I read a lot of people's experiences here in the thread and I think a lot of you really should give YouTube Premium a try. It solves most of the problems you are describing, while also paying the creators
I do understand that some apps provide extra features etc. but premium removes ads cross-platform... and since GoogleMusic is included, it replaces Spotify as well(yes, it's different..).
This alternative looks great to me, on paper at least. I'll give it a go.
You're saying that you don't pay for Premium and use an unofficial client that does not pay content creators just because it's too much of a hassle to change the two settings that bother you.
And I understand wanting a gratis client. To what extent does the cost of YouTube Premium pay for the client versus the creators?
Out of curiosity, if there were a private (but neither libre nor gratis) YouTube Premium client, would you use it?
I agree that this is an issue, but I'm not that much of a purist. As long as I'm not actively supporting a non-libre service I don't necessarily mind using it if I can do so in a way that does not completely disrespect my own privacy.
>To what extent does the cost of YouTube Premium pay for the client versus the creators?
That's a good question, which I would really like to know the answer to. In principle, if YouTube offered a libre client like Newpipe but with a payment model like YouTube Red, and if I knew that a majority of the money went to content creators, I would love that and very happily pay for it. I would be very reluctant to use a non-libre client (like Youtube's own), however - I prefer the browser, even with ads, in that case.
How come? If someone sends me an email to my FOSS server, which I open with my FOSS client, I don't care if the server they used to send me is FOSS or not. If YouTube is just sending me data (not running their code on my machines), why should I care what they run?
In any case, to use YouTube Premium you have to login, and therefore have all your viewings tracked. Being able to have subscriptions, etc while avoiding having to login is one of the great features of NewPipe.
My understanding is that you can pause watch history, see link below.
I find it equally odd to assume that they do exactly what they say.
If you stop watch history, that must mean no watch history is collected.
Is your hypothesis that a large company would consider violating important privacy laws for minimal gain (very slightly improved ad tracking)? It's possible but unlikely.
It's not really a hypothesis at this point. I've seen first hand plenty of companies that treat fines and lawsuits as a cost of doing business. If the expected profit is higher than expected fines, full speed ahead. GDPR does have large potential fines, but for all I know the math could still work out.
Not only that, but they have enough information on user locations that it might be worth it to segment it out. Take every jurisdiction a given user might be connected to, use the most restrictive overlap of laws, and track each user as much as legally possible. Most users are not under GDPR or similar, and if you miss one here or there you take it out of the fine budget.