"And, now, for a 20-minute long story before we show you the clip ... "

May 21, 2022 5:44 PM

"SponsorBlock is an open-source crowdsourced browser extension and open API for skipping sponsor segments in YouTube videos ... It also supports skipping other categories, such as intros, outros and reminders to subscribe, and skipping to the point with highlight."
posted by MollyRealized (11 comments total)

which have saved a total of 572 years and 56.90 days of people's lives.
posted by clavdivs at 6:00 PM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

which have saved a total of 572 years and 74.12 days of people's lives.

ok, I'm never a app/tech guy but in just over a hour, nearly 20 Days of our Lives
have been saved.
nice, thanks.
posted by clavdivs at 7:10 PM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

Multiply that hour by 480 people, and that's 20 days.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:12 PM on May 21, 2022

This is great. I had just about given up watching YouTube anymore.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:46 PM on May 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

This gets the Seal of Approval. Twenty-plus minute videos to convey a few sentences of information are a plague.
posted by Enturbulated at 9:59 PM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

That is super-cool!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 10:29 PM on May 21, 2022

For those, like me, who download videos to preserve their access to it, I should note the command line tool yt-dlp (an actively developed fork of the venerable youtube-dl) can automatically mark or remove SponsorBlock chapters to/from the downloaded file. It is very handy.
posted by bouvin at 4:31 AM on May 22, 2022 [13 favorites]

I want this for TV.
posted by Splunge at 7:24 AM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Looks interesting. I'm usually pretty mellow, but YouTube explainer videos fill me with rage. I'm actually okay with acknowledging sponsors, but intentionally or incompetently obstructing/delaying getting around to the actual point of the exercise in a time-based medium just fries all of my neurons.

I love it when YouTube lectures have text transcripts. But it's an extra expense for the producer.
posted by ovvl at 11:36 AM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Interesting. Though honestly the channels I watch tend to put the sponsor section at the end of the video if it has one and when I'm watching at my computer I just tap the right-arrow a few times to skip past the segment if it's not at the end. Most of the time if sponsor segments are sufficiently intrusive that I want to do something about it I just stop watching that channel's videos; since I can't blame the sponsor segments on an algorithm, then I start wondering about whether the channel host(s)/producers respect their audience and if that level of respect bleeds into the care they take with the topic under presentation.
posted by Aleyn at 12:15 PM on May 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

YouTube is the best streaming platform I've found so far - almost all I watch anymore. The convenience of ad free premium is well worth it to me, for $11 per month.
posted by johnjohn4011 at 5:03 PM on May 23, 2022