There's people and companies on YouTube that produce outstanding content and I have no issue supporting them (YouTube Premium). I get that's not an option for a lot of people though so barring the invasive tracking for ads on YouTube, this is the next best thing.
For sponsor, I use SponsorBlock. I would say it's my second most favourite extension after Ublock Origin. I'm always amazed when it just skip over those section. For low quality video, it even start the video at the conclusion/recap, so you get all the info you need without spending too much time.
It's like I don't get upset by crappy stock photos or navigation bars, but would give up on a website that took 30 seconds to load...
A sponsor segment is an advertiser targeting the whole audience of a video by directly working with the video creator. Trustworthy creators will select sponsors which make sense for their audience and don’t detract from their credibility or brand.
An ad, though, is a break in the content where the host basically takes each of their audiencemembers, and separately auctions off the right to talk to them to a shady back room full of random hawkers.
Each audience member gets a random ad which the content creator has no control over or awareness of, nor any relationship with other than financial.
(Speaking as someone with experience in psychology, publishing and ad tech here, so that's my primary focus/perspective.)
Here's my personal ideal for a platform like YT:
- Take a service fee cut (e.g. 30%)
- allocate the remaining 70% of money to the people I watched
(optional) let me allocate some of my budget to a random pool of other creators so I can support their growth/someone else's free access to content.
This can work. An example would be Guardian relying on donations, where many people pay so others can access their content. (look for their case studies to learn more)
The fee is charged to users if I understand it correctly? So essentially YouTube premium? That can work, but not everyone can afford to spend money on a subscription and if you block access to the platform it's arguably you will be able to grow to the size and diversity YouTube has. Floatplane is an alternative where you can directly subscribe to creators but that's not cheap if you watch a wide variety.
Ironically, the biggest obstacle for me pushing the alternatives were the publishers' sales teams: people with decent salaries, with mortgages to pay, whose life depended on ads or sponsorships. Even the adtech companies I worked with were happy to pay for my work, esp. during the cookiegeddon times (2019).
> I'd argue the consent is you clicking on the video to watch it.
Fair argument but in practice, given the amount of UX work done so I do watch the sponsored content, it takes a toll on you. The only solution would be to stop using YT at all.