#sponsorblock

[ailurinae]

(image is link to original post, description in alt)

If you just use uBlock Origin and don't layer random other adblockers or rules on top, you should be fine on YouTube. Adding special rules yourself or multiple blockers is just making trouble for yourself.

[fablethevoid]

Somewhat recently I've been made aware of the "filler" category in sponsorblock and I have some thoughts. Read below the cut.

Recently, either reinstalling youtube vanced or an update to sponsorblock added the "filler" category to the sponsorblock on my phone. Now I think this is a good idea on paper, after all youtube videos often times do have a lot of space of essentially nothing in them. This, however, becomes very apparently a flawed idea when you consider that sponsorblock is based on user input, meaning that anyone can submit a section of content in a video to be "filler" and it will be marked as such until enough people go out of their way to vote it as a bad submission.

I have noticed that people's use of the "filler" category is very broadly applied. Two prominent examples I've seen are entire segments of Stephanie Sterling videos where she talks about old toys or her own sexuality and sexual desires (which arguably are as much of the main content of their show as the talk of video games), and stumbling over words that only lasts less than a second of a video essay that really benefits from a minor pause in the scripted talk in my opinion.

Now this wouldn't be such a big deal to me were it not for the fact that sponsorblock seems to have "filler" content set to automatically skip by default. This means that people that use the extension might just assume these likely trivial breaks from the main content of the videos they watch are just not worth seeing, which I find disheartening and disappointing. I would at the very least suggest that sponsorblock makes the "filler" category either something that requires user input to skip or just entirely untouched by default.

Now while I was thinking about this, it led me to think about the fact that people so commonly label the content they do as "filler". Personally it brings to mind how short form content such as social media posts on platforms like twitter (suck my cock elon) and tiktok are most likely training people to shorten their attention spans and patience. Even a slight pause in a video for someone to stumble or think over their words a disruption that's proven to be good for discussions, is noticeable enough of a disturbance to people to get cut out of videos. Personally it has me rethinking my use of social media (even without platforms like tiktok on my phone) and pondering the fact that I seem to struggle with finding the mental patience and capacity for the deeper games I used to enjoy when I was a child such as factorio and modded minecraft. Games that require the use of your mind and patience no longer come nearly as easy to me and that has me concerned.

If you read this far, thank you. I'd ask that you maybe make the efforts to give your brain more time to breathe and think, and perhaps reconsider how media has shaped the way your brain works. I'm going to certainly try and do the same myself.

[qwenck]

All of my Firefox extensions deleted themselves when my computer updated itself last night (curse you, Windows,) so here's the list of extensions I've remembered to reinstall.

uBlock Origin adblocker

SponsorBlock

Multi Account Containers

Wayback Machine Extension

Indie Wiki Buddy

[leumasme]

uh oh

FAQ about this

[fleshadept]

just gonna say i've been seeing a lot of talk about youtube hitting people with "adblockers are not allowed on youtube" pages and i have never run into that with my firefox + ublock origin combo

[not-terezi-pyrope]

I caved and installed SponsorBlock as well as UBlock. Sorry Youtubers but I think I've seen enough ads in my entire lifetime that the advertising industry owes me my peace, like, morally

[theartofsalient]

「SPONSORBLOCK」

[silly-witch]

hey what extension do you use to skip youtube ad reads and does it work consistently? sounds lifesaving

This one!

I use it on firefox and honestly it's AMAZING. Here's the download link for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/. It also let's you skip unpaid sponsor shit (youtuber merch) intros and outros. I love it <3

[invisible-arcs]

FreeTube is saving my life right now thanks to someone's suggestion on here. if youtube is pissing you off, look into it... it does everything you'd want from a video player with no fuss. It even has my two favorite youtube extensions built in: DeArrow and SponsorBlock. Also download LibRedirect and if you still want to browse youtube like normal or you are sent a video link, you can right-click and select the option to redirect to the video in a new tab with no ads

I am not an expert in these types of things, just a fed up youtube user and these solutions seem to really work.

