YouTube Premium is the best $10 I spend per month. Nowhere else can I consistently find the sort of niche content that interests me.
I prefer newpipe for $0/mo
I prefer Tubular

Do you know how it compares to LibreTube[1]? For the SponsorBlock integration; it works well for me, but I kinda miss the newpipe interface.

[1]: https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube

GitHub - libre-tube/LibreTube: An alternative frontend for YouTube, for Android.

An alternative frontend for YouTube, for Android. Contribute to libre-tube/LibreTube development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
I've never tried LibreTube. I am used to the new pipe interface and had all my subscriptions managed their so the move to Tubular was easy.

nowhere near comparable experience if you want to seamlessly use your YT account across a TV + phone + computer

i'd rather pay the $10 than pay with my time by being an ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician

> ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician
that is being done as open source community efforts now: NewPipe for mobile, SmartTube for smart TVs etc.
All you have to do is update them once in a while

For those of us who are too cheap to pay the subscription:

On my iPhone I almost never see YTube ads. I don’t use the YTube app and instead I install Chrome and watch YT that way. I lose notifications—which is perfect for me, since I don’t want many notifications on my phone anyway.

This might also work in Safari but I haven’t tested it.

On Android, Firefox with sponsorblock. I do pay for Premium though. In since YouTube Red.
It's not comparable, it's superior! The youtube app stinks! And I don't care about "seamlessly" using it across my devices.
I mean it’s just $10. People are making livelihoods based off from YouTube. I get not liking ads, but if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it? Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
I refuse to give google any cent (and I also do not use youtube at all, so at least I’m consistent).

> Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?

No.

Edit: I do pay $5/mo for PBS

I would prefer to pay that money to creators directly than to pay it to an adtech firm and trust that they'll dole it out fairly.

>if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it?

It requires the use of a google account and there is no way to even request opting out of the accompanying data harvesting. Any "curation" or "recommendation" that would inevitably happen is also an anti-feature.

>Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?

No

I find that all of Google’s ad products are under-moderated for malicious ads. It’s a choice on their part to not tightly control this—they certainly could, though it would harm their incredible profitability if they did more scrutiny on the ads they show. I personally don’t especially care to pay a premium not to see deepfakes of celebrities promoting crypto scams.

More channels are fighting for attention though, so finding more channels are "creating buzz" or "news" based on mediocre information ie. taking things out of context and making unwarranted conclusions or blowing things out of proportions for clickbait titles.

"This changes everything!!"

Getting youtube fatigue.

I heavily use the "Not interested" and the "Do not recommend this channel" options a lot and don't click on clickbait, and use the DeArrow extension, and this way my front page looks quite good.

At this point you’re doing almost as much work as if you handpicked a few channels and put them in your RSS reader.

Algorithms are sold as “curation is hard, the algorithm does it for you” but getting the algorithm to do a good job is actually a lot of work

That’s not an argument against the comment you responded to.

If I just took any random 20 creators I’m subscribed to on YouTube, the premium membership fee, which includes YT Music, is more valuable than any of the other streaming services.

The only other streaming service I’ve been a paying member even longer than YouTube is di.fm

I also occasionally pay for a few months or bassdrive.com and or soma.fm

For movies / series, I’m back to sharing.

Disabled recommendations. Disabled comments (firefox plugin). Use subscriptions page as the homepage (firefox plugin). Only subscribe to channels that interest me (and aren't annoying like that).
The browser extension "DeArrow" is well worth a look.

I've started putting together a curated directory of (subjectively) good YouTube channels and videos [1]. It's literally the 3rd day, so not many entries yet, but I plan to continue growing it like I did with Minifeed [2].

1. https://skyshelf.app/

2. https://minifeed.net/

Fully agree. There is so much good content and being ad-free is just a really great experience.
uBlock origin + SponsorBlock has a much better price to performance ratio imo.
I'd pay that, but it's about $22 in my country...