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YouTube tests blocking videos unless you disable ad blockers
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Unpopular opinion: I like paying for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads and still make it possible for creators and YouTube to get paid and survive an keep offering me entertainment.
In addition you also get YouTube Music so no need to pay for Spotify. It might not have as good features but I listen to music specifically so I only search for what I want to listen to and don't want any algorithms anyway.
This is very much their propaganda tactic, that by not watching ads you're stealing from the poor content creators, when in reality they're just chucking a few pennies to the people who actually made the videos. If you want to actually support the creators then donate to their patreon or whatever, but don't pretend that watching ads or paying for premium is doing anything more than lining the pockets of investors.
I don't have premium but I have stumbled on a number of content creators (I'm sure one of them was TheSpiffingBrit among others) explaining the audience how they get significantly more money from people watching them in a youtube premium...
Moving to a decentralised service like Lemmy didn't line anyone's pockets (well, except maybe the infrastructure provider, but that could be anyone!)
If you think software is the answer you are in for a rather... regrettably consistent future, I believe.
I pay for nebula, which is significantly cheaper and has a lot of creators that I am interested in supporting, plus extra content from them.
You can subscribe to the channels you are interested in and see just them in the library tab, but yeah I can see that hiding things from the videos tab would be nice.
Small question about Nebula, am I right in thinking that it's mostly music-centered? Context, I barely use YouTube for music, but rather for documentaries and game stream edits.
It's mostly edutainment type content.
My counterpoint to yours: YouTube Premium is not available in all countries.
Beyond that, I personally used YouTube Red for years until they killed Google Play Music. I was an avid user of GPM, had several playlists and radios tuned there, and when they announced the move to YT Music, I was hesitant but gave them until literally the last minute to add the features from GPM that didn't exist on YTM, but they never did.
I cancelled my YouTube Red subscription the day that the GPM app on my phone said it wouldn't work again, and on that day I swore I'd never pay YT another penny directly.
Yes that's really bad that they don't offer it in all countries. I'm in luck that I lived in those countries they do offer it. But even that, once I moved to Korea, they don't allow YT Premium Family here. I guess it's some Korean Law thing, they have very extreme laws when it comes to IT here, Google Maps doesn't work, etc. Anyway until now they didn't mind that I used My dad's computer in Germany to circumvent it. But yeah, one day they will come after me, I'm sure.
Same with me. I loved Google Play Music and was sad when they killed it. YouTube Music still isn't as good. I ended up ripping a bunch of old CDs, setting up my own Plex server, and using Plexamp for music streaming instead.
Yeah I think it's a good option for a lot of people.
As a counterpoint, I recommend watching Louis Rossman's take on why he recommends people pirate instead of paying for YouTube Premium. His general philosophy on things is that you should pay for things unless you're getting an inferior service to the pirates. In this case of YouTube Premium, he considers it restrictive enough (won't let him watch videos offline) that he cancelled his subscription and now recommends piracy.
But YouTube Premium lets you download and watch offline...
You can without premium as well. Just find a youtube-dl instance or host one yourself.
Did you watch the video? YouTube Premium lets you watch a video offline if you're online. If you've been offline for 3 days, however, you cannot watch any videos offline, which makes the usage of the word "offline" a little strange.
Perhaps I should add that I hate ads with a passion and that I'm really thankful to YouTube that they offer opt out of ads.
I like YT Music better than Spotify because user uploads cover the gaps in Spotify's catalog. Bootlegs, concert recordings, obscure game soundtracks, it has everything.
Agree on the gaps but I hate that YouTube music puts music videos in my mixes or only the videos are available in rare instances. Sometimes I'd be listening to a mix (bc I like discovering new stuff) and then I get a minute of random noises and dialogue from the beginning of a video. Granted, I haven't looked heavily into disabling videos or anything
Yeah, that is admittedly a big drawback for YT