Technology

It's hilariously sad to me how many ~~rubes~~ ~~easy marks~~ people are still paying Google for the pRivIlEge to have their eyes and brains assaulted by ads.

What ads? If you mean normal YouTube ads, no, Premium removes those. If you mean sponsor sections of video, it’s no SponsorBlock but now if you start skipping ahead during those sections of a video you can click a button that jumps you to the end of the ad. This is a Premium feature.

Edit: Oh, I forgot they added a “Premium lite.” I can understand why that might appeal to a subset of users, but that’s definitely not for me.

Either use a front-end without ads

Easy enough on PC, but my usual use case is the video playing on my iPhone, so…no.

or stop using it

Why? It’s a service I enjoy and find valuable to me.

"but it's such a value!" no it isn't

I’m pretty happy with the value I get for premium. I watch/listen to a shitload of educational content and political commentary on YouTube. It also includes YouTube Music so I have my music streaming covered there, too. I probably get more value-per-dollar out of my premium subscription than my Nebula subscription (which is also fantastic, by the way).

you're just gullible and naive.

Yeah, how dare I spend my money on something useful to me and in the process help support the people who make the shit I watch. (Though admittedly, while premium views are worth far more than ad views and literally infinitely more than ad-blocked views to channel creators, that isn’t the bulk of their revenue, which comes instead from sponsor deals and Patreon/channel member subscriptions.)

Or complicit. Which is worse.

Complicit in what?

You do you, my friend, but don’t act like you’re better than others because you disagree with how they consume content compared to you.