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goalonetwo

SmarTube works amazingly well. I expect them to circumvent those limitations as usual.

I see it as a morale duty to not watch ads and also not pay an ethically dubious company like Google.

They are free to try to stop me but I'm also free to not watch their brainwashing ads.

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Youtube ads are bad and obnoxious (and at times creepy). Nowhere near as bad as Facebook ads though.

FB ads these days are actually serving up malware.

When the big tech companies can get their ad shit together, I will stop blocking ads.

Yep, a recent FB ad for clothing I tried to buy was a fake scam company. I had to cancel my card. Youtube ads sometimes have wierd 30m cult-like ads.

I got so used to Brave skipping any type of ads on YouTube that one day I was mindlessly scrolling YouTube shorts until I saw a video which was clearly an ad, despite any clear indication. My immediate reaction was to close down the tab.

Maybe the ad blocker will figure this out in the next update, but until then all Google did was kick out my video scrolling habit.

I just pay because I already collude with hundreds, possibly thousands of ethically dubious companies every day.

I'd rather pay google with my money than my data or eyeballs anyway. (Not that paying for YouTube actually helps much with this angle... but at least it kinda sorta looks like the transaction I want. Money for services.)

> I'd rather pay google with my money than my data or eyeballs anyway.

If you pay them money, they don’t stop collecting your data and eyeballs, so you’re paying purely for the user experience with the site.

Paying for YT Premium encourages them to continue what they are doing.

FreeTube for desktops. Despite making what I'd call some dodgy UI decisions, it's still a much more friendly experience than watching YT on the web or, heaven forbid, mobile. Removes interstitial ads, and has SponsorBlock built in as well.

Why not just stop using YouTube?

I would love to do that but unfortunately Network effect means that a lot of creators don't upload their video anywhere else. It is unfortunately becoming the default for everything.

I paid for Vimeo and other services in the past. But I will not pay for Youtube/Google

So you want their free hosting, but don't want to pay for it either directly, or indirectly?

Yes.

For me, it's not the concept of paying. I'd gladly pay someone to host YouTube. I just don't think paying Google is a good thing.

Who asked for Google to be the custodian of our culture? I don’t owe them rent just because they were so presumptuous to put themselves into that position.

There used to be a thriving variety of video hosting sites.

That's exactly how I feel as well. I don't want them to be the default but here we are.

And I'm definitely not going to pay which would encourage/send the signal that this is what we want.

Yes. I'm fine with them dying and a better company taking over that I would then support.

YouTube spent about ten years convincing their users that videos will be offered with only unobtrusive banner ads or short, pre-video ads. Then once the network effects were safely locked in, they changed it to a protection racket where multiple loud, frequently offensive ads (including for scams!) will interrupt a one-minute video and new ads are triggered by so much as rewinding, but you can pay to not see them.

I'd much rather support a different platform, myself.

If they weren't already stealing my data, I'd gladly pay them for ad-free. My data is worth far more to me and goog won't even offer me an option to not steal it because it is worth far more to them as well.

Or just pay for premium (it’s worth it)

That’s the 21st century equivalent of becoming an ascetic monk.

That’s like asking a large segment of the population to stop using the Internet altogether. YouTube is basically a utility now, you can’t avoid it in many cases.

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