[ChrisMarshallNY]

YouTube has worked well.

However, I did try their YT Premium, for a while, and was incredibly disappointed in their UI.

I assume that the Premium UI was designed for people that use their free tier, but is very strange, to folks like me, who come from other paid services.

But I am likely not their target audience. I suppose that YT Premium does well.

[paxys]

There is no "Premium UI". Premium is simply regular YouTube without ads.

[darby_nine]

I think maybe the above poster is referencing the music product, but that's just a guess.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

No, it was the movie channel. I tried it out, because YT Premium had a particular show I wanted to see.

The biggest issue that I had, was that I couldn't find shows that I wanted to see. YT kept shoving a bunch of stuff into the UI that I wasn't interested in. All my searches were littered with results that were not relevant to me. I suspect they were paid.

The Apple App Store has the same problem. It's infuriating.

Listen, I apologize for diverting from the real issue, that a tech luminary died young. I did not know her, but it sounds like she was popular, and did well.

[lokar]

Do you mean YouTube tv?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Sorry. I thought they were the same.

Anyway, yes. YouTube TV.

[nnf]

I’m not sure what you mean about the UI, but I pay for YouTube Premium exclusively so I don’t have to see ads, and for that purpose alone, to me it’s worth it.

[tahoeskibum]

Also useful to be able to download videos for offline viewing, e.g., on a plane or when internet is spotty.

[yyyfb]

Also for background playback on mobile

[angoragoats]

Background playback works fine on desktop for any video site (simply put the window in the background) and the fact that YouTube gates this feature behind a paywall is a prime example of enshittification. It makes me want to never give them a dime.

[Physkal]

Why not just use an ad blocker?

[kbolino]

I'd rather move towards a web (largely) without ads than continue to be the product sold to advertisers rather than the consumer served by the platform. The constant escalation of the ad blocker-ad server war has also contributed greatly to ballooning complexity in all sorts of technologies.

I hope YT Premium is a step in that direction, but only time will tell.

[SoftTalker]

Well you are both the customer and the product with YT Premium. Yeah you don't see ads, but they are still tracking everything you watch and using that to deliver targeted ads to you on other platforms.

[Jensson]

Why not pay for a product you use instead of being a leech? It is perfectly fine if you wanna leech, but understand not everyone wanna do that.

[cnasc]

Not looking at an advertisement is not “being a leech.”

I glance away from billboards, I refill my drink during commercial breaks, I show up when the movie starts instead of when the preview starts. These are normal behaviors, not leech behaviors. The ads are not very sophisticated, so I don’t need sophisticated measures to avoid them. On the web, the ads have ratcheted up the intensity (tracking, targeting) with technology and in response I have augmented my ability to ignore with technology. That’s fair.

You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers. It is perfectly fine if you want to guzzle Kiwi Black, but understand not everyone wants to do that.

[johnnyanmac]

This is an extreme comparison, but there's more action in avoiding ads with an adblocker than by passively averting your gaze in physical media. It'd be more like if you chopped down billboards, installed a jammer into your router to deliver phone stats to tv ads, and blaring noises before the movie starts.

I don't think it's that extreme, but it's always hard making comparisons between physical and digital.

>You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers.

I prefer the framing that doesn't chastise those who are simply ignorant or have their own morals. I recognize adblock is technically "theft" so I don't want to go on a high horse insult the "normal people".

[ndriscoll]

It's more like you have some magic AR glasses that can replace billboards with a blank space, and (presuming the theatre didn't let you in past the beginning of the ads or something) putting in earplugs/earbuds, closing your eyes, and asking your friend to nudge you when the ads are over.

Blocking ads and trackers is no more theft than blocking crypto miners. Malware is malware. You'd be crazy to consider running it as some bizarre form of payment.

[angoragoats]

Ad blocking is not theft (in quotes or otherwise), because no one is being deprived of property they own.

[fragmede]

That's a false dichotomy. Rationalize not paying for content with whatever logical contortions you can come up with, leeching content and not paying for it clearly isn't going to encourage the creation of additional content. Pay for it via Patreon or some other platform if you don't want to give money to Google, but the leech problem is why so many things suck. Even BitTorrent sites hate leeches.

[throw10920]

I don't think the GP cares about false dichotomies:

> You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers.

This is not rational debate, but activism and emotional manipulation. Recommend flagging and not engaging.

[samatman]

Reminder, or new thing for those not already aware: there was already a lawsuit about automatically skipping commercials, and the broadcaster in that lawsuit lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N...

> Additionally, Fox alleged that Dish infringed Fox's distribution right through use of PTAT copies and AutoHop. However, mentioning that all copying were conducted on the user's PTAT without "change hands" and that the only thing distributed from Dish to the users was the marking data, the Court denied Fox's claim. Citing Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., the Court concluded that the users' copying at home for the time shift purpose did not infringe Fox's copyright. Then, Dish's secondary liability was also denied.

[throwaway32654]

You already pay for YouTube with your data.

[johnnyanmac]

2 factors:

1. less annoying for non-desktop devices. Especially when casting content onto my TV

2. moral niceties: Premium viewers apparently help give more revenue to content creators, and I tend to watch smaller channels. It's nice knowing I can disproportionately help those kinds of creators out.

Also, apparently Google is in the middle of its latest clash with adblocking so even that can get unreliable.

[Novosell]

Well, YouTube premium will work on every device you can sign in to YouTube on. Adblock is available for the most part, but isn't easily available everywhere.

[pokerface_86]

don’t know any for YT ioS, i used to live with ads on mobile but after getting premium, even though i use an ad blocker + firefox on desktop, i never canceled it for a reason

[pokerface_86]

also YT on a tv is difficult to set up an ad blocker for

[browningstreet]

I, for one, will pay for good things.. but also, it’s worth it if you watch a lot of YouTube on things like AppleTV or Fire Cube. Ad blockers won’t work there.