Stop me if you've heard this tale before: paying for YouTube Premium feels too morally insensitive to get rid of questionable scam and fruity ads, using YouTube with ads frustrates you and makes you feel like you're building up wasted time, and your phone requires a million steps to "sideload" and install modified versions of YouTube without ads.
The problem is there. And the solution sounds pretty fair: save that money by "pirating" YouTube Premium with a web browser that blocks ads.
Well, that sounds easy enough! But then you realize that is a terrible solution (for reasons that I have very strong words for), because no browser can do everything you need, and strapping an Ad Blocker to iOS's safari blocks links you click in your email for no reason is a HORRIBLE idea. Who wants to block both ads, and trackers at once? Who wants to rely on Safari the same way people used to rely on Internet Explorer?
Don't you think the problem started at "Why are phones trying really hard to make ads hard to work around," or "Why does everybody want me to continue the watch on my phone? Why does everything have to happen on my phone?", rather than "How do I get rid of ads so I can watch YouTube on my phone without ads?"
All platforms equally race to suck you of money the fastest
I find the common mobile space is very toxic. Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't go without these devices; Mobile 2FA is a necessary evil that is the one thing hindering my laziness, sure, and basic SIM text and calls are a very main place stay, even if their security is questionably bad and depends on the person.
But it is also genuinely hell, and a space I have a lot of hate for. Almost all existing phone brands have, equally, been ruined by greed. iOS was the first to do this considering unlike Android, you could never install apps from a file, having been able to done so since 1.0 and been required to say "I consent!" since 1.6. However even if we didn't have iOS, iOS brought many changes in the industry, such as being the app store where revolutionary games and ideas originally started. Flappy Bird, Fruit Ninja, Curiosity, all of your essential social media apps... Hell, even watching YouTube in the first few iOS versions was a thing.
But things have changed a lot. Apple has gone on a genocidal rampage against users sideloading, going as far as banning Apple IDs from using their developer certificate (even for free use), and has long implemented ID collection since iOS ~26.3. Congratulations, Apple, you have let Android beat you in every conceivable way except Accessibility. I hope your blood stained crown was worth the fight for.
Even if we do remember the good things iOS has done for phones, there is a lot of silver lining, and the Sideloading "genocide" is far from my only concern. iOS is very quick to go out of date, as I've addressed in my past rants. iOS 18.0, being as recent as 2024, is already out of date as apps begin moving to 18.4, 18.6 etc.
And on top of charging me for the phone, a million platforms want to charge me to watch movies and YouTube ad-free. And are doing nothing about actively harmful ads made with Generative AI and are blatantly inappropiate, even for children. Greedy bastards.
You know what platform isn't blocking me from doing that myself? Google.
Android has an iOS version from roughly 2018 that is still relevant and works with 99% of apps today. However, despite this miracle of technology (and the Pixel + GrapheneOS offering resistance against the garbage happening today), there's another problem.
But first...
The sensationalization of phone addiction
There is something weird about all of this. People are trying to make mobile content a 'sensation' to be promoted and consumed, by trying to make it easy for everybody to get addicted to the content on your phone.
After all, why not, if you can take it anywhere? Watch YouTube on your plane, play Call of Duty in the car, maybe you could continue listening to that album while waiting in line at the grocery store. You could even take your tabs with you anywhere!
Except suddenly, there's suddenly a barricade and a thousand spikes at the door when I want to go ad-free. Either I have to pay people monthly with cash I could spend on better things, like companies that aren't joining harmful movements that take away my rights. That's 20 dollars every month I could put towards buying games by developers I support!
Hell, I could BLOCK the ads myself, and be done with it. Save myself some money, enjoy the content as it should be. Except everybody is so hellbent on making money one way or another, the ecosystem itself is getting walled in, so they can make phones addictive without anybody to sting them on it.
Oh, so when I want to cheap out, suddenly I'm no longer your demographic for phone addiction? Suddenly when I want to block ads on Safari, all the tools suck, because you set the limitations to keep people paying a long time ago?
Also, your phone is a necessity for internet
Also a non-problem, but note how smartphones are now a necessity for security. Government sites require an authentication app on your Phone to log-in. Discord and many other platforms are giving you this option too, and all of that is on the same device you might be watching YouTube on.
Huh, now that's weird. How come the same place I call my boss is being used to authorize my logins? Surely there is some reason for that, but it's stuck on the tip of my tongue... /s
You could say we need this for Desktops, considering the way everybody has jumped the wagon to Mobile. It's lunatic business, sure.
But there is a good reason why: computers are less stable than phones. Where a phone might die battery wise and only go slow in some circumstances (at least with good phones), your computer could die at any moment, even while you are reading this post. So why tie your logins to that?
A problem so toxic, I decided to detox
Anyway, with Apple fucking over sideloaders for no good reason (and the last exploit that let me jailbreak to get around it without risking an account ban was iOS 17.0 days), and Safari being one of the worst platforms for ad-free browsing, where can we go? I've already ranted about Brave iOS. I've already ranted about the alternatives.
I went for nuclear, actually. Uninstalled every non-essential on my phone, hid Safari, everything. My phone sits untouched unless I'm expecting a text or need a notification I missed from my PC, and I verify my logins on it. All the work I have to do now is keep it by my side when I need it.
Bam, free cure for phone addiction, my argument is flawless, and I'm the champion! /s
...Of course, that is a terrible argument. I'll keep it short and drop a link for anybody curious why: You instinctually check it even when there's nothing coming in.
The problem with every workaround
Okay, well to be fair, we have alternatives. And how are those looking?
Switching to Android
Already off to a wonderful start! If this was a couple of years ago, and you didn't mind Android's UI and settings, this would be fine. However, for a few reasons, this is no longer a silver bullet and is about to become bad advice.
Firstly, Google has decided to copy Apple by trying to tighten the App Sideloading space. Whether they are going to do anything insanely crazy or keep it surface level, nobody knows for sure yet. But what Google is doing here is going to shut down the ecosystem and make the system a monopoly of Green vs Blue, as if every technology space isn't like this already. This is going to kill Sideloading and make phones a place where people with money go.
And if you don't think it is already like this, let me drop a few examples of the biggest fights: Twitter vs. Bluesky. Steam vs. Epic. Discord vs. Fluxer. Spotify vs. Apple Music. SpaceHey vs. FriendRewind. Gecko vs. Blink. Same assholes, different scene.
While these examples can be overshadowed by smaller competitors, the arguement would have been the same. GOG, Fanatical, itch.io, GameJolt, EA and Ubisoft all respectively, regardless of their niche or category, cannot compete with Steam because Steam is simply at the top of the game with pro-consumer. Not saying they're perfect, but they got the formula figured out, while everybody else is hoping the minimum rakes in the cash.
Come on man, at least don't make the Android userbase mass exodus, you're already paying Firefox to compete with you, at least make a platform worth competing with Apple.
Oh yeah, they're losing ground. Because people use Morphe to get ad-free YouTube on Android and Spotify is cracking down on their equivalent too. No wonder why they're doing this!
And even if this wasn't just a matter of subscriptions, a lot of budget android phones perform like Android flagships did about twenty years ago. A budget phone from 2020 performs like its from 2009 and was forcefully hacked to run Android 12. If you don't want to buy second hand or throw over a thousand dollars for a modern flagship, you're getting a phone that is slow, incredibly busted, underpowered and always chugging RAM trying to do basic tasks.
You can theoretically buy second hand a modern phone and skip this bullshit, however that is its own rant, that is not fit to come here. People can't control their hand-me-downs, please stop assuming people have money or the magic ability to go anywhere they want. I'm not taking an Uber over 7 hours to get a good phone deal.
Strapping an adblock to Safari
Even if we assume I don't need to Jailbreak and could happily live without the YouTube app (spoiler: no), you could say we could strap an advertisement blocker to Safari. And you're right, that sounds like a great idea!
Except Safari freezes the phone as much as Brave does, for one. That's one strike.
For two, all the available ad-blockers are in three camps. Either they suck at blocking things (both under- and over-blocking), over-monetize by charging for features you can get free on PC or require a version of iOS that is immune to Jailbreaks, that's strike two and three.
...Oh, and it doesn't block Fandom videos! Four strikes, go sit in the corner.
Switching to a browser with an ad-block
Sigh... Let me speed through this one, since we already talked about this previously.
With every browser you install, you are wasting space on your phone when you shouldn't have to. So by this logic, the external browsers should be good enough, to the point that they are mostly flawless. Except they don't, because you're gambling. Same dice, different odds, all browsers here use WebKit because it's iOS we're talking about.
Brave and Safari freezes my phones, Orion is still new, unstable and pretty unusable in its current state, and all the other giants don't even properly block ads and trackers, if at all.
I would love to try Blinker Fluid and Reynard, and tell you how great those options are, but just a gentle reminder...
Sideloading / Jailbreaking
APPLE HAS NEUTERED THE SIDELOADING BUSINESS.
On all modern iPhones, you have to use your Apple ID's "developer certificate" to sideload apps, first of all. And the restrictions are so insanely specific and petty, which already makes it complicated. If you don't want to follow their specific rules, you could just use LiveContainer, except apps barely work on there, and it creates behavioral problems that never existed when installing the apps natively.
Even if you did use it, Apple has recently been mass genociding Sideloader users by stopping their apple IDs from sideloading or refreshing, seemingly no matter the reason. If you want to say 'fuck the system' and do it with an underground leaked certificate, you have to run a DNS profile that requires you to do a whole song and dance to keep apps working, which includes not turning on your phone unless it's an older version or has Airplane Mode on.
There are exploits to clear the "blacklist" in some cases, however these tools are not immune to the fact that Apple can just randomly decide to make the cert not work, and cause you to basically lose all your app data for funsies!
You could jailbreak your phone, but doing so requires a way to Sideload. So if you have a phone too new, you have to play this stupid song and dance. Unless you buy a phone vulnerable to TrollStore, which requires iOS 17.0 / 16.6 and earlier. Who the hell wants to do that, when 18.0 is already going out of date? Some apps right now, are ALREADY requiring IOS 18.6. What is the point?
So really, you have two options. Buy a separate phone that is out of date to solve your content addiction problem, or deal with ads. At that point, get android or go home. What the fuck?
Just paying up every month
Haha, what a funny joke! You guys are laughing, right? This one is funny, right?
Okay, but seriously, this solution assumes a lot of things. Firstly, it assumes the Website ads are so normal and non problematic, that it doesn't bother you. Because you don't open Safari, or something.
Secondly, it assumes you agree with the actions of Google and everybody else enough to pay them (or simply don't care enough to spend your money elsewhere), then it assumes you are willing to pay for multiple services as needed, which in extreme cases could go upwards of 60+ dollars for EVERYTHING you want at once.
Then, it means you're paying for a platform, that might potentially take your rights away later. And by doing this, you're pretty much waiving a white flag saying "Your crappy practices got me to spend money on you, please continue taking my rights away and suckering me into spending more!".
You get ripped off this way. All this does is get rid of ads and let you download videos in a propietary format. You don't get SponsorBlock or DeArrow. You don't get dislikes back. So you're paying for half of the appeal.