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Comment by _Algernon_ | Hacker News Reader

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_Algernon_

Just gonna leave this link to ublock origin here. If nothing else, install it as a small "fuck you" to dark patterns:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

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And I'll leave this here:

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

This also skips the sponsored parts of the actual videos ("this video is sponsored by skillshadow raid vpn,...")

I wonder if you could build an AI using this datasource to automatically detect sponsored segments. 3.8 million segment submissions is probably enough data.

It's been tried: https://github.com/andrewzlee/NeuralBlock

I think this kind of add-skipping is worse.

It is 'stealing' from the content creators rather than youtube. Besides, these ads are not based on surveillance capitalism but much less invasive old-school methods. Finally, there is much easier recourse against these ads. Don't watch content creators that have annoying adds. There are not many alternatives to youtube, but there are many alternatives to any given channel.

Personally I also believe that in-content ads are much less annoying. I think that is because the content-creator gets to push back on really annoying adds.

Creators are making so much money, we should not suffer poor user experience out of sympathy. Has anyone run the math as to how much these ppl make? Hint: a lot. CPMs are crazy high, in addition to product placement.

IMHO, in-video ads are worse than the usual ads, because they subversive and break the flow. When I'm watching a math video I don't want to hear about how Euler could have used a VPN.

Creators make some money, the better ones make a lot. I think creators are much more deserving of add money from their work as opposed to the platform that is hosting them. Especially because my relationship with the creators is much more voluntary than my relationship with the platform.

If numberphile starts running annoying ads, I can easily stop watching them, or manually skip them.

Which right is higher up on the hierarchy? Content creators' right to serve me adds, or my right to decide what software to run/not run on my general purpose computer. I know what I would answer to that.

You have a right to run all sorts of software that is unpleasant and generally a bad thing. See, for example, people running game cheat software, people running DDoS attacks, or even people sending others rick-rolls or goatsee.

In other words. Just because you have a right to run software that blocks creators apps does not mean it is right (in the sense of right vs wrong) to run that software.

If I can fast-forward a VHS tape (yes, I'm that old), to skip the recorded ads, why not fast-forward the ads in youtube videos?

I see a difference between doing it manually (not at all a problem, and indeed should be a right) and doing it automatically.

>"It is 'stealing' from the content creators rather than youtube."

I'm not so sure, from what I understand these creators are typically paid upfront to embed the sponsorship in the video and they are given some promocode or url to present to watchers and that's how these sponsors track engagement. I don't think they check the watch time or the skip rate.

True, skipping in-content ads wont hurt creators pocket directly. But it will indirectly. Less engagement with the ads will eventually hurt their rates. And perhaps even the existence of tools like these could hurt the income of creators in general.

Especially the second is scary. Creators being able to run these ads makes them much more independent from youtube, which I consider quite important.

Can't go wrong with ad blocking.

How can I adblock on my nvidia shield tv? I hate youtube ads. So much that I switched from iOS to Google Pixel just to be able to install vanced.

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

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