This is why I just pay for YouTube Premium (in £). I can afford it and it just makes life easier.
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To be honest I’m surprised at how relaxed they’ve been over the past 20 years on this
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When I was over in Budapest Recently I managed to sign up fairly smoothly and it even charges me in Hungarian Florint! Which is about £3-4 a month!
In related news, I’ve really been enjoying Firefox’s VPN service.
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You Tube Premium
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I guess one way it might be worth it is switching from Spotify to YouTube music. Not sure how they compare - always assumed the collection would be smaller on YouTube music.
I haven’t had any ads or popups ever since I clicked to allow ads and it showed me the instructions for each adblocker, don’t know if it’s a bug or what but it’s as if it treated that as me allowing them.
By refusing to give Google a single penny, you’re also refusing to give Tim Scott a single penny.
I don’t actually mind ads on YouTube that much myself, as I know that the channels in watching end up getting some money as a result of them. And while each viewer may only account for a small fraction, the aggregate is not insignificant.
Granted, it helps that usually one only has to watch a little bit and then it’s possible to press to skip. I’d probably be more vexed if there were 5 minutes of unskippable ads like can be found on some other streaming services.
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If they offered a simple ad-free plan I’d have subscribed to it, they’re shooting themselves in the foot charging £12.99 and bundling Music Premium in.
For comparison, I currently pay £7.99 for Disney+, which gives access to a huge amount of content. Apple Music is £10.99, which gives me unlimited streaming and storage of custom songs I’ve downloaded/ripped from CDs. YouTube Premium however is £12.99, more expensive than either of the others, but doesn’t grant me access to content I didn’t already have access to, the only benefit would be no ads. So on that basis it’s hugely overpriced. If they had a simple ad-free tier, I’d have subscribed and I’m sure others would have too. But I can’t justify £12.99 purely to remove ads on content I can already otherwise access.
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If ad-free and music is £12.99 and music is £10.99…
Does that mean ad-free should be valued at £2.
I’m happy enough paying zero for Premium but at £2 I would pay.
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Happy to avoid debating ethics, as that wasn’t my intention.
Where I was coming from - and I wish I’d bookmarked it or something at the time - was a couple of days ago I saw a post on BlueSky from a YouTuber who made the point that the money they receive from their share of YouTube ads is more than double what they get from their Patreon.
So as I said in my previous reply, given I enjoy watching James Hoffmann, and I enjoy watching SortedFOOD (to take two examples), to me it feels churlish to deliberately deny them of ad income. (I say deliberately because for years I didn’t even realise YT had ads, because I watched on the computer which already had adblocking extensions installed, so it was only when I got a Fire stick and started watching on the big telly I realised.)
To take your other two points in reverse order, I absolutely agree that YouTube Premium is overpriced - and funnily enough, I do pay for your example, Channel 4’s almost ad-free tier because for the amount I watch the time saved is more than worth it. I’m not for a minute advocating that anyone pays the ridiculous price YT is asking. It’s not worth it.
As for the ads being inappropriate, do your Google settings block ad personalisation? I objected massively to Twitter serving me gambling ads all the time (I have a moral objection to gambling ads being served indiscriminately). I couldn’t tell you what ads YT serve me, but they definitely don’t serve gambling ones, and I wouldn’t have a problem with tampon ones. For me, the non-personalised ads I get served are perfectly neutral and inoffensive.
But I digress, what I meant to say was that if your Google settings include ad personalisation, it might be worth going through the stepa for clearing/resetting your ad data and seeing if that stops them serving the tampon ones.
Maybe I watch channels that aren’t as ad-heavy but I don’t really notice too many ads, certainly not enough that annoy me into paying to get rid.
If it helps, this is the link to the Google And Centre:
https://myadcenter.google.com/
At the very top you should be able to see if personalisation is turned off or not.
I’m not sure of the relevance - Google don’t know your sexuality (or maybe they do with the amount of data they gather). I could say the same as a straight man, given that such ads are likely only relevant to women (of all sexualities).
I think Google actually did a trial of a cheaper ad-removal only subscription in some of the Nordic countries a couple of years ago. I’ve not heard anything since, though, so they probably felt it wasn’t something they wanted to continue with.
They binned it recently.
ETA:
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Until you get multiple ads you can’t slip. 
I know I started this thread, but I’ve decided to pay for Premium.
Having thought it through, you can justify adblocking to yourself on YouTube in lots of ways, but there no denying you are taking money from the creator, large or small. We wouldn’t want to be associated with a shoplifter, but is this really any different?
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You can keep abreast of the current ad-blocker wars here:
https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/