[tenderlambkin]

Ublock Origin

Youtube: SponsorBlock (skips ads within videos), DeArrow (replaces clickbait thumbnails & titles), Blocktube (block channels), Enhancer (Quality of Life features), Youtube-Shorts Block

Youtube Mobile: Youtube Vanced/Revanced Manager

Twitter: Minimal Theme extension

Tumblr: xKit/xKit Rewritten, Dashboard Unfucker, Stylus with "Old Tumblr Dashboard" userstyle

Spotify: xManager (desktop & mobile)

Firefox: High chance you'll love it and curse holding out for so long.

Linux: No whiney search box trying to Edge you, no ads in the start menu, no trending searches reminding you about celebrity gossip & politics.

i would move heaven and earth to avoid hearing one single advertisement

[leavesandbounds]

Look, SponsorBlock is my best friend

I love and appreciate it

But some of you people submitting segments need to learn what the fuck an 'intermission' is

Streamers talking and interacting when not explicitly playing the game is still part of the main stream content

A short segment of a documentary-style video where there isn't voiceover but there is still information on the screen is STILL PART OF THE MAIN CONTENT

I'm tired of being skipped 5 minutes of my streamers talking and showing their cats and whatever because someone decided it wasn't interesting enough

[newkiqx]

sponsorblock is so fucking clever for tracking these stats. I salvaged three actual days of peoples lives by taking a couple of minutes to tag some ads in a video? Fuck yes. Now i want to win at this, which is a normal thing to want

[oh-yes-i-did-not]

I've been trying to use the SponsorBlock addon settings so it won't block self-promotion but it just never seems to work. So I just started to whitelist certain channels. Some I won't since they do both self-promo and sponsors all the time, but others do sponsors really rarely. And some do their sponsorships so well that I don't mind (Rachel and Jun, they just have to be perfect about every damn thing, even sponsorships)

But yeah, I would prefer if I got the other settings to work. It does mark self-promo as yellow on the video timeline but still skips.

[chiclet-go-boom]

i am absolutely HERE for SponsorBlock. its such a quality of life feature that i'm horrified when i'm on a different computer that doesn't have it and suddenly i am subjected to stuff i'd forgotten even existed.

the crowdsourcing is very cool - if you're watching a video and the sponsor content is NOT blocked, you have the option to mark the start and end of it using the extension so anybody else watching the same video later will get the skip that they long for and deserve. warm fuzzy feelings to pass along down the line.

[sunset-moth]

i always feel this great sense of "I'm doing my part!" any time I add a segment in SponsorBlock or write a title for DeArrow. Please use both of them, it improves YT so much by removing sponsors, "like comment and subscribe," allowing you to skip to the 5 seconds of the 5 minute video you actually want to get the info it's trying to present, and turning clickbait titles into usable ones... Both of them are community-based, so they need people using them to be useful - someone else needs to have watched the video before you to replace the title and mark segments for you, so the more people using it, the better. SponsorBlock is pretty widely-used, I think, but I have only heard of DeArrow once.

It's the kind of thing where you don't know how bad things are because it's normalized, and having it fixed is a sudden "wow, that sucked, why didn't i do something earlier?"

...Also, TIL that DeArrow is by the same dev(s). Neat.

[thorne1435]

I've got SponsorBlock for YouTube. And if you do too, can I give you some advice?

If you skip a non-music part that's just "The long intro/outro that I don't like." I'm chopping you into pieces and mailing you to all your relatives.

"Non-Music Part" is for TALKING AND NON-MUSIC. It's for channel-outros that play music that isn't apart of the music your trying to hear, even!

It's not for the intro or outro of "Duel (Versus Reprise)". It's not for a piece of the artwork that you just don't like. That shit is there for a reason god dammit. If you want perfectly loopable music, go look for a looped edit or listen to Toby Fox and James Roach exclusively. I will kill you.