You can pay the $10~ per month for premium and get rid of the ads. Many people here on hn complain about the ads but are unwilling to pay to support non ad version at the same time.
I don't have a problem paying for subs, I use Apple Music and used Spotify, I like Netflix or Prime. But Google/Youtube is unethical with their ads. Yesterday I saw an ad showing "the police kidnapping people in california" from a Russian account. No way to report it anymore, now way to prove it was true, a blatant example of trying to influence people negatively.
I'll support the content creators I like directly now via other methods. If youtube can't at least remove blatantly false "ads" then they don't deserve my support.
It doesn't work for YouTube, at least on the mobile app. It's a bit hit or miss, for example it doesn't get rid of ads in Duolinguo, but it does stop the 30 second ones. On desktop you're better off using a plugin (I run both, but then you get leftover whitespace).
Advertisements have all the downsides, are used in tremendously unethical ways including abhorrent views and as a malware propagation network. It is my duty to put heavy adblockers on as a layer of protection.
And it's none of their concern what I download to my computer. If they want to do more serverside logic to make sure I download their crap,it's going right in to /dev/null
They're starting to creep into premium now too. I have Google play music which includes YouTube premium, just checked YouTube on my phone and it immediately showed an advert, even though I'm signed in.
I'm a Premium user but between permanently enabled uBlock, Pi-Hole, and (almost) always-on VPN to use all that I never payed attention to the ads aspect. The most obvious benefits for me were that I can download the music and listen offline, including with the screen off which means I can connect now my Sonos system to Youtube.
Well, serving high-definition video isn't free. If you watch a lot of YouTube, have an adblocker, and don't pay for Premium, that would make you a freeloader.
> Well, serving high-definition video isn't free. If you watch a lot of YouTube, have an adblocker, and don't pay for Premium, that would make you a freeloader.
The serving part is likely almost free since YouTube doesn't pay much for bandwidth. [0]
