To quote from the homepage:

SponsorBlock is an open-source crowdsourced browser extension and open API for skipping sponsor segments in YouTube videos.

(SponsorBlock - 01/03/2023)

Statistically it has over 12,834,372 sponsor segments registered which has saved almost 997 years of time collectively (insane!)

The website and extension are completely open source and the database is completely accessible for download. In a sense this ticks all the boxes for me, in a way many other extensions and systems don’t due to its incredible openness. It also follows in the same vein as ad blocking extensions: crowd sourced blacklists that make collective life easier by reducing ads.

Nevertheless this irks me. While an ad blocking extension on YouTube would stop advertising placed by YouTube, this stops advertising done by the creator. I guess it comes from this distinction: you go to YouTube as a platform to watch videos, but you watch videos from a creator. It makes complete sense to block ads from YouTube (being annoyed at ads placed by YouTube is fine; that is not the content you are on the website for), but to block the sponsor segment is to block a portion of the video you came to watch.

Perhaps this isn’t that much of a concern; many sponsor segments are terrible and provide no value to a video. However, SponsorBlock can also block other things; it can block intros, credits, previews, highlights, fillers or even chapters. Why would a creator put these things into their video if it’s completely fine (invariant even) to remove them? Isn’t that a waste of time for them?

Is it not right to consume content from a creator as they intended?