Technology

Yeah, uBlock Origin not working would take me from liking YouTube a fair bit to making it unusable.

• I use Proton but keep legacy Gmail accounts around to ensure I still have access to accounts I may have forgotten about or people I knew a long time ago sending a stray email. The only other usage is logging into YouTube.
• I use a Captcha solver extension.
• I use uBlock Origin to block all their ads.
• I don't use their DNS.
• I use DDG over their search engine and Firefox over their browser.
• I don't use Google Drive or their office suite (I think the latter is abysmal to use tbf).
• I use DeepL over Translate.
• I use NewPipe for YouTube on mobile and have a subscription to Nebula.
• I no longer use Google Maps, opting for OSM instead.
• I still use Android and unfortunately can't unlock the bootloader but have degoogled as far as I know how, including never even registering a Google account with it (F-Droid + Aurora Store).

YouTube is far and away the biggest means by which I interact with Google, and that falls off a cliff if I'm forced to interact with a mess of their ridiculously shitty ads every time I have to use it. uBO has likely saved hundreds of hours of watching ads over my lifetime (and probably thousands of dollars from not being subconsciously influenced by ads), and I'm not paying a subscription fee to such an unethical company to get rid of the ads. This would bring me from YouTube as a timewaster to YouTube only as strictly necessary. Even though I don't support them directly through ads, I do support them by supporting creators I like monetarily, by sharing links and maintaining the network effect, and by giving them plenty of metadata by interacting with their service. If they do this, they ensure that I continue to monetarily support competitors like Nebula and permanently lose a grip they've had on me since I was a kid.