The NewPipe team decided to not include SponsorBlock in NewPipe.
Why?
Essentially, they are saying to the different funding methods:
Advertising: Not ethical since it undermines privacy of users
Affiliate links: Not ethical since the point where the affiliate link points to knows exactly from where the link clicker comes from which undermines privacy + they point almost only to big platforms because smaller companys don‘t have enough resources to implement affiliate link systems
Donations: Ethical and the most ethical funding method
Sponsorship: Ethical since the content creator can decide if he want to sponsor that specific company/product, mostly relevant to the watcher because the company tends to operate in the same area as the content creator and because the sponsored segment itself doesn‘t contain any form of tracking or fine-graines advertising.
But we have to look into how the sponsor determines the amount of money the content creator gets for including the sponsored segment.
There are three possible ways for the sponsor to do that:
There‘s a coupon and/or link in the description and/or video which you can redeem if you buy the resource / which points with a unique code exactly to the resource for which the sponsored segment is for. Then, the company looks how many used that coupon or link and gives the content creator a specific amount of money per used link and/or coupon. (Most used method)
The company gives the content creator per view a specific amount of money.
The content creator and the company negotiate before even posting the video how much money the content creator gets if he includes a sponsored segment in the video. This offer from the sponsor is based on the average views of the videos (I don‘t know if this method is even used sometimes, it‘s just one of the three ways I could imagine)
Coupon and/or Link
In this case, the advertising is unethical since it‘s in the same way privacy invasive as affiliate links; in this case, NewPipe should skip the sponsored segment to not put the user to a privacy risk.
Per view
In this case, watching a video through NewPipe doesn‘t support the content creator anyways because the video views through NewPipe doesn‘t count to the public view counter anyways. So in that case, NewPipe should skip the sponsored segment as well because it just wastes the time of the user.
Specific amount of money
In this case, watching a video through NewPipe doesn‘t support the content creator anyways because the content creator doesn‘t get more money if the sponsored segment is skipped or not. So in that case, NewPipe should skip the sponsored segment as well because it just wastes the time of the user.
Conclusion
In any way, NewPipe should not not skip the sponsored segment because it is either unethical or just waste of user‘s time.
I always wondered about that. If NewPipe limits telemetry then how does a sponsor know the segment was watched? I manually skip every sponsorship anyway. There are alternatives to NewPipe with sponsor block included but I prefer the NewPipe UI.
NewPipe devs are using the same argument as Linus of LTT regarding piracy. Consume the advertisments in exchange for accesing the video. This is the implied social contract. But NewPipe blocks all other ads. Why is a Füm sponsorship more valid than car insurance or holiday packages served by Google? Google spends money on bandwidth and gets nothing. The creator gets nothing either since NewPipe doesn’t affect their metrics.
I think you’re not considering the fact that the people who negotiate these sponsorships know that not all views are counted and uncounted views can be priced into the per view value of the sponsorship. If more views like from NewPipe were counted the price per view of a sponsorship could just decrease to account for more now being counted.
Only downside is they can fall behind updates since they’re downstream of NewPipe. If only the NewPipe team would compromise by including those features and keeping them disabled by default.
Can’t what? Count the NewPipe views? Well for one, yes they can, Google is fully capable of choosing to count views from clients like NewPipe, they choose not to because they don’t contribute to their advertising model. Second, that’s obviously not my point, the point is that each counted view is simple a measure of the video’s success, no one is literally nickel and dining over individual views for these sponsorships. The fact that some views aren’t counted is well known and easily priced into these deals. I don’t know the exact figure but think like the price can be 5% higher per counted view than it would be if all views were counted because there’s an assumption that 5% of views come from uncounted but legitimate watches of the video.
If I’m using a frontend the content creator doesn’t benefit from me watching their sponsorship segment. Why should put up with the ad?
I don’t buy things based on ads I see, so, again, no point in me watching an ad.
Sponsored ads on YouTube are often two minutes long. If I wouldn’t watch a two-minute ad on TV, why would I watch it on YouTube?
For these uncounted views, they still can‘t know if they watched the sponsored segment or not which means that NewPipe should skip it as it is just a waste of user‘s time.
I mean I think it’s a waste of time regardless of if the view is counted or not especially since sponsor block doesn’t remove a view from the video (which is a better argument IMO), I’m just pointing out that the idea that creators are directly harmed by uncounted views is probably not directly true on an individual level.
I prefer BravePipe it’s nice to have PeerTube and Rumple for channels that sometimes have age restricted videos. A few mirror to PeerTube or Rumple. The dev is also good at keeping up with NewPipe.
NewPipe has PeerTube support but it currently doesn’t work for me. Searching for PrivacyGuides lists a channel named Jonah with livestream VODs but the thumbnails don’t work.
I previously used Grayjay for Rumble but it requires a CATCHPA which doesn’t go anywhere.
