[jdhwosnhw]

I would genuinely like to understand this perspective. Ads or paying for premium is how the underlying business makes money. The UX might suck but you have a choice - you can just not watch YouTube. The approach you describe (which i understand is a popular one) is equivalent to justifying robbing a store because their prices are too high.

[aembleton]

The approach is the equivalent of avoiding the end of aisles so that you don't even look at the products that companies are paying to the store to promote.

[jdhwosnhw]

Except in this case the only way the store makes money is either by you paying an entrance fee or by you looking at the products. You are being delivered a service (whose delivery costs money) while actively circumventing the mechanism the store employs to be compensated for that service.

[jiehong]

YouTube is the content, not the box.

You might like the content, but you don’t pay for a shit box anyways.

[allarm]

It’s not a robbery if noone is getting robbed. That’s a very bad analogy really.

[jdhwosnhw]

You are using a service without paying for the service by actively circumventing the payment mechanism. Is that not stealing?