That's basically google's main business. Their business is not in web search, video platform, mobile OS, email or AI, it's ad. People forget Google is an ad company, that uses any tool available to give you ad. If it's free and not open source, you are the product. Either to sell your attention and availability to companies through ads, or to use your data to do profiling, build a more vicious ad platform and sell your data on the side.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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I don't pay anything. Just use newpipe/ublock/smarttube
Revanced and Tubular, for those who want more flavours.
Kinda makes sense tho. Either they earn money on you from ads or they make money from you because of subscription. Or you're like me and you still block the ads even though YouTube does everything it can to stop you.
I wouldn't really mind watching some ads before a video, but I don't wanna get constantly interrupted or have the ads track me everywhere. I tend to watch the in-video ads from creators tho, because most people I follow have relevant ads, funny ads, or ar the very least deserve some revenue.
Some of us pay ourselves to install an ad blocker and then we keep our money and we don't get any ads.
Wait, you guys are getting paid to not see ads??
I pay myself in handjobs.
Why the fuck am I looking at a picture of Will Ferrell and not Ricky?
I'm gonna pay you $0 to fuck off (with ublock)
What’s that have to do with Ricky Bobby?
We could just ban advertising.
Like Cuba!
I'm for it.
Any form of advertising aside from maybe a press release to announce a new product/service, and also any form of commissioned sales.
Why is it a random picture of Will Ferrell though? Why are recent memes like this?
You guys pay youtube?
PiHole exists!
Pihole does not stop youtube ads as they are served through youtube's domains. You need ublock or something like that.
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Stupid question, but does pihole offer any substantial benefit over using a remote ad-blocking DNS like AdGuard or whatever?
Please ignore the other two commenters.....
Adblockers block ads at the user level, meaning you have to manage the adblocker for each device in your ecosystem.
PiHole and similar DNS based ad blocking technologies OTOH block ads at the network level and only needs one install location to manage content for all devices you have on your network.
This means with PiHole you can have one set of custom rules that block all ads at the network level by using a set of pre-loaded and customizeable DNS blocklists. OR! you can install Ublock on 2 devices in your house and let the other 7 devices that have no access to adblockers (like IoT devices) be subject to the atrocity that is modern advertising.
Additionally, adblockers in browsers can eventually be shut off. See: Google Chrome and Ublock Origin.
Yes but there are public DNS servers that block blacklisted domains. I can set that as DNS in my router settings and it works the same as using pihole as a blacklisting DNS server, right?
But what does a pihole (which is DNS blocking) do that AdGuard's free public DNS (which is DNS blocking) doesn't? Of course uBlock Origin alongside them is better, but what's a pihole specifically doing?
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Never given YouTube a dime and never will
Never clicking on any online ad is another goal to strive for.
"Perpetrators offer a service that will not be put into effect, or offer a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket."
The very definition of racketeering.
I've said this a few times in various places, but I'm really surprised we aren't allowed to bid for ad space for ourselves to not show an ad the way advertisers do for ads. Obviously a flat monthly rate is simpler, nobody is denying that, but just from a purely "free market" perspective (which shareholders love to say they want while using the government to crush opposition) why can't I pay slightly more than whatever small amount of money someone is paying to show me an ad to not see the ad?
Realistically I don't think we'll ever see that because it's a fairly complicated. I don't have any hard data, but I can't imagine that the majority of users using something like YouTube Premium are getting a "good deal." Sure, some folks probably watch all day every day and they get the better end of the deal, but I'd bet for a lot of folks YouTube makes more money off charging the subscription than they would showing the ads. Which is sort of an odd scenario we've gotten ourselves into (but amazing if you're a company that serves ads).
Its a good idea but mentally people hate micro-transactions(transactions that are lower than 10cents) so they get mad every time its suggested. Plus its technically quite challenging to process those kind of transactions efficiently.
You wouldn't prompt them every time. And it would be no more difficult than serving the ads which are also charging every time they're shown.
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Add to this that companies would prefer showing their ads to paying customers (who have some money to spend), not the free tier plebs
Every single youtube channel needs to start seeding torrents of their videos, and posting those links to other platforms (here, mastodon, etc).
Youtube / google could be defeated collectively if creators were to consistently do this, and interested people had the ability to help seed videos.
But a lot of YouTube channels get money through youtube
Most of the channels I know ask for donations via patreon or other funding platforms. I don't think youtube pays much except for maybe the top 1% of slop channels.
A lot more people make money than the top 1%. The top 1% make big money, but many more may not make a fortune, but it's a legit side hustle for them. Get into the right niche, and you can do VERY well.
In most cases, not all that much. YouTube is mainly useful for getting views and building an audience. It’s a combination of revenue sources like sponsors, merchandise, donations, etc., that really make it worthwhile for creators.
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Its much better to pay YouTube so the YouTubers get money based on what the audience wants, and not what the Advertisers want from Youtube.
Sounds like you're describing Nebula
Nebula does not bring an audience like YouTube can, so its not a solution yet.
I think YouTube should have a free tier with limited watch minutes of low quality, not an advertising tier.
Nebula sounds great until you use it... At least on Android, it buffers randomly for no reason, doesn't fallback onto audio-only if your screen is off, crashes, etc... it's just not very nice to use
They call it a double-sided economy.
I call it “let’s fuck everyone.”
Storing and serving videos is expensive, they have to pay for it somehow. Either you pay directly or someone else pays for you (through an Ad). I don't see why this is inherently a problem.
I can see arguments on if the specifics are a problem with how they're going about it, but the fundamentals make sense.
It always feels like YouTube is double dipping though. Not with what the post is about; that's either/or, obviously.
But Google makes a nice profit collecting user data and behavior, and then selling that to advertising companies. That happens regardless of using an adblocker, and I'd be shocked if it doesn't also happen regardless of YT premium.
But at the same time, Google also IS an advertising company; they use their user data collection platform to also show ads to users, getting paid again.
So personally, even if YT wasn't owned and operated by a shitstain of a capitalist eldritch horror company, I'd still have zero qualms blocking all their ads: they're making money off of me regardless.
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