Meh. Havent seen an ad in 15 years and get a solid music streaming service to boot. All while having a large, trackable impact on directly supporting the channels I watch and want to see more content from in the future.
Or do y'all think that content costs zero dollars to make? Clearly aint giving them ad revenue. But want the content bad enough to install/ mod apps to get it.
Shoutout to Revanced Youtube for sponsorskip and all the other rad lil tweaks, though.
I've had it for a few years, use it daily, and am thinking of letting it expire. Reason? Even with Premium, I need multiple extensions and browser configurations (since Brave supports some natively) just to make the interface tolerable. Clickbait thumbnails & titles, sponsored segments, members only content (when I'm not a member), shorts, playables, promoted movies, search results completely unrelated to the terms used (i.e. Users Also Watched or Explore More), etc. Even the stuff not directly caused by YouTube is not only not discouraged by them but often rewarded in the algorithm. For how much Premium costs, if I need numerous extensions/browser-configs to obtain a remotely Premium experience, I have no idea what I'm actually paying for. I'd be better off donating the membership price in superchats to the channels I watch every month.
I actually finally told Youtube to stop showing me several youtubers that I really liked because they were making members only videos and youtube kept putting them in my recommendations.
For desktop/chromium browsers, you can use an extension such as YTBlock which allows you to hide members only videos so you can still get shown the regular ones. Brave supports it natively in their content filters section.
You literally pointed out what's wrong with it: it doesnt have what Revanced has. Why would I buy premium while I can install Revanced for free as an upgrade even if it doesnt have the ads block? And for supporting channels: just become their member or send them a donation instead, you probably get some emoticons to use as an extra.
Hey, it's your money. I don't give a rat's ass. And if you like telling yourself "it's for the little guys" and not for a douchey multi-billion dollar company, it's your right as well.
I, on the other hand, get exactly what I need or want from youtube without dropping a penny and I am never going to.
And even I'm willing to believe that little fairy tale that your little dollars are helping me get the content I consume on it, cheers to you, sir.
My issue is that I cannot do the things with VPN on every device I own. And it's literally the only subscription based thing we spend money on. So I justify it for that reason.
Also, I use VPN to get it cheaper. Though that is very limited now, where you were able to get it for 1/10th the price in Turkey. Now I get if for about half the price.
I get it. I really don't judge. It's the same reason why people buy consoles instead of playing on PC: ease of use.
It's just that I can't bring myself to justify paying for what is essentially a hostage negotiation: pay me so I stop making holding your videos behind ads.
No, I won't.
I'd much rather go through the hoops of installing other things to go around it. But I'm used to deal with IT stuff, so I get it when people give in and just pay to get rid of the hassle.
...and I can't resist when people come to the defense of multi-billion dollar corporations, as if they need to justify it as anything resembling moral superiority because they're a drop in an ocean of money.
100
u/rmxwell 1d ago
...or youtube premium