They could just block buffering this video until the time of the ad is finished on serverside, as they know how long the ad is.

You still can block ads but you must wait if you see a black window or an ad stream.

We can just buffer manually and wait. It's an unsolvable problem without DRM, and even then...

This whole approach would massively increase the cost of distribution due to how CDN networks scale.

A silent black screen would still be a win. Ads are disinformation.

Yep, I'm tired of fighting the arms race with twitch ads, so I just mute the video now and do something else for a few minutes.

I would honestly be perfectly happy with a black screen for 30 seconds as a compromise to ads. I only leave the twitch webpage because the visuals bother me almost just as much as hearing the stupid sales pitch or the goofy "lol we're so cheeky and random" jokes made non-stop by insurance company ads.

I'd rather a silent black screen than an ad.

I can't understand people using SponsorBlock. Basically you want people creating videos for free?

Me watching a sponsor segment isn't going to make any money for the video creator. They're being paid by the sponsor to place the segment in their video; there's no way for the sponsor to track who watches it. The segment is just a waste of my time.

This is separate from YouTube itself tracking who watches the video, and for how long (and if they skip any), and if they watch any ads, and then giving a bit of money to the creator for the ad views.

Is this true? I'm not sure if sponsors ask for this but I think metrics are available to creators to show how many people watch during different portions of the video, so they could, including post-payment based on the results.

See audienceWatchRatio under https://developers.google.com/youtube/analytics/metrics

Example: "A one-minute video is watched 100 times. Half of the viewers stop watching after 15 seconds and the rest watch the entire video. None of the viewers watch any parts of the video more than once. In this case, this metric's value would be 1 for time buckets in the first quarter of the video, and its value would be 0.50 for the remainder of the video."

So someone could ask for ratios before, after, and during the ad segment to see if it's worth sponsoring them again. On average they can tell how many people skip the segment, how many stop watching entirely, etc. You can also see this on the UI where it shows peaks above the timeline with other users clicking past sponsored content.

Yes, but if SponsorBlock or any other solution like that starts to become popular, sponsors will stop paying creators.

Like it or not, the whole way "free" services on the internet work with ad-blocking, and always have, is that the people blocking ads are taking advantage of technological measures to avoid them, so that the actual cost of serving content is paid (by ad-viewing time) by all the suckers who don't know how to block ads, or don't want to for some reason. It's basically like that with sponsor segments, though here I think it's more like a television or newspaper ad: the sponsor is simply hoping enough people will watch the segment and go buy their stuff (since it's personally recommended by the content creator!!) to make their sponsorship investment worthwhile.

How is it fair for creators to take my premium money AND force me to watch sponsor segments? That's double dipping. YouTube should have a system for marking segments so premium users don't have to watch those segments. Premium users pay with premium money and free users pay by watching YouTube ads + sponsor segments. Fair in my book

So, don't? Nobody is forcing you to do anything. Just don't watch or don't pay premium. Jeez, since when does the world owe you anything?

The only way SponsorBlock will become popular is if a huge fraction of YouTube users switch to 3rd-party clients. I have a really hard time seeing that happening; that would be like most Mac and Windows users all switching to Linux.

I just uninstalled the Youtube app. Now I use the website on my phone, and Sponsorblock works without issue.

Why do I need the app for anyway?

If I understand you correctly, you're using YouTube in a browser on your phone. SponsorBlock only works on your phone because you've installed an "app": a browser extension that implements it within the browser.

Most people don't do this.

More people ought to do this. It's the best way right now to defeat spurious decisions by platforms. Reddit's app is off my phone. I use its terrible website, so I don't go there anymore. Youtube has a good website, and until they enshittify it, it's the best way to experience Youtube on a phone.

I totally agree: using the website (through Firefox + uBo) is generally the best way, because the user has the most control. A proprietary app doesn't give you this.

There are more than 2 options

Amusingly, a person could pay for YouTube Premium (thereby, allegedly, giving the creators more money) and still use sponsorblock to block the double-dipped inline ads.

Most people I watch on YouTube are either not sponsored or on Nebula, so I just watch there instead.

Sponsorblock doesn't take away sponsorship money from creators. Sponsors have no way of knowing how many people use sponsorblock. Oh I also pay for premium. So the creators get their cake and I eat ad-free content. Win win

People don't come to YouTube for ads/integrations. When I click on the video, I only want the actual content. Ad segments aren't the only way to monetize anyway.

> Basically you want people creating videos for free?

Noone "wants" anything here. It's just more convenient.