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

submitted 1 year ago by bionicjoey@lemmy.ca to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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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[-] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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

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[-] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago

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.

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[-] Skelectus@suppo.fi 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.