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Comment by stackskipton | Hacker News Reader

At some point, paying for something and knowing it will work is worth it. In particular, ad blocking YouTube on mobile is frustrating.

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Not getting sucked into YouTube on mobile is a feature, not a bug

Why? Much like with the person who mentioned YouTube is their primary online entertainment, it also is for me. And I'm using my phone in more situations than my laptop, e.g. when doing the dishes or some chore.

I don't watch ragebait videos either, I watch either music videos, or stuff about my hobbies.

Ads would kill either. I hate random ads popping up.

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.

That is not what extortion means

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.

If you are a YouTube Premium subscriber you actually do get a button that skips in-video sponsor ads.

Why bother about what YT will do in the future? Nobody can answer your question, but when/if they stop blocking ads, we can stop paying from Premium. Same as when any service becomes enshittified. For now, Premium does block all ads except sponsored content (i.e. stuff in the video itself).

As for sponsored content, I don't think that's under YT's control (other than that they allow it, imagine if it was forbidden: authors would complain about that arbitrary restriction). Sponsored content is like product placement, if you pay for a cinema ticket, why does the movie advertise products, cars, stores, etc? And is it the movie theater's fault?

NewPipe is the way to do that on android...

Yup. Astounding how many tech people just fork over money to an evil company instead though.

Smarttube on Android TV's works exceptionally well, too. I've seen people recommend Tizentube over it because it's nearly indistinguishable from the standard YouTube app, but with adblocking--but I actually prefer the more minimalist UI of Smarttube.

is there something for IOS?

My solution is to watch YouTube on brave browser.

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.

If they rise the price or start showing ads you can stop paying for Premium, same as with any service that stops being useful to you.

Not sure why you need to mention the "renter" thing, this is literally a service you're paying for and that you can stop paying the minute it stops being useful to you. There's no vendor lock-in, just stop paying for Premium when if it ever becomes shit.

The OP is not saying Premium will always be good, they're saying why they find it useful to pay for Premium now.

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