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Linus Tech Tips uploaded a video showing how to block ads on Youtube. Which was removed by Youtube for community guidelines violations.
(sh.itjust.works)
https://files.catbox.moe/a6111d.png / https://nitter.poast.org/LinusTech/status/1825956050685800834
If you go the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjHMzGl-VY. You will see it's gone. So Youtube being Youtube.
Here's a Odysee mirror of the video, https://odysee.com/@jopec:7/linus-tech-tips-degoogle-your-life-part-2-adfree-youtube:0.
You're right, it absolutely doesn't, which is why it's so weird to me that Linus makes a big deal about it.
Which is why I either donate to channels I like or buy their merch. They get way more than if I wasn't blocking ads, and I don't have to support a company that manipulates people with ads. So I guess at the end of the day I'm "stealing" from YouTube, and I guess I'm okay with that. If they offered good value for their premium service, I'd pay. But they don't, so I just use an ad-blocker to get the thing I care about. I refuse to let them harvest my personal data, and that's basically what their advertising is designed to do. I'd disable my ad-blocker if their ads were provably not tracking me, but I know that to not be true.
I'm not against paying for things. I pay for Nebula, my email (Tuta), and some other alternatives to Google products, I just refuse to pay for artificial limitations. YouTube Premium sucks for my intended use-case (download news to listen to on my commute, and occasionally listen to music while doing chores), and it's not worth the $10 or whatever they charge for it. If they offered a lower tier (say, something based on watch-time), I might pay for it, more out of guilt than anything, but it needs to be a fair price. About half the channels I regularly watch are on Nebula or Odyssee, so I wouldn't miss too much if they blocked my access to it.