There is so much content on YT where the creators don't even get paid though. Even a popular video that would make money can become demonetized (but still runs ads!!). I much prefer to subscribe via patreon or other forms to support creators more directly.

This also ignores the in-video sponsorships and ads that creators will often include.

I pay for Premium.

I also run an ad blocker, with extra rules to ban content I don't want to see, such as the terrible "shorts" mind-ebola, as well as a bunch of regexes for clickbait titles and a big ban list of channels that is updated often.

SponsorBlock to remove baked-in advertisements and other misfeatures like interaction reminders.

Now I am also using the beta DeArrow extension to disarm the thumbnails/titles a little bit by replacing them with random frames from the video.

I think the hip way to say it is "I'm between jobs" currently, but when I had a stable income source I would do eventual donations to channels of my interest, which according to some creators even a single USD is way more than the average lifetime return of a single viewer due to ads/YTP.

The only reason I haven't subscribed to Nebula / CuriosityStream instead, which seems to be a much healthier platform, is precisely because they advertise it so much. Also because I do appreciate more entertainment-y videos sometimes, not just edutainment.

How do you block YouTube Shorts?

<https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> has a ton of options, and you can configure it to only block shorts, if you like.

A couple uBO filter rules, paste it to the "My filters" tab on the settings:

    ! Nuke high contrast elements
    www.youtube.com##ytd-feed-filter-chip-bar-renderer
    www.youtube.com##yt-chip-cloud-renderer

    ! Nuke news sections and other "engagement boosting" sections of the homepage
    ! This breaks the channel page, I temporary disable the filter rules when I need to go in there. Selector can probably be refined
    www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer

    ! Nuke Shorts
    www.youtube.com##[is-slim-media]

I also have a couple fixes on https://userstyles.world/style/6382/my-youtube-fixes which you can apply using the Stylus addon, these compact the layout a bit more, lowers contrast of "calls to action" like the Subscribe or comment buttons, as well as attempts to make the Theater view actually take all of the available screen space (without being actually fullscreen).

> bunch of regexes for clickbait titles

Can you please share which ad blocker you use and how we might use regexes to do this? Sounds fascinating and I want to do that myself

Not really just regex, I called it that for brevity. uBlock Origin's cosmetic filters, in particular :has-text which does indeed support regex.

It's basically CSS selectors, but with some very powerful ones added in too.

Check the docs for details https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

The particular filters I use include things like:

    ! Kills "You won't believe something useless! Some subtitle"
    youtube.com##ytd-rich-item-renderer:has-text(/you won'?t .*!( .*)?/i)

    ! Kills "100 idiotic life hacks that are definite safety hazards!"
    youtube.com##ytd-rich-item-renderer:has-text(/(\d+) (.+)s/i)

And a bunch more more specific to my interests and native language, but I hope you got the gist of it.

Also look at the sibling comment about other distraction-removals like shorts and engagement callout taming.

Every creator I watch gets their money through merch, patreon, sponsors, basically everywhere BUT youtube, because nearly every single video will be "unmonitized" or copyright claimed by someone who doesn't even own the rights and cannot be challenged in an unbiased setting.

The only people who make meaningful advertising money from youtube are the ones in the extreme high value advertising niches, like Swell Entertainment when she does a tech related video (though she still makes way more money from sponsorships) or all the Logan pauls making clickbait screaming content for literal children to mindlessly consume all day because their parents can't afford baby sitters because all the money goes to advertising behemoths instead of the workers.

I actually WANT youtube to be a great, pro-creator platform, where I have to pay to see people who feel that youtube gives them support and good tools to do their damn job. But that's not an option. The only option available is for me to pay youtube to remove their horrifically overbearing advertising, often from advertisers that are fraudulent, so I can watch videos from creators who genuinely hate youtube for making their lives hell.

I will not give youtube a dime until they stop viewing creators as replaceable cogs in a machine designed to grind them to dust for every second of content they can produce and then cast them aside.

I mean fuck, does youtube even send content creators documents to help them prepare their taxes? These people are all technically self employed, couldn't a behemoth like google help them get a pooled health care scheme that was affordable to middle size creators?

Or find them on Nebula so they can actually get paid.

It's not that simple, though, because premium represents a lot more money than a normal month of ad income. It doesn't make me sick when people want to avoid spending >$100 a year. $2 a month to a random patreon would compensate creators more.

It's not like Youtube made the amazing videos, though. They might pay the actual creators a pittance, but they extract literal billions of value for the privilege.

I don't mind compensating the creators. I do mind compensating the middleman leech in between.