Couldn’t agree more. I tried to switch to safari awhile back, and loved most of the interface, the snappiness, the open tab view for people like that open a gazillion tabs. But the ads I struggled to get rid of (specifically YouTube commercials) pushed me back to chrome with ublock.

I used to have a "hardcore" setup with ublock origin and pihole (plus a bunch of other tools, a non creepy VPN). Plus, I’m probably more focused on privacy even than the _average_ HN reader, due to the nature of my work, but to be fair, nowadays I’m pretty happy with Adguard (w.custom exclusion lists), Hush and private relay. I don’t see any ads. I do pay for YT however.

It’s not perfect but the balance of effort versus results is pretty good imho. The only thing I really miss is being able to disable JS per site, instead of globally, which Safari doesn’t allow :/

There is a very simple way to get rid of ads on YouTube in any browser…

Ok. Care to elaborate at all?

I think what OP meant is subscribe youtube premium

Check out Orion! It's a Webkit-based browser like Safari but the devs also ported the extension APIs from Chrome and Firefox, so you can install Chrome and Firefox extensions. It's Mac-only and in beta but, there's tons of features that could be worth checking it out.

I use a hosts file on macOS and Firefox Focus’ content blocker on iOS. It works quite well except for YouTube and I pay for that.