same here, I use invidious!

And this still won’t be enough to stop people from using it.

yewtu.be FTW!

Wow, shilling for YouTube premium and anti-net-neutrality (the "discount through your phone company" part) in one comment.

That likely makes you easier to track. User agents don't really matter all that much if an advanced tracking script is used. When your IP address is the same, your browser engine is the same, your canvas data stays the same, your window size stays the same, your operating system stays the same, then they will just know that you also use an extension that makes your user agent not reflect your system and track you based on that too.

Use Mullvad Browser without changing anything important (change the default search engine at most) and preferably use a proper VPN to actually avoid tracking during regular internet usage. Or use LibreWolf to at least fool naive scripts.

I would suggest reading this too:
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/3.3-Overrides-[To-RFP-or-Not]

actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay

And evidently those who do! My parents live in a different country. What are they, not my family? What's the family plan for? (Rhetorical question)

With Vanced I have so many more options to customize my experience. I can hide shorts I never watch, set a fixed resolution for data and wifi, return the stupid dislike ratio they removed... And if I'm using Vanced anyway to fix all the issues they introduce, why on earth would I additionally pay for their service?

I want to pay for their shit, especially to support content creators, but I can't support a platform whose singular mission it is to make everything worse for everyone constantly. Feels like every month I have to get a new extension to undo some horrible design decision.

*available on all platforms and browsers (including iOS/iPadOS)

YT forces me to login if I am using a VPN these days, if I use Firefox or Safari. Brave avoids this. I will have to try Mullvad.

Try a different VPN server if you get the "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" error. If you're using Mullvad VPN, the Netherlands Amsterdam 203 server should work.

Do you have a means of removing sponsors on the mobile app though? Revanced has sponsorblock and adblock in the app.

Or to start using it. I'm not sure I know anybody actually using it

It's a "product" that profits billions off other people's - often stolen - works.

As long as people are actually willing to get scammed (and boy did the threshold get low in the last decades), scammers will scam.

Vanced

I hope you mean ReVanced, otherwise... bBoy, I've got some news for you.

You pay a scammer to scam you and wonder why you get scammed?
Their course was clear the moment they ditched their slogan "don't be evil". And here we are, again.

And you know when exactly YouTube went total ape-shit? The moment people could earn some meager bucks. Then shitty content flooded the whole platform until it was full of crap and actual good content got harder and harder to find in that pile of "you might wanna see this"
Nowadays i see the frontpage, sigh in disgust and close the page. And I haven't even seen an ad there yet. This would be the cherry on top

That is correct. Though I guess that there aren't more than 0.1% on yt that are "making it". You just don't see the vids that got 5 views since 2004 or the millions of ppl that so dread to be someone yet never gain traction.

it's because Youtube is a content monopoly. TikTok is a platform for short content...on youtube it's a feature with shorts. Twitch is a platform for live streaming content...on youtube it's a feature with, other than discoverability, the same features. Any music streaming service? again...it's a feature on youtube. The fact I could export my playlists from any music streaming platform and import it to Youtube and listen to it ad free via an ad blocker? come on. So as opposed to using multiple platforms, with youtube you have it all in one place. So no, this will not get people to stop using it.

Premium you don't need if you're even the slightest bit tech savvy. but no one is ever going to stop using youtube, there's no point. I mean I use peertube as much as possible but every now and then I'm back on youtube because of all those features in one place and some things I just can't find on peertube.

I'll join you in the downvotes. There's many reasons to hate YouTube. Asking them to pay for video content to everyone for free is a bit silly.

I'm also not saying you shouldn't use alternatives or run an ad-blocker. Those are cool. I just find it funny how someone is saying: "I get some benefit in paying for this service" results in such backlash, lol.

Why pay for premium anyway? Let alone a family plan. You still get ads. They can be skipped too — SponsorBlock will do it for free. Google could use this but chooses not to.

They want YouTube to be like cable TV. You pay for it. You watch ads. You pay more for premium channels.