I’ve been paying for premium, basically because they’ve been sort of forcing to people with the ridiculous number of ads. I get zero ads injected. You’ll still get sponsorships that are part of the video done by the creator, which is now become a little bit more annoying. But at least it’s something that the content creator completely approves of and endorses. I can skip that part anyway.
I’ll probably cancel it soon, only because I need to stop watching so much of this stuff, and I need to get rid of things in life that I shouldn’t be paying for. Once I do that, I’ll never be able to watch YouTube again, because it was unbearable with the number of ads injected. I hate being reminded over and over that I am nothing but a consumer that they try to influence with ads over, amd over, and over, and over.
Off-topic, I recently got another free month of Amazon prime. I was watching some shows on there, and the ads are f’n annoying there too. I can’t believe they make people pay more now to remove the ads. I’ll never pay for Prime in any fashion.
I have paid for YouTube Premium for years and watch YouTube nearly every day and I have never seen an ad from YouTube (you still may see baked-in ads from the video creator but those can be automatically skipped with the SponsorBlock extension).
I do it this way, pay for premium and still use an ad blocker. I do it this way because there is no question whether or not I see ads. My conscience is clear because YouTube claims creators get a kickback when premium users watch their content.
For me it’s the best middle ground. I pay one bill, everyone gets paid.