My guess is that it has something to do with my YouTube Premium subscription never triggering Google’s anti-adblock software, which means the app was never flagged for a soft lock.

I use Vanced for the SponsorBlock, increased default play speed, background payback, and other assorted tweaks rather than for the ad blocking, but blocking ads will definitely jump to the top of my list if my “Google Play Family” ever stops paying for premium. At which point I guess I’ll migrate to GrayJay?

Hell, I’m still using the original Vanced. No clue how it’s managed to escape death for all of these months, but I’m not complaining

Ideally this would be baked into ActivityPub, true, as would a distinction between porn, gore, and other sensitive topics for easy filtering by flair. But in the meantime, I’m relatively satisfied with the (admittedly hacked together) approach we have now. We already spend a couple minutes playing around with the look and feel of any new client we download, and filters are just part of that “settling in” process. If we had a bunch of them to set, it’d be one thing. But porn filtering really is just a matter of tagging one or two instances to cover 99% of the content out there. And the best part is that you’re not even digging through the settings, you’re tapping 3 buttons (max) on posts if you see them at all. As far as inconveniences go when switching apps, that one’s pretty minor.

As for being “locked in” and beholden to a particular client, are you really locked in if all of them let you do the same things (albeit in their own ways)?

Many of the Android apps let you filter instances, as well as individual communities or users. Most instances don’t host porn because of the legal headache, so blocking the only two that specialize in it should (mostly) do the trick: lemmynsfw and pornlemmy. On Sync for Lemmy, tap the overflow button on an offending post > filter > filter instance