Comment by twoodfin
11 hours ago
I was one of those people skeptical that ad-free YouTube was worth the high price, but now firmly a convert.
Get it! The best deal in streaming content. Unlocks such a better experience you’ll find a dozen whole new areas of valuable & enjoyable content to explore.
I've been a YouTube premium member twice. Both times, a few months in they start showing ads anyway. Fewer, but still not none.
Why not just block ads?
1. YouTube is my primary entertainment so I don’t mind paying for it in lieu of Netflix or Hulu or whatever
2. I like that it directly benefits the creators of the videos I watch
3. It gets everyone in my family ad free viewing for 0 effort across all devices (I primarily watch it from Apple TV app)
4. Gives you higher quality bitrate option sometimes
5. It gives me the moral and logical high ground when arguing with nerds about YouTube online
6. Can download video on most (all?) devices, comes in handy sometimes, but I don’t use it frequently
7. In the past there have been preview features / experiments that were locked behind it, I think PIP was one of them, may be wrong on that. Nice to check them out or get them first
Reg. point 2, creators get a fraction of a cent for your view. Just send them a dollar once a year, and they will benefit more. Then install adblocker.
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>moral high ground
Depends who you ask. Many would say supporting companies that are so anti consumer is in a meaningful way contributing to the problem.
Many would argue using "free" media sources is more moral since you're not supporting what many consider to be evil companies.
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> It gives me the moral and logical high ground when arguing with nerds about YouTube online
The thing with paying for YouTube is that you’re giving Google money for them to get more data on you. Logically that seems like a bad deal. I get that you probably don’t mind it, but other people rightfully do.
> Can download video on most (all?) devices
Is that download as in “they are available offline in the app” or as in “you get an MP4 that you can watch in your preferred player”?
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just curious - so is YT Premium really ad-free on mobile? I've been burned by streaming services taking my money and still pushing ads in my face. that's the main reason I haven't signed up for YT Premium.
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How does it give you a moral or logical high ground?
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At some point, paying for something and knowing it will work is worth it. In particular, ad blocking YouTube on mobile is frustrating.
Not getting sucked into YouTube on mobile is a feature, not a bug
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Had they done that from day 1 you woulf have a point but it sounds like extorsion to me given youtube got rid of most of its competition and established its casi monopolistic position being adfree.
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If you can. A lot of subscription TV channels have ads even though you have to pay to get them. Does paying for youtube block all ads, and if so will it continue to, or will they change as so many others have and just make your payment remove some ads? I'm not even counting sponsored content in a lot of videos as ads, but they are annoying too.
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NewPipe is the way to do that on android...
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I've been using YT on my FF mobile browser with an ad block and it's been working great.
They could raise the price or start having ads even if you pay. You're a renter. You have no rights.
Because there's so much more value to YT premium (including YT music) that goes beyond merely blocking ads. It's really a no-brainer if you watch YT often.
There is YouTube Premium Lite now which gets you ad-free long form videos. It’s decoupled from YouTube Music
Or, you know, you could just pay for a service that you enjoy. I watch a lot more YouTube and see a bigger need to keep it alive than Netflix, HBO and co for which I am paying good money already, why should YouTube be exempt from that? Also if Netflix goes away tomorrow, you’ll find their content on torrents easily, but if YouTube goes away, we will lose decades of videos that no one has backups of. Expecting them to offer this service for free and without ads is crazy.
Well some people are in the massive minority that despises modern youtube, even if its ad free.
Look at it through a few different lenses and you'll find plenty of reasons to think youtube is overall bad. People seem to love to retreat to the dishwasher repair instructions for some random old model, to try to defend modern youtube. those videos were all over youtube before it became a vile ad infested infinite scroll attention demanding app, and the product has been on a steep decline since the perverse incentives to chase attention by any means have been added.
The core of modern youtube in 2026, is a bunch of "creators" pumping out x amount of minutes per week or as often as per day, of low quality content dressed up in a video format to disguise how low quality it is, to their viewers that will click it and not realize how poorly crafted it is because its their main feed of information and that is their baseline. You can deflect this and say there is some high quality stuff, sure, but there is no way you can possibly say that the vast majority isn't absolute garbage, and that youtube isn't incentivized to keep people watching for as long as possible with no regard for which level of quality content they are watching.
Literally everyone i've talked to that defends youtube, accepts that they watch some absolute garbage at times, and deem it worthwhile for some reason. I have no understanding for why so many people are just content burning time watching actual garbage, when there is so much high quality stuff elsewhere.
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The percent of people who know how to install an adblocker out of the global YouTube audience is so minuscule.
I don't block ads because stealing ad revenue from companies is unethical. These companies have workers who have families that they need to feed. They provide a service for free, so it's the least I can do. I watch every ad in full.
My cousin, however, stopped blocking ads on YouTube when the YouTube warnings showed up. She is scared that at some point Google would ban Gmail accounts for doing it, and she's had hers for 10 years and really relies on it. She also says YouTube videos are really easy to download so anything she really wants from YouTube she tends to have a local copy of.
It isn’t unethical to block ads; the norm on the internet has always been that senders send any not-actively-malicious bits we want and the recipient renders them however they want (including not).
That said I’m also worried about getting banned for blocking too many YouTube ads (Google doesn’t have any obligation to send me emails after all) so I… just don’t go there.
Stealing my data bandwidth by sending me unsolicited ads is also unethical. Profiling my online behavior and monetizing it is also unethical. YouTube doesn't seem to be bothered with compensating me for that. Why should I care about them?
> I watch every ad in full.
Same here. When I am watching an ad on my phone, I make sure to smile and nod REAL big at the screen-side camera - sometimes throwing in a big thumbs-up - because I need these corporations to know that I love everything they do and stand for.
Sometimes I wish that YouTube was just 100% ads. Been ostracized at more than one party for saying that, though.
This is the society we live in folks. We have no choice but to accept it. Might as well stop and smell the roses - or in this case, LOL at the LiMu Emu.
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You're right, I didn't think about the thousands left destitute by them using UBlock Origin to play a fake meeting video
Corporate psy-op
The mafia is also made of hard working people with families to feed. Sometimes industries deserve to die. Even if the people working in them don't deserve to lose their jobs. That's life in a free market.
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i mostly watch YT via the apple tv app where you can't
YouTube inserts server-side artificial 5- or 30-second delays before streaming can start in order to force you to waste the time that would be taken up by the ad either way.
Because with google it's an unwinnable arms race.
I have never run into issues
AppleTV
100% agree. I likely would have stuck with adblockers but watching on TV(s) is worth the monthly fee alone. Also you can "watch" (ie listen) in the background on the mobile app too.
I watch YouTube alot btw. :D
The basic install of Kodi on LibreELEC blocks the ads on YouTube. I left Roku after using it for a long time, and the experience with Kodi is far better. Simple setup, too.
For mobile, I use NewPipe which allows background YouTube as well.
Might not work for everyone but I never see an ad on YouTube.
One of the best products ever created, and they deserve the dough for serving me all the gigabytes. Fast, reliable, and one product not headed for KilledByGoogle. (Did I jinx it? “We’re transitioning to a vertical-video only platform to meet our billion users where they are…”)
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