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by a2tech 273 days ago
Google is not getting a cut of that sponsorship money. They don't care if it wrecks your deal. They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube. If you're fully beholden to Youtube, there will be no escape, no way for you to leave and take your viewership with you.

Remember how Youtube used to be a nice cage with lots of air holes and fun toys to occupy you? Light ad enforcement, tools to help you build your viewership etc? People are starting to feel the pinch of those being removed. That cool room is starting to look like what it really is--an industrial cage.
4 comments
Andrex 273 days ago
I think it's less ominous than that.

Skip Ahead is only for Premium subscribers. The logic probably being native-ads/sponsorships are in fact ads, and Premium users are paying for an ad-free experience.

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PeterisP 273 days ago
It's interesting that I just read an inteview with YouTube CEO (https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-youtube-ceo-n...) who mentioned that YouTube fully intends to start getting a cut out of that sponsorship money ("to align interests better").
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eastbound 273 days ago
> They want your ONLY source of income to be Youtube.

I’m not sure. They want influencers to make profit using their platform, so they want to make them rich. On the viewcount, a skipped sponsor still looks like a view. No sponsor is going to look at the proportion of watching each part of the video, they just care about the view counter.

What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

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kelnos 272 days ago
> What Youtube may want, though, is for paying customers to be able to skip ads. “If you pay you should have no ads”.

It feels rare that I agree with Google on anything these days, but if that is the case... sounds fair.

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Workaccount2 272 days ago
YouTube doesn't have to defend itself. Read this thread and understand how shitty/entitled it's users are.

Then these adult children go an complain there are no competitors. No shit, you scoff at subscriptions and wear your ad-block like a badge of honor. Who the hell would invest in making a platform for non-paying users?

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godshatter 271 days ago
Strangely enough, I do feel entitled to download data from YouTube using standard protocols on a standard port. It's not like I'm breaking in or anything.
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