Revanced is the way
Enshittification
What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
Not available on iOS though. :(
You can try Vinegar though. It’s a paid plugin for Safari but it blocks the ads and works wonders. It’s doesn’t take too long to get used to using Youtube on Safari once you stop seeing the ads. Give it a go
Brave for iOS, YT mobile site. Blocks everything.
Nebula has replaced quite a few YouTube channels for me. Not fully there yet, but it's nice to have a better revenue model for creators.
uBlock Origin for the win.
YouTube has to be profitable somehow
Not really. It's what draws a lot of people to Google's platform. Then they sell your data. It can be a loss leader. In fact, it probably has to to survive.
I'd be surprised. It's extremely expensive to store, process, and stream that much video data. Google also doesn't, as I understand, sell data to third-parties; they use it to target ads for their own ad network, and while I'm sure viewing habits contribute a lot towards making that targeting more valuable, they're still dealing with extremely high operating costs, and those have to be at least somewhat balanced with actual direct revenue.