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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.
Egregious is the perfect word, I can only add that the adds are offensively stupid as well, and loud. I've been clicking back and forth until the content comes on but now it's three times at least. I'll install one of these ad blockers now but the real problem still isn't solved. I'd love to leave the platform altogether but don't know of an alternative. I tried PeerTube at one point but that was a dumpster fire , at least at the time I peeked in.
The other thing I hate about YT is the obvious click baiting the platform does, over the creators wishes. If I'm not clicking on any of the videos, the thumbnail images get weirder and crazier until I just leave the whole mess. Anyone else noticed this? It's like they are convinced this will gain more engagement and maybe it does but I hate it and feel manipulated and degraded by it.
AFAIK the changing thumbnails are not made by YouTube. The creator uploads a number of options for thumbnails and video titles, then YouTube randomly? shows those options to users and provides statistics to the creator so they can apply the best performing (in terms of click through and watch time) option to improve video performance. It's all of course linked to how the algorithm works, so is indirectly influenced by YouTube.
Source: a video I watched a while ago but I don't even remember who made the video, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
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).