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Of all of the various online services, YouTube is the one where I feel I get the most value in return for paying for premium. 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free. (Well, except that so much of hobby YouTube is implicitly all ad because the video is about some piece of hobby gear, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.)

I've never watched a YouTube short.

My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.

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There are a few ways to disable/hide shorts. One day I said to a friend, “man I wish I could block these things, they’re insulting to my intelligence and just encourage clicking around” and my friend said “I’ve been blocking them for a while, just do this.” And while I can’t remember what “this” was, it’s worth a quick google.

Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.

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If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.
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Let me put it this way.

Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.

I don't want to pay for that.

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>Youtube without ads is still worse than pretty much all the major streaming services with ads.

Depends on what you watch, as always. my YT feed is a mix of news, random gaming content, documentaries on a variety of topics, and odd little tech trivia. It covers all the bases at once.

Any other streaming service is simply "okay, maybe there's 1-2 shows on here I want to watch". Then I just pluck it onto my NAS and move about on my day. Why would I pay for a streaming service that struggles to even keep the few shows I like on there running past 1-2 seasons?

Nebula is the only other service I ever considered paying for. It's not a "Youtube killer" and misses out on a lot of the odd trivia sides of YT, but it overally feels more fleshed out on content than Netflix".

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Or just watch Youtube on a laptop, and install an ad blocker.
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> Their ads are terrible.

I imagine they are that's why I pay for YT Premium, which I think is my most bang for buck subscription based on the amount of time I spend watching it

> Curation doesn't exist.

I don't find this a problem personally because 95% of my feed is just channels I'm subscribed to but YMMV depends on what you expect out of it

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