Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may “experience buffering issues” or see errors such as “the following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
Does it even pay the people you watch? No… wait… it just freeloads off YouTube by piping that content to their site.
I watch a number of creators that YT has demonetized so I’m not worried about it.
YT can clearly see what people want in these apps. They simply need to provide the exact same functionality and set a price. They won’t though because they want control and data as well.
Sure, that’s fair critique. Them not implementing the features people turn to third party apps for. Absolutely.
What I can’t make sense of are the people who want control, privacy, content, and not to pay a dime. YouTube could do this better, sure, but let that be the criticism not the mere fact they have the audacity to kick off people who provide nothing and take everything.
To be clear I wouldn’t give them my money even if they did offer all the same features.
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