Greetings y'all. I've been using ways to circumvent YouTube ads for years now. I'd much rather donate to creators directly instead of using Google as a middle man, needing YouTube Premium. If even pay for premium for just a add free version, if the price wouldn't be so outrageous. I've So far used adblockers, Vanced and then Revanced.
Since the recent developments in this matter, I've setup Tubearchivist, a self hosted solution to download YouTube videos for later consumption. It mostly works great, with a few minor things that bother me but I highly recommend it. ReVanced also still works, but nobody knows for how long.
The question now is, if I should use a VPN to obscure my identity to Google. I don't know if I'm being paranoid here but I wouldn't put it past Google to block my account, if they see YouTube traffic for my IP address and no served ads. Revanced even uses my main Google account, so not that far fetched.
So far, or at least to my knowledge, Google has never done this but I think they just might in the future. So I'm planning on putting tubearchivist behind a VPN via gluetun.
What do you think? I'm eager to hear your opinions on this.
I can also add my docker compose, if there's interest and when I'm back on my PC.
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It's the other way round. I do pay for a VPN anyway and I donate via patron to support creators. A dollar here, a dollar there. It's still cheaper than a subscription here in Germany and my favorite creators get a bigger payout. I'd be happy to pay for premium if it was something like 5 euros, but 12 a month.
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How is the bullshit. I take 5 bucks every month and use those for patreon. I cycle through the channels so everybody gets a bit. I only pay the lowest tier for one month, then cancel again. Next month, a few different creators…
One view with ads is worth in the area of a cent, most likely less. Most channels upload once or twice a months. If the lowest paying tier is a dollar, they just made 50 times what they would get for ad revenue.
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I'm not paying everyone. Pretty much impossible. Here is my logic for what I'm doing on detail.
Netflix is 8 Euro a month here in Germany as a basic plan. I can share that with my girlfriend. They produce movies and then stream those to me. I use it quite often. I'm totally okay with what I'm getting for my money and pay happily.
Youtube is 12 Euro per month. I can't share that plan with my girlfriend, as it would fuck up the algorithm. Youtube hosts videos but doesn't produce content. I'm not happy with the value in getting.
Now I try to pay creators directly. Can I pay all of them? No. Can I be just? No. Is youtube just? Also no. Small creators get nothing. So I take my 5 euros and divide among creators. Next month a few others and so on. I can choose which ones, depending on how I feel about their content. I find a brilliant channel who helped me out with a project and who's got patreon? Sure, why not? Last one here was DbTech, which I'm not subscribed to.
So the difference between income for content creators is Youtube Premium: 55 percent of 12 euros is 5,4 euros, My system: about 5 euros. The only difference being how the money is divided. I try to favor smaller channels.
In the end, I believe my system is superior, as gives me more control on where I spend my money. I only try to screw over Google, because they are greedy as fuck!