It's the main way I watch youtube now. After Piped and Newpipe stopped working for me across all devices, I only use 2 methods of watching Youtube now. Open in mpv (which is configured to use yt-dlp in the backend to make things faster), and download using yt-dlp. So it's key to me keeping on watching Youtube. Recently, I've started getting ads showing up even on Mobile Vivaldi, so no more YT on my phone.
So my new workflow is to use Piped to find a video, then copy the end of the link and type "yt-dlp <C-S-v>" in a terminal, wait for the video(s) to download, and open in mpv.
OR
In some cases, use Qutebrowser, with a custom keybind to open a video in mpv.
So my new workflow is to use Piped to find a video, then copy the end of the link and type “yt-dlp <C-S-v>” in a terminal, wait for the video(s) to download, and open in mpv.
Why not just pass the YouTube link to mpv so you don't have to wait for the video to download?
I still have to wait a long time for the video to load in the Mpv cache, and sometimes I want a bunch of videos to watch later (or watch multiple times if they're educational). In which case, I either open up a bunch of videos in their own mpv windows and they all load while I'm watching the first one, or I download them while I'm doing something else.
But loading a bunch of mpv windows is heavier than a bunch of terminals running yt-dlp (and I could also just switch to using tmux.... which I probably should get around to at some point).
How ever YouTubers get paid is entirely between the YouTubers and YouTube, that is the relevant contract. Adblocking is necessary for user security and not negotiable. I do choose to pay some YouTubers via Patreon but that's completely a personal choice that I feel no obligation towards,
Ads exist because people want to make money. So these bad actors go out and look for places where people like to spend their time, and they poison these places with their money-hungry practices. In the process they destroy the innocence of all these manifestations of human creativity, and manipulate people into buying shit they don't actually need, effectively destroying the planet through overconsumption. That's not even mentioning that ad-companies put us on a path towards a mass-surveillance society, just because big-data leads to more effective ads. I can't help but see ads as a destructive force of evil in our world. I like human creativity in it's many forms, and I'm all in favor of rewarding creators to a certain extent, but using ads seems to be the worst possible method of doing so.
(not intending to criticize your comments, just spreading the anti-ad gospel ;-)
I don't like ads either, but they are the only functioning way of paying creators outside of direct payments, especially with economic inflation and competition from streaming services eating away at people's budget for media. No one else has a solution that works under capitalism.
But ads are not functioning, they are destructive. They are by no means cheap either, people are paying through being manipulated and we are paying collectively for the damage it's doing to our world. We'd be much better of if we had only direct payments. Direct artist payments will always be the more effective and efficient financing structure because then we pay just for the creative output, not all the unrelated economic parasitic activities.
The solution is very simple and there is nothing that inflation can do about it: we don't watch ads, we pay creators that we want to support, and if from these donations a creator doesn't earn enough money he has two options: 1. One has an intrinsic drive to create and publish so he does so through other means, for instance by working a part time job. If this sounds unreasonable then let us not forget that already most of all human creativity is financed exactly like this, it is only the exception that is financially lucrative. 2. One chooses not to create (or in a less costly manner). You could think of this as a sad outcome, but you'd be better off concluding that this creative output wasn't so important to anyone, not to the creator nor to the public. This means we'd be left with the better and more intrinsically motivated creative content.
So let's not justify ads, but let's reject them in the most radical ways we can.
The two options for compensating a creator for their work online are advertisements or direct payments. There are no other functional alternatives. In a better world, more countries would have grants or universal basic income, but that's not the world that exists right now.