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

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”?

stifle867,

I’m confused about your stance on ReVanced. It’s about as open-source as you can get github.com/revanced/revanced-patches

bionicjoey,

With ReVanced there is a core underlying app being patched which is not OSS. With GrayJay, the source of the whole thing is source-available

stifle867,

I understand that and wouldn’t have commented if you said that. Instead you said that, quote, ReVanced, end quote, is not open source.

kick_out_the_jams, (edited )

My understanding is that it literally can't be used in an open fashion since it critically requires a proprietary closed base.

Some source code is available but the entire thing is not open source.

ayaya,
@ayaya@lemdro.id avatar

I think you guys are just discussing semantics. Revanced as a project is the patches themselves, so Revanced is open source. But a YouTube app patched with the Revanced patches is not.

kick_out_the_jams,

That's a better way to frame it.

The patch is 'about as open source as you can get' but the actual application is far from it.

stifle867,

Exactly. Could have just said YouTube is closed source from the start when ReVanced is 100% open-source.

brothershamus,
@brothershamus@kbin.social avatar

Well I'm glad that's settled then.

bionicjoey,

Well the app it creates on your device is not open source. The patch is, but the actual software being run isn’t.

Also you can just use actual quotation marks my dude, no need to say “quote end quote” like some kind of Dan Carlin impersonator

noodlejetski,

no it’s not. the modifications are open source, but the base client is the same old closed source Youtube app.

cupcakezealot, (edited )
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

i keep sponsorblock on but i pretty much have it set on manual skip by default. i mostly use it for critical role (whom i also subscribe to on twitch) shows to skip the intermission or for twitch vods on youtube to skip the beginning and after parts where it’s just the streamer talking to chat.

but i also don’t understand how skipping in video sponsored segments loses them money like it’s not a youtube thing it’s a creator thing like television adverts. how would they know if it’s been skipped wouldn’t they already get the money to do the sponsorship before the video is posted?

chiliedogg,

They get paid more if people use the affiliate links or coupon codes from the sponsored sections of the video.

DanForever,

Youtube tracks how much of a video each person watches. These metrics are used by youtubers to strike deals with sponsors.

The amount of money the sponsor pays will be based on how many views the sponsor’s message part of the video gets.

anothermember,

Blocking YouTube’s advertising is necessary for privacy, and it punishes YouTube for their bad business practices.

But sponsors aren’t underhanded like that and I feel like they’re the type of thing we should really be promoting as an alternative to privacy invading ads, and hopefully a way for creators to move off of YouTube eventually.

bionicjoey,

A lot of sponsors are very exploitative companies in their own right, and I don’t owe them my time or attention.

anothermember,

The point is that YouTubers pay for that with their own reputation, if I followed a YouTuber that promoted exploitative companies I would stop following that YouTuber - why would you want to watch their content anyway?

yum13241,

Raid: Shadow Legends anyone?

Chewy7324,

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.

For me, terms and definitions are very important. Just like right to repair is often misrepresented to the detriment of consumers, it’s important to only talk about open source if the license actually respects your freedom [1].

Open source has a lot of positive connotations and calling some project open source while only being source available feels like taking advantage of it.

It’s similar to how large corporations talking about being eco friendly with their packaging whilst making the actual devices as hard to repair as possible.

You’re right, the ReVanced project is open source, but the resulting app is not, since it’s modifying the official YouTube app.

[1] opensource.org/osd/

Alimentar,

I’m fairly certain they didn’t want to include it but felt it was the only way to offer the same/better service over revanced.

I’m sure as hell happy about that. I understand the creators need their sponsors but at the same time, I cannot stand ads. Like this I’m keeping his app and frequent it more often.

Scary_le_Poo, (edited )
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

Grayjay doesn’t block ads. It simply doesn’t load them in the stream. There is a difference.

LittleEndu,

Grayjay also doesn’t send analytics data back to YouTube, so watching the sponsor or skipping it look identical to YouTube’s servers. One can’t make the argument that you are supporting creators by watching their sponsors if the sponsors have no way to know that the sponsor part of the video was watched.

Silentiea,

As far as I’m aware, creator sponsorships rarely care about whether or not you watch the segments, but about how many people follow the link or whatnot. So you could make the argument that sponsorblock makes you never follow the links, but that really assumes you would otherwise, which…

LittleEndu,

Yeah, and there are no products that I care about that get advertised by youtubers so I would never click on those links. I don’t shave, I don’t need to build a website, I don’t need a VPN, I don’t need a food delivery service, I don’t listen to audio books, I don’t need earpods, I don’t play mobile games…

Listening to these sponsors literally loses me time. I reinstalled revanced 2 months ago and sponsorblock already has skipped 50 minutes worth of sponsors. (oh these sponsorblock stats also seem to be missing from grayjay. Grayjay doesn’t seem to have any sponsorblock settings besides allowing you to manually skip instead automatically)

flop_leash_973,

Outside of his right to repair work I find most anything Rossmann gets involved in is questionable. He is a good example of someone that got popular for something they cared about and knew something about, then mistakenly got the idea that success meant they had valid opinions on other things they know nothing about.

Rossmann knows about laptop hardware repair and running a small business. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into being a knowledgeable voice in the software dev or large scale digital advertising industries.

He is just a mouthpiece for the company behind Greyjay, nothing more.

WarmApplePieShrek,

So he’s basically Elon Musk.

bionicjoey,

I’m inclined to agree. I respect the work he’s done for R2R, but I find his videos on New York commercial real estate to be incredibly cringe. Nonetheless I think GrayJay is a decent YouTube frontend and will probably continue using it until it gives me a reason to stop or until something I prefer comes along.

Skelectus, (edited )
@Skelectus@suppo.fi avatar

I think they said that they technically don’t block ads. They just don’t implement them. If youtube were to somehow pack ads into the video stream, they wouldn’t go around it. Though I’m sure that in such case an adblock extension would pop up very fast.

Norgur,

Since the app has ties to creators, I get why they disapprove of sponsorblock, but... Why did they implement it if they don't like it?

bionicjoey,

Certainly there was big demand for it. I was hoping they’d eventually implement it as I’d been testing the app out

Draconic_NEO,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I get why they disapprove of sponsorblock

The app strips analytics and watch data preventing views from being counted. So the argument doesn’t logically make sense. They’re trying to make a moral argument out of something that doesn’t and can’t have any impact because the data used to justify watch-time and engagement isn’t provided.

voracitude,

deleted_by_author

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    abcxyz,

    Please explain to me how does blocking sponsor segments harm creators?

    voracitude,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    abcxyz,

    This is not how ot works though.

    Modern internet-based video platforms like YouTube do NOT tell this information to advrrtisers, because the sponsor block ads have no contract with YouTube directly. They are paying the content creator, not youtube.

    There’s no way for sponsor block advertisers to tell how many people skipped their ad.

    Tak,
    @Tak@lemmy.ml avatar

    Most sponsors I’ve seen for youtube have some link or code to reference who sent you but I’m not buying anything they are selling.

    I don’t care how many people Nord pays I’m not using their fucking VPN. Why even waste the electricity displaying an ad for a service I will never purchase.

    voracitude,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    abcxyz,

    It’s fine if you don’t want to admit you’re wrong, but please don’t preach it to others, because none of what you said is factual. Speaking from first hand experience.

    akilou,

    How do you turn it on? I’m on Grayjay v 195 but I’m not seeing the option in settings.

    narp, (edited )

    You have to go first to “sources” and then it’s in the YouTube options

    Kuro,

    Are they even able to see when their baked in ads get skipped over?

    bionicjoey,

    Kinda. YouTube has stats about which times of a video are watched more proportionally for a single view. You can ironically usually use this data to see when a sponsor spot ends (to skip to it) since there will be a peak in the watch time curve.

    cyanarchy,

    Probably, I’m fairly certain they get told which parts of the video get skipped and which get rewatched.

    Draconic_NEO,
    @Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Only applies on official apps and frontends with analytics. Without them it’s just buffering the video.

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