YouTube actually does block sponsor spots in videos if you have Premium. They call it "Skip Ahead" and don't really talk about sponsor spots, but practically speaking it's 9/10 just the "skip sponsor segment" button.

I remember about 10-15 years ago YouTube actually did try to ban sponsor spots in videos, but the backlash from creators was strong enough that they walked that back to "ok well we'll allow sponsor spots but you can't just insert the sponsor's own ad, it's gotta be your ad read and B-roll".

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elondaits 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most of the UI features that YT added over the last few years can be thought of as a way to skip sponsor ads. e.g., thumbnail previews on the seek bar, the little histogram on the seek bar, auto-chapter detection, and playing at 2x when you click and hold on the video.

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stravant 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm pretty sure that skip ahead is deliberately broken to satisfy advertisers.

Sponsorblock has zero issue jumping to the precise moment after the sponsor vs jump ahead always leaves just enough time to still hear the name of the sponsor.

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Dylan16807 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They make it slightly easier to find the end of a sponsor segment, while still requiring me to manually interact with the video. As an ad blocker I score that either F+ or D-.

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hdgvhicv 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes it tends to work one at a time, but some videos have two sponsor segments and it doesn’t work the second time. I assumed it skipped to where people often skip to.

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hhh an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

that's not blocking though. It's allowing you to skip over the areas people commonly skip in videos where they take the data from everyone. I get them at sponsor slots of course, but also intros often. Because it's not removing it entirely, I would not consider that blocking.

	▲	SllX 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The parent’s characterization is fine. 9/10 times (more in my own experience) it is the functional equivalent of a sponsor blocker. That it technically isn’t that specifically is immaterial, because if it works, that’s because people are skipping the sponsor segments in large enough quantities for it to easily become that. That said, I don’t think YouTube owes it to Premium subscribers to add a sponsor block. That’s part of the video’s content as it was provided to YouTube, and YouTube never advertised YouTube Premium as something which will block in-video sponsor reads. This is part of how YouTubers make a living & a Premium sub doesn’t replace the money they receive for those the way it does for YouTube’s own ads.

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s such a great feature, and I see why YouTube gates it to Premium.

Once you’ve transitioned from an ad-watching customer to a paid one, YouTube actually turns into something that treats your product experience and satisfaction as important.

It’s fascinating how it switches that off for non-paying users. Not a lot of companies’ services do that so obviously and blatantly.

In other words, when YouTube is being watched for free, they have that typical engagement incentive: keep you watching as long as possible, watch as many ads as possible, etc.

When you’re paying? Who cares, skip the content if you want. Use Gemini to summarize it, we don’t care if you watch the video.

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godshatter an hour ago | parent [-]

Try watching YouTube without logging in through a VPN with an ad blocker. You get 5s black screens and "Experiencing Interruptions?" popups.

If they don't want people watching videos without logging in, they should gate them behind a login screen rather than fucking with their users.

	▲	Xirdus 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I was getting that when logged in, without VPN (but still ad blocking.)