YouTube Premium is the best ~~$11.99~~ ~~$13.00~~ $15.17 I spend per month...
I actually don't care that much about YouTube content and it's not a place I go and hang out, but I'll pay just about anything to avoid seeing ads. Yes, I know ad blockers exist, but getting them to work on laptop, phone, Apple TV directly, Apple TV via casting, etc is not easy or even possible in some cases. If I had to guess I watch ~1hr of YouTube a week, if I watch more than that I'm watching longer-form content, but mostly it's because everyone hosts their videos there so the 3-7min here and there add up to ~1hr (tutorials, product launch, help/documentation video, etc). As much as it pains me to fork over $15+/mo for that, I hate being interrupted by ads more.
Firefox + uBlock Origin on smartphone and desktop = no ads (though I personally prefer Vivaldi on desktop, but for simplicity just recommend Firefox)
SmartTube on Android TV has no ads and skip sponsors
so all you need to remember are two apps FF (+uBO) and SmartTune on TV, you install it once and don't care anymore, comparably difficult with payment for YT
More channels are fighting for attention though, so finding more channels are "creating buzz" or "news" based on mediocre information ie. taking things out of context and making unwarranted conclusions or blowing things out of proportions for clickbait titles.
I heavily use the "Not interested" and the "Do not recommend this channel" options a lot and don't click on clickbait, and use the DeArrow extension, and this way my front page looks quite good.
No, I often get nice recommendations from the long tail, like interesting academic talks or tinkerer channels, videos sometimes with only a few hundred views or even fewer.
I've started putting together a curated directory of (subjectively) good YouTube channels and videos [1]. It's literally the 3rd day, so not many entries yet, but I plan to continue growing it like I did with Minifeed [2].
That’s not an argument against the comment you responded to.
If I just took any random 20 creators I’m subscribed to on YouTube, the premium membership fee, which includes YT Music, is more valuable than any of the other streaming services.
The only other streaming service I’ve been a paying member even longer than YouTube is di.fm
I also occasionally pay for a few months or bassdrive.com and or soma.fm
Disabled recommendations. Disabled comments (firefox plugin). Use subscriptions page as the homepage (firefox plugin). Only subscribe to channels that interest me (and aren't annoying like that).
I paid for Youtube Premium. I was still shown ads on embedded youtube videos, and it was changed so that the ads pop up so quick I can click initially and go to the youtube site (where I won't be shown the ads) before the ad starts. I switched to an ad blocker because that was so adversarial on youtube's part in order bypass the 'feature' I paid for.
For those of us who are too cheap to pay the subscription:
On my iPhone I almost never see YTube ads. I don’t use the YTube app and instead I install Chrome and watch YT that way. I lose notifications—which is perfect for me, since I don’t want many notifications on my phone anyway.
This might also work in Safari but I haven’t tested it.
> ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician
that is being done as open source community efforts now: NewPipe for mobile, SmartTube for smart TVs etc.
All you have to do is update them once in a while
I mean it’s just $10. People are making livelihoods based off from YouTube. I get not liking ads, but if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it? Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
>if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it?
It requires the use of a google account and there is no way to even request opting out of the accompanying data harvesting. Any "curation" or "recommendation" that would inevitably happen is also an anti-feature.
>Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
I find that all of Google’s ad products are under-moderated for malicious ads. It’s a choice on their part to not tightly control this—they certainly could, though it would harm their incredible profitability if they did more scrutiny on the ads they show. I personally don’t especially care to pay a premium not to see deepfakes of celebrities promoting crypto scams.
I find YT to be very sloppy nowadays. Not so much AI content as content that is over-optimized for clicks and revenue. 80% filler and maybe 20% substance.
YT is huge, and there is plenty of good stuff. You just need to subscribe to good channels that are not so easy to find. And block the clickbait channels when they appear.
I wish we could collectively move over to some decentralized alternative. Even if we make sure to disable the bad parts, relying on these few actors that have such revenue optimized and enshitification-prone business models does not sit right.
Although decentralization by itself does probably not protect from this trap in the long run.
Nothing is really stopping us the consumer. But given that YouTube seems to be the only one in its "medium" (compared to Twitch and TikTok being different formats) that pays creators, it's hard to ask all of them to impact their potential livelihoods.
Nebula as a premium service seems to be the best in terms of paying creators and keeping non-perverse incentives. But Nebula is for very specific kinds of content.
Also, though not a benefit to you in particular, apparently any creator you watch with Premium gets a way bigger payout for your view. Only heard about this anecdotally but it seems to track.
You can do this manually on the free plan. Mouse over the playhead and you'll see a graph. You can click the highest point in the graph which is where most people clicked through to.
its crazy lengths ppl will go to avoid paying few dollars a month. i dont belive ppl commenting on this website are that squeezed for money. kind of bizzare.
Video is a terrible learning format for most information. I actually judge people who learn primarily through video as having very low information parsing throughput.
I actually don't care that much about YouTube content and it's not a place I go and hang out, but I'll pay just about anything to avoid seeing ads. Yes, I know ad blockers exist, but getting them to work on laptop, phone, Apple TV directly, Apple TV via casting, etc is not easy or even possible in some cases. If I had to guess I watch ~1hr of YouTube a week, if I watch more than that I'm watching longer-form content, but mostly it's because everyone hosts their videos there so the 3-7min here and there add up to ~1hr (tutorials, product launch, help/documentation video, etc). As much as it pains me to fork over $15+/mo for that, I hate being interrupted by ads more.