[fullarr]

YouTube makes money by spying on you and serving you ads

So yeah it's theft

[t0mas88]

The fact that someone makes money spying on me doesn't make it illegal for me to take countermeasures.

If your business is taking pictures of people on the street and I decide to wear a baseball cap and sunglasses, you're just out of luck.

[fullarr]

This is a weak argument because YouTube isn't a public street it's a private business

You aren't forced to use it, it is a choice

And this application (FreeTube) is for the sole purpose of circumventing their (YouTube) monetization for the sake of convenience

I don't have a dog in the fight and I'm certainly not a fan of YouTube or Google, but you can't argue it's somehow ok just because you dislike ads or lack of privacy on a "free" video streaming website

[t0mas88]

And YouTube as a private business can refuse to serve people using ad blockers or alternative clients. But that doesn't make it illegal to use an ad blocker as the parent post was implying.

[eertami]

And if advertising doesn't influence you at all, would it still be stealing? I'm just saving them the bandwidth.

[anonymous_sorry]

I'm not sure that's how the law works.

[BLKNSLVR]

I'm confused as to whether you're for it against the behaviour.

I'd say both of those things makes it ok to do whatever you can to avoid them - given that YouTube appears happy enough to serve ads for various obvious scams that wouldn't make it past television advertising standards bodies.