Although what you describe seems annoying, still no ads

No ads but it's far worse than just annoying — for me. I get annoyed when a video buffers for 10 seconds due to a technical hiccup. Being made to wait for up to a minute with pretend-technical issues and mocking messages like "Why am I seeing this?" that try to convince me that they're not doing this on purpose is insulting and enraging.

I would gladly pay for an independent alternative but I will never pay for Youtube Premium on principle [1]. If these workarounds stop working I'll just use third party clients all the time, I already use SmartTube on TV.

[1] If I give you my money, I want you to respect me as a customer. Google will continue tracking me, abuse my personal information, and almost certainly re-introduce ads at some point in the future in pursuit of infinite growth. It's never going to be enough, the only winning move (with them) is not to play.

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kelnos 3 days ago | parent [-]

On the other hand, I'd rather sit for 10-60 seconds waiting for (fake) buffering, than sit through a 10-60 second ad.

	▲	dns_snek 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It doesn't stop there, it would also fake-buffer when you jumped to a different point in the video, it would be stuck in a broken transitional UI state for 10-30 seconds any time you navigated to a different page. Clearly they want people to get pissed off enough that they turn off the ad blocker, it's been getting worse over time.
	▲	dotancohen 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		With ads, at least you know that they will end. And when.