I've never found defaulting to paying for services I consume in need of steelmaning but I suppose it ultimately comes down to how much you care about that sort of thing than the particular reasoning in the end. The biggest reason I won't pay for content is because it's harder to consume that way. E.g. actual Blu-Rays are often impossible to legally play the way you want on the devices you want, especially in comparison to a pirated mkv. YouTube Premium is extremely easy to pay for though, even for the whole family and all my devices. Solutions like uBlock Origin (which I use on many other sites) are actually harder and more fragmented in approach if I want to cover all the same usecases so, in the continued spirit of steelmaning each side, why should I seek to "pirate it" (for lack of a better term) instead?

By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways).

> By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways)

Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes down to practicality.

Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Yeah definitely a bit of practicality but mostly the factor of having already paid everyone that would be getting paid yet the system not being built to adjust to that properly (YouTube only has one version of the video it'll serve and no knowing that I'm subscribed externally to the person either).

Excluding some other somewhat reasonable scenarios which break the mold in corner cases (like accessing the dozens of subscription news sites that get posted on HN with no way to actually pay for them properly except spending more time managing the subscriptions than actually reading article or two a day) my "I paid everyone for the content so I can consume it the way that works for me" stance and reasoning doesn't really apply when you intentionally skip the first step "I paid everyone for" out of disinterest in doing so.

The main reason (imo) would be if you wanted no ads on Mobile without a lot of hassle, and the ability to play audio from youtube with your phone screen off.

Ah, Newpipe!