> I don't get why people are so against ads.

Because my mind is sacred and my attention is inalienable. They do not get to put things in my mind without my consent. I consider that a violation of my personal integrity and ad blocking to be justified self-defense.

> How else should creators of content you enjoy get paid?

I dunno. Any way they can manage, so long as it's not advertising. My attention is not currency to pay for services with.

Nearly every creator who makes money on YouTube these days takes sponsorships, which I don't mind at all. Sponsorship segments have no tracking, are very skippable, and some creators make them fun enough to be worth watching in their own right. They're integrated into the video at a logical break point (rather than interrupting at odd times), and the creator can choose to avoid a sponsor that doesn't line up with their values.

Similar methods include merch drops, writing a book and selling it through your existing fan base, and having a Patreon that you plug during the video.

All of this is preferable to the nightmarish ads that YouTube typically serves and the insane amounts of tracking they use which somehow still manages to completely miss the mark when finding topics that would appeal to me.

>Sponsorship segments have no tracking

No, the creator gets anonymized stats for their videos of the viewer's demographics. These get shared with brands. In some ways there is less privacy than normal YouTube ads.

Eh, I guarantee you that the creators get less detail than Google has. Anonymized aggregate stats are a far cry from the individual profile Google builds of you.

Yeah but a good chunk of their income comes from YouTube, still. You can either put up with the ads/ad-blocking cat and mouse, or pay for Premium.

If you adblock you are objectively making creators lose money. I'm not trying to take a moral high ground on this, but be honest about what you're doing at least.

They are not entitled to money, therefore they can't "lose" money.

This whole "oh those poor creators" argument is ridiculous.

Most youtube content is trash. When you produce trash but feel entitled to receive money for that trash, what does that make you? This is not a proper, healthy mindset.

Why are you watching videos that are trash? I watch videos that I like.

Because we can't do anything anymore without someone trying to talk us out of our money. Because our time is valuable. Because we're more than just a wallet to extract value from. Because our attention isn't for sale, it's something we offer to what we determine deserves it.

Ads exist to do one thing; convince you that you want something that you don't want. The thing about products you want is, you don't need them advertised to you in order to want to buy them. Ads prey on our insecurities, and are literal psychological manipulation. The sense of urgency, the fear of missing out, social status, 99 cents, you will finally be happy with this new thing, you will finally be cool with this new thing, you will finally find love with this new thing, you'll finally be a man/woman with this new thing, they'll finally notice you with this new thing. Fuck advertising. We live in a world where the biggest thing of a sporting event are the fucking ads they play between the sport. We live in a world where ads on displays track us via bluetooth signatures in the real world and are then tied to your online ad profile to help determine your demographics. Fuck ads.

> Because our time is valuable

Buy youtube premium

Ads help people discover goods and services they may find value in. There are goods and services people would want to buy, but they just don't know that they exist until an ad shows them that it exists.

90% of what I see advertised(and sponsored) is garbage SAAS products and other junk.

Because some ads are really irritating with loud music and annoying voices, advertising things I have no use for. And they keep playing me the same 2-3 ads over and over.

If they would just advertise things I was interested in, and skip/block the ones I'm not, then I would watch them.

I would assume you don't know about the days of drive-by advertising malware, and the fact it came from ANY type of media. Animated .gifs, video streams, vulnerable .mp3 files, javascript injection, and worse.

Ad blocking is basic security on the internet. It is literally security 101.