You’d think so, but no! My only real ad surfaces anymore are YouTube (sponsored spots), podcasts, and billboards. I am very good at skipping podcast ads and sponsor spots on YouTube, but when I don’t I mostly just fume about how I can’t for whatever reason (usually when I’m washing dishes and my hands are wet). Billboards are easy to ignore most of the time, too, because on my regular routes I know where they are and have apparently trained myself that there’s not anything of interest there.
I don’t use sponsorblock myself (though I don’t begrudge anyone who does). For a couple of reasons:
I don’t trust SponsorBlock necessarily, since it’s community-noted. It’s become clear that I have different opinions than others about what constitutes a sponsor spot. uBlock can be more certain about what constitutes an ad or not, since it comes from a different domain than the content, but with sponsor spots, they’re part of the same content stream.
Sometimes host-read ad spots are actually clever, or integral to the video in some way.
I have a lot more sympathy for the individual creator who gets all of that money than I do for the trillion-dollar multinational conglomerate.
In any case, I am typically pretty good at skipping ahead. And if the sponsor segments get too onerous, I tend to just stop watching that channel.
EDIT TO ADD: I’ve been informed that SponsorBlock now does a good job of solving the first problem by categorizing sponsor spots. I’ll have to try it out again.
FYI, you don’t have to have it automatically skip segments. You can have it label the segment in the seek bar (different color depending on type of content), and when the video reaches that point, a little option to skip pops up. So it’s entirely up to you each time.
Yep, I block the embedded ads from YouTube, too. I don’t use SponsorBlock to automatically skip the ad spots that the creator put in themselves, though. Sometimes they’re actually clever, but more to the point I have a lot more sympathy for the individual creator who gets all of that money than I do for the trillion-dollar multinational conglomerate.
You can configure which categories to skip, so you could enable ad spots, yet still skip intros, or non-music portions of music videos, that kind of thing. There are 10 different categories.
Oh, interesting! The last time I tried it was long, long ago, so I didn’t realize that they had expanded that configuration. Or maybe I just don’t remember seeing it.
You’d think so, but no! My only real ad surfaces anymore are YouTube (sponsored spots), podcasts, and billboards. I am very good at skipping podcast ads and sponsor spots on YouTube, but when I don’t I mostly just fume about how I can’t for whatever reason (usually when I’m washing dishes and my hands are wet). Billboards are easy to ignore most of the time, too, because on my regular routes I know where they are and have apparently trained myself that there’s not anything of interest there.
YouTube has gotten a lot better since I started using “sponsorblock”, it automatically skips sponsor segments.
i use ublock origin.
You can use both, I do.
I don’t use sponsorblock myself (though I don’t begrudge anyone who does). For a couple of reasons:
I don’t trust SponsorBlock necessarily, since it’s community-noted. It’s become clear that I have different opinions than others about what constitutes a sponsor spot. uBlock can be more certain about what constitutes an ad or not, since it comes from a different domain than the content, but with sponsor spots, they’re part of the same content stream.
Sometimes host-read ad spots are actually clever, or integral to the video in some way.
I have a lot more sympathy for the individual creator who gets all of that money than I do for the trillion-dollar multinational conglomerate.
In any case, I am typically pretty good at skipping ahead. And if the sponsor segments get too onerous, I tend to just stop watching that channel.
EDIT TO ADD: I’ve been informed that SponsorBlock now does a good job of solving the first problem by categorizing sponsor spots. I’ll have to try it out again.
FYI, you don’t have to have it automatically skip segments. You can have it label the segment in the seek bar (different color depending on type of content), and when the video reaches that point, a little option to skip pops up. So it’s entirely up to you each time.
Noutube on fdroid also does this automagically.
i adblock youtube ads, its impossible without it.
Yep, I block the embedded ads from YouTube, too. I don’t use SponsorBlock to automatically skip the ad spots that the creator put in themselves, though. Sometimes they’re actually clever, but more to the point I have a lot more sympathy for the individual creator who gets all of that money than I do for the trillion-dollar multinational conglomerate.
You can configure which categories to skip, so you could enable ad spots, yet still skip intros, or non-music portions of music videos, that kind of thing. There are 10 different categories.
Oh, interesting! The last time I tried it was long, long ago, so I didn’t realize that they had expanded that configuration. Or maybe I just don’t remember seeing it.