I prefer to word it slightly differently - have a paid service that offers a free ad-supported version.

The danger, of course, is that once you separate it out like that you quickly realize that the advertisers want the paying customers, not the freeloaders and so ads encroach on the he payment plans, too.

Not the OP but I'm coming from what sounds like the same place.

In theory yes but does the ad SDK used by the app still gather data on me, even though the ads are turned off/app is paid for? Without clear indication that it will not, the answer for me is 'no'.

Cool! Thanks for the reply - so you'd feel much more comfortable with a subscription to opt out of all tracking and ads?

Yeah, if I could reasonably verify that the tracking was not occurring. Unfortunately in today's environment, trust is also an issue.

Absolutely. I gladly pay for YouTube Premium, Subscribe to Twitch streamers I like to remove ads there, and other services that do an ad-supported free tier than a premium ad-free tier.

Other replies to me are reading me wrong, I didn't say "I hate ads therefore I believe no one should ever use ads", I said "I hate ads and would happily pay for me to personally not see them". Telegram can fill their apps with ads if they want, for those that can't/won't pay, as long as there's an option for us to pay and not see them.

i have zero problems with this kind of monetization. i mean, that's why i pay for youtube and spotify -- i wanna support the services/content creators in some way, but i abhor ads.

Don't most you tubers and Spotify channels have patreons?

some do and i do pay for those -- but you can't really support every single channel you watch (at least for me, youtube replaced normal tv).

so paying for youtube premium gives me an ad-free experience while also helping content creators.

You’re essentially not helping the YouTube creators from the numbers they’ve given on their payout from Premium. It is incredibly small.

probably as small as the money they would get if i was watching ads. but instead of watching them with an adblocker, i just use yt premium.

as i said, i do pay for my fav creators on patreons, because if i started paying for all of them, i wouldn't have money to do anything else.

Ah I think I confused things. I must’ve responded thinking you were one of the people saying Spotify is essentially worthless to artists. Which is true in a financial sense like YT equivalent things, but yeah, you support in other ways.