Until earlier this year I just watched the ads because in some small way it supports creators and I could deal with it. Then they increased the number of ads per watch-time to egregious levels.
I certainly wasn't going to reward a company for making the existing service worse by subscribing. Started using the apps people mention immediately and also setup pihole to block more ads.
That's what I had going. I was fine with supporting the creators that I subscribed to. I have a whitelist on my ad blockers for sites that I support and have decent ads (if it looks like "Ow! My Balls" from Idiocracy, I block them). But, YouTube added WAY too many ads, unskippable ads, ads everywhere. It's too much, and the creators get less and less. I block everything I can on YouTube now. Some are still getting through, but most of the time I'm good. Still some great creators, and I'm going to start downloading the ones I really want to keep for reference.
Until earlier this year I just watched the ads because in some small way it supports creators and I could deal with it. Then they increased the number of ads per watch-time to egregious levels.
I certainly wasn't going to reward a company for making the existing service worse by subscribing. Started using the apps people mention immediately and also setup pihole to block more ads.
That's what I had going. I was fine with supporting the creators that I subscribed to. I have a whitelist on my ad blockers for sites that I support and have decent ads (if it looks like "Ow! My Balls" from Idiocracy, I block them). But, YouTube added WAY too many ads, unskippable ads, ads everywhere. It's too much, and the creators get less and less. I block everything I can on YouTube now. Some are still getting through, but most of the time I'm good. Still some great creators, and I'm going to start downloading the ones I really want to keep for reference.
I sometimes like to subscribe to the YT channel of some creators for a few months. Get some bonus content and no ads (if no ad blocker).