But now I have entire blocks of totally unrelated traditional-style ads for nothing YouTube or video related (like women's shoes) in the suggestions section.
Its happening on other sites in other ways as well (either dark patterns or vast amounts of ads) and it has gotten me to the point where I actively take pleasure in extracting the maximum value for me as customer (so blocking ads, using VPN to pay in rubles or rupees, etc) as most companies these days see you as nothing but entities to suck as much profit out of as possible, with no regard for a reasonable middle ground. Sucks for them, that's a two-way street.
Basically I tolerated Youtube ads up to a point, but now that I'm using Newpipe instead, neither Youtube nor the creators get anything.
I wish there was a better way, since it's not pracitcal to contribute to all channel's patreons.
I don't think it is possible to get no ads by banning all the categories this way, it will just become random at that point I guess.
What I would like to see instead is a return of self-hosted videos from creators’ own websites plus a site like YouTube that is really just an aggregator of those videos. That way you can also have smaller businesses that provide YouTube-like services for those that don’t want to self-host, but those videos still get included in that aggregator. I think that would be the best ecosystem for competition.
However, I have no idea how feasible that is. It’s just an idea that came to mind.
"What I would like to see instead is a return of self-hosted videos from creators’ own websites plus a site like Peertube that is really just an aggregator of those videos. That way you can also have smaller businesses that provide Peertube-like services for those that don’t want to self-host, but those videos still get included in that aggregator. I think that would be the best ecosystem for competition."