I can tell you why I do. I watch more YT than anything else (on my TV), and don’t want to watch ads, or play cat and mouse games trying to prevent them. I also listen to a lot of music, and use YT Music. I pay for the family plan, since we all listen to music, and my son and I watch a lot of YT (very different videos on YT however :) )
I get, there’s a growing group of people that think everything should be free, but I’m OK paying for something I use a lot, to remove ads. There should, however be more controls for paid users, like controlling whether or not you see creator ads, shorts, etc…
I do totally get paying to support something you use a ton.
But I don’t get comments like this calling blocking ads a cat and mouse game. It’s always been incredibly easy to block ads on the devices I own and I rarely ever have to mess with anything after installing a single browser extension or a single app.
On my desktop/laptop–ublock origin. I would install this regardless of whether or not I care about YouTube ads because ads on websites in general can be pretty cancerous. So I would already have it on my device to begin with. Install one extension and forget about it. Very occasionally ads start coming through, but then the extension auto updates itself and I don’t have to worry about it. It’s effortless and I absolutely never need to mess with the settings.
On my phone–YouTube ReVanced. Just basically download I think two APK files and you’re set. I’ve had to reinstall this a single time over the maybe decade(?) I’ve been using it as YouTube had some sort of breaking update or something. But having to install it again once every many years is hardly an inconvenience. Oh I guess I have had to install it again when I’ve gotten a new phone, but that’s really not that odd or inconvenient to me either…and generally I don’t get a new phone that often.
On my android TV device–SmartTube Next. It’s a single APK file. Set it and forget it. I’ve never had to reinstall the app.
One caveat with this is that it seems harder to watch YouTube ad free (without paying for premium) on Apple devices. So if you use a lot of Apple products it also makes sense.
Ya, all you have to do is install something different on every device you own/watch YouTube on.
You also, have to be technical enough to side load, or compile revanced etc… I’ve heard over and over that ubo keeps having updates/changes to keep yt ads down.
I actually am technical enough to do those things, but both doing and managing these various apps across multiple devices in my house is a lot of work. Or, I can just pay for the music and TV I watch.
For the record, I also have and paid for GrayJay app on my phone and do also use it on occasion. We have used smart tube TV in the past because when my son was younger Google had shit parental controls and we couldn’t allow his child account to access regular yt (restricted). I’ve got it side loaded on both our Nvidia shield and gtv devices. Too bad it doesn’t work on android TV, or my wife/sons iPhones.
YTmusic is the main reason I bothered to pay for premium. I was using Spotify and had a trial of 3months. The quality of recommendations was decent so chose to stick around. Adfree YouTube was another bonus.
I think youtube has just started needing way more bandwidth than it used to. A few years ago, 100KB/s would load a videos page almost instantly, comments as well, and smoothly run 360p playback. Now even at 160KB/s I often spend 60+ seconds for parts of the page to even load.
That’s thanks to their shitty javascript. Gosh, I hate sites doing that so much
Just let me use my browser the way it’s intended to instoad of loading every shitty little html element dynamically with your shitty js doing shitty network requests dropping them like crazy
I’m a paying YouTube premium subscriber and use adguard. But, I have been experiencing the YouTube app being slow in loading comments for some reason.
Why? Why are you paying YouTube? What is wrong with you?
I can tell you why I do. I watch more YT than anything else (on my TV), and don’t want to watch ads, or play cat and mouse games trying to prevent them. I also listen to a lot of music, and use YT Music. I pay for the family plan, since we all listen to music, and my son and I watch a lot of YT (very different videos on YT however :) )
I get, there’s a growing group of people that think everything should be free, but I’m OK paying for something I use a lot, to remove ads. There should, however be more controls for paid users, like controlling whether or not you see creator ads, shorts, etc…
I do totally get paying to support something you use a ton.
But I don’t get comments like this calling blocking ads a cat and mouse game. It’s always been incredibly easy to block ads on the devices I own and I rarely ever have to mess with anything after installing a single browser extension or a single app.
On my desktop/laptop–ublock origin. I would install this regardless of whether or not I care about YouTube ads because ads on websites in general can be pretty cancerous. So I would already have it on my device to begin with. Install one extension and forget about it. Very occasionally ads start coming through, but then the extension auto updates itself and I don’t have to worry about it. It’s effortless and I absolutely never need to mess with the settings.
On my phone–YouTube ReVanced. Just basically download I think two APK files and you’re set. I’ve had to reinstall this a single time over the maybe decade(?) I’ve been using it as YouTube had some sort of breaking update or something. But having to install it again once every many years is hardly an inconvenience. Oh I guess I have had to install it again when I’ve gotten a new phone, but that’s really not that odd or inconvenient to me either…and generally I don’t get a new phone that often.
On my android TV device–SmartTube Next. It’s a single APK file. Set it and forget it. I’ve never had to reinstall the app.
One caveat with this is that it seems harder to watch YouTube ad free (without paying for premium) on Apple devices. So if you use a lot of Apple products it also makes sense.
Ya, all you have to do is install something different on every device you own/watch YouTube on.
You also, have to be technical enough to side load, or compile revanced etc… I’ve heard over and over that ubo keeps having updates/changes to keep yt ads down.
I actually am technical enough to do those things, but both doing and managing these various apps across multiple devices in my house is a lot of work. Or, I can just pay for the music and TV I watch.
For the record, I also have and paid for GrayJay app on my phone and do also use it on occasion. We have used smart tube TV in the past because when my son was younger Google had shit parental controls and we couldn’t allow his child account to access regular yt (restricted). I’ve got it side loaded on both our Nvidia shield and gtv devices. Too bad it doesn’t work on android TV, or my wife/sons iPhones.
YTmusic is the main reason I bothered to pay for premium. I was using Spotify and had a trial of 3months. The quality of recommendations was decent so chose to stick around. Adfree YouTube was another bonus.
I think youtube has just started needing way more bandwidth than it used to. A few years ago, 100KB/s would load a videos page almost instantly, comments as well, and smoothly run 360p playback. Now even at 160KB/s I often spend 60+ seconds for parts of the page to even load.
That’s thanks to their shitty javascript. Gosh, I hate sites doing that so much
Just let me use my browser the way it’s intended to instoad of loading every shitty little html element dynamically with your shitty js doing shitty network requests dropping them like crazy