YouTube premium requires I have a Google account, and consent to Google ToS which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder.

Youtube Premium is not acceptable. I can use cash to buy a book or a movie at a store and not have to reveal anything about myself in the process. No targeting, no having my personal data and behavior collected in centralized systems and sold forever.

The only acceptable model I have seen is what LBRY does, where I can have an anonymous account and top up a wallet of tokens which are used to support creators with microtransactions. No tracking, no ads, but creators get paid.

> which includes them tracking my behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the highest bidder.

You can use Ad Block while using YT Premium.

But you cannot opt out of Google having a list of every video you watch and when/where you watch from tied to your credit card details and browser.

Google will use this data to sort feeds and recommendations in a way that helps meet the behavior modification goals of their partners.

When creators upload to platforms that let me anonymously pay them with money, I will happily do so. LBRY has proven this can be done.

How do you think creators gain a following in a world without a recommendation system? I can assure you only maybe a dozen of the (english) creators in the top 1000 are actually popular from word-of-mouth, with the rest entirely dependent on the recommendation system for their entire channel.

I think you misunderstand what YouTube is. YouTube's primary product IS its recommendation system. Other platforms will happily host video files for you for a marginal cost, but nobody goes to them because they won't see videos that appeal to them specifically when they visit the site's homepage.

I would counter that by asking how someone who is not blessed by the almighty advertizer-friendly algorithm can ever be seen. I suggest that the internet is healthiest when anyone has a real chance of gaining a following because they organically went viral or were upvoted by users like frequently happens on mastodon or even hackernews... even if the content is not advertiser friendly.

I understand what YouTube is quite well. The product is providing the most addictive advertiser friendly content possible that ignores all mental health studies. The product is cigarettes and like cigarettes, their use will only be reduced when enough people are educated on the harms and reject the second hand smoke in our public places.

Humans are capable of simply searching for things and subscribing to things like RSS. RSS was peak internet and ActivityPub is the next generation of this. We can go back to that, while maybe adding unbiased, open source, and provably fair user voted topical discovery engines.

https://odysee.com/ is getting close with an open source system with community voted content discovery and creator support via microtransaction tips. You do not need to be advertiser friendly to succeed there, and we all get the same view of the world.

no adblock blocks in-content ads, and if we are talking technicalities and theory anyway, surely it violates the tos. I'm not sure what this suggestion even meant to accomplish now that I think about it.

>no adblock blocks in-content ads

Ever heard of SponsorBlock?

If I could pay creators directly and anonymously with only money and not my data and viewing habits and agreeing to let random third parties try to manipulate me, I would.

For now the only creators I can support with privacy are on LBRY.

"If the grocery store allowed me to pay via gold bullion, I would pay rather than shoplift."

I'm sympathetic to "I would pay for this if I could" argumentation when it comes to digital goods. But at some point the conditions you're setting become so unreasonable that nobody can reasonably fulfill them, and it becomes clear you're only doing it to get free stuff and stiff the creators.

You don't want to see ads? YT already gives you that option. You don't want YT data to be used for ad targeting? YT already gives you that option. But you additionally want to pay in gold bullion and only to the farmer rather than the grocery store that actually provided you the service. It's not very reasonable, is it?

You talk as though a refusal to compromise privacy is unreasonable. We all need privacy to protect ourselves and each other.

What happens when your searches for a medical condition are sold to your insurance company? Or when your political searches are used to inform new gerrymandering lines? Or when an anti-choice state gives Google a warrant demanding the identity of everyone who has made searches for abortion information? What about someone in China or Russia searching for content that casts their government in a negative light?

Laws change and politicians change. History has taught us over and over that centralized personal data will always eventually end up in the hands of those who will weaponize it.

Those of us with influence in technology must demand privacy. Privacy is not negotiable. Content hosts will either offer privacy or continue to see tool after tool emerge to make it easy for people to circumvent their surveillance capitalism models.

LBRY/Odysee has already proven it is totally possible to support video creators online without with anonymous microtransactions.

I have hope more creators sick of ads and censorship will mirror their content to privacy preserving systems that allow direct monetization.

Sure, it'd be extremely reasonable for you to not compromise your privacy, and only view content from creators that allow you to pay with your favorite cryptocurrency. But I thought that wasn't your stance; instead you will view the content anyway, but just make sure the creators are not compensated.

That's not a very principled defense of privacy, is it? It's just taking stuff for free because you can.

(If your real concern really is with search / watch history, those can be disabled. But two posts ago your real concern was with ad targeting, until I mentioned that it can be disabled. This makes your objections appear like excuses rather than the actual root cause.)

Most content in the world is provided exclusively on privacy-hostile platforms.

We either suggest people remove themselves from modern culture entirely, or we suggest they use tools that let them continue to partake in culture while rejecting harmful surveillance capitalism models.

In both cases the surveillance capitalists do not get any data or money, but the latter case at least privacy concerned citizens see the content, are still a part of society, and can buy merch or offer anonymous tips to creators directly in the instances they are given the chance via conventions, or anonymous tip-jar donation systems.

I choose the option better for users and creators. The surveillance capitalists get starved of revinue but if it hurts them enough they will be forced to change models just like the music industry did.

People pirated music to avoid DRM but still became fans and bought concert tickets.

Incorrect. I have premium and I still get all kinds of ads, in the content itself, and of course premium means a login which means not anonymous and absolutely "personalized" content.

If the content itself includes paid promotion then (a) it’s not individualized, and (b) the platform you view it on (YouTube, FreeTube, Blu-ray, or VHS) doesn’t matter… …so I don’t think paid promotions from the content creators themselves are relevant to the discussion? Your only option is manually skipping the promotional content which is usually really trivial to do.

I have YouTube Premium and don’t see any ads by Google/YouTube. I’m not a heavy YouTube viewer though so it’s possible I’m missing something.

Edit: just discovered sponsorblock and wooow am I impressed at the lengths some folks will go to skip ads. TIL

Sponsorblock is great, it really makes some videos watchable.

Though in general if there is a lot of sponsorship in videos it usually means the content itself is also really mediocre and spammy so I don't tend to watch those anyway. The people who really have a lot of technical knowledge don't monetise it very much because they don't have to. Being an expert in their field already nets them more than enough money.

I watch very little youtube anyway, as I dislike the video format and prefer written content. But when I do need to because what I'm looking for isn't available elsewhere, sponsorblock is a great help.

If you pay very little of the money go to the creators, while the centralization and monopoly on content grows. Plus, even more user tracking.