to block
parts of the main video that are ads.

~~~
rinchik
"parts of the main video that are ads" \- well, i'm not sure what those are.
Is it something that happens when they record a program from a TV and then
upload that video to youtube without removing TV ads?

~~~
hombre_fatal
Imagine a Youtube video where the host takes a break to read off an
advertisement and that you'll get a 10% discount if you use their code during
the checkout process. And then they resume with their content.

They often will pre-record these segments with a consistent "now with a quick
word about our sponsors" jingle which can be statically detected and removed
from the video.

------
throwGuardian
So much tech targeting content creation revenue generation!! Why? Can't we
just let those generating free content do their thing without going after
their livelihood?

~~~
ajna91
It's an unstable equilibrium, not win-win but win-lose. It's only win-win if
you think being subjected to tracking, ads, etc costs you nothing. Many people
would disagree.

~~~
Mirioron
These are sponsor segments that are part of the video. There is no tracking
involved that isn't also part of the video, because it's part of the video
itself. This is not about privacy, but rather about being annoyed by ads.

~~~
meowface
That _is_ why I use ad blockers, though. I don't care about the tracking,
generally; I care about seeing ads. This is why most people use them. There's
nothing wrong with not wanting to see ads.

