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Comment by h4kunamata | Hacker News Reader

TV is hot garbage now.

YT has solid channels, from DIY to black hole talks and most importantly, uncensored news.

TV is just ADs and more ADs, garbage content after garbage content. Not everything is pretty tho, YT has a complete monopoly and there is nothing anybody can do about it, the alternatives suck with some silly subscription when there is no even content.

I do pay for Youtube Premium since Youtube Music is hands down better than Spotify. I would pay for alternative services to help them out IF they were worth it. YT Premium is the only subscription I pay and happy to do so, I see value.

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Is YT Premium 100% ad-free?

I get the feeling that if many users start using Premium, at some point they'll see ads again.

YT-Premium is still ad-free, though they did bump up the prices recently.

Being a monopoly gives them that kind of power, but they haven’t gone overboard—probably because they know regulators would start poking around if they did.

youtube does not put ads before, during or after a video for a premium subscriber. creators are in control of the content within that video (and that could include sponsored segments). if that is an issue, you will need to skip those or use something like SponsorBlock.

Premium has a "skip section" button for those.

Is that the new button that's been popping up? And here I was blaming SponsorBlock.

Not only is it ad-free, they provide a "skip advertisement" feature for in-video ads.

Technically it's a "skip commonly skipped section" usually that includes in-video ads, but also long introductions, filler spaces and any other bits that enough people care to manually skip a few times

Yes, but as YouTube payments to videographers have dropped, most have started filling the gap by having sponsored content inside the video, which is harder to skip and avoid.

very curious what is meant by uncensored news.

I think it's the sort of news that doesn't sound as though all the news channels had a meeting and decided to say the same thing at the same time.

> most importantly, uncensored news

I would like evidence of this because I hear constantly how certain topics are persona non grata on YT, and will be pulled or shadowbanned to page 1001 of results.

I take that to mean not from any big name news organisation. I do see a variety showing up in recommendations.

I unsubbed from YT premium when I realized the only feature I was really paying for was not being bombarded by ads every 30 seconds of video. Sometimes you'll get back to back aggressive ads within only a handful of seconds. The purpose seems to be to annoy you into purchasing a subscription, which is really predatory and annoying. Or locking "features" behind a paywall basically every other app provides, like continuing playing even when the app is in the background made me eventually annoyed enough to just cancel, and I can somewhat tolerate the ads. If not it forces me off the app sometimes which is not what I had intended but is a nice side effect.

It would be one thing if the ads weren't incredibly annoying by themselves, the content is either really, really weird, seemingly AI generated, or annoying, or some combination of all of those. I cannot imagine who they are for.

And you don't use ublock for the free version? Or is there no alternative blocking option for mobile?

WhY dOn’T yOu JuSt UsE uBlOcK is not a retort to what I am saying.

It wasn't a retort, it was an honestly curious question about why you'd tolerate being bombarded with ads if an easy solution exists that doesn't require paying. Simple enough, no?

There's is for Fennec under F-Droid.org

This has always been my philosophical objection to paying for YT premium: You're not really paying for any additional feature--you're paying them to stop tormenting you with ads. "The free version should be deliberately unpleasant so they pay to make it pleasant" just isn't a business model I want to support as a customer.

> uncensored news. Get a load of this guy

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