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Louis Rossman/FUTO's YouTube app, GrayJay, now supports Sponsorblock... and shames you if you use it (lemmy.ca)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Seriously this was very surprising. I've been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it's a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn't "true open source" but it's a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.

I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me "turning this on harms creators" and made me click a box before I could continue.

Bruh, you're literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I'm "harming the creator"?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Well, it does harm creators, as they may get less money. The same goes for adblockers.

Then again I don't really understand why would you care about being "shamed", especially by a company that charges money for a frontend using YouTube's (extremely expensive) servers for free.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Then again I don't really understand why would you care about being "shamed", especially by a company that charges money for a frontend using YouTube's (extremely expensive) servers for free.

To paraphrase Norm MacDonald: the worst part is the hypocrisy 😅

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

"extremely expensive" is a bit of an overstatement.

Youtube proper, not the rest of Google, is tens of billions in the black, annually.

They reached this level of control over the market by running without video ads for a long time, forcing competitors to close out or not even open into the market without similar money backing. Turning around now and forcing tracking and ads should open them up to antitrust suits.

It's all arbitrage. If you can afford YouTube Premium's price, and don't mind the tracking, go for it. But all this ad blocking and alternative front ends MIGHT come to half a billion annually. uBlock has around 15 million installs, each installed user- assuming all separate and unique and blocking YouTube- would have to deny YouTube $1000 annually for it to be affecting their revenue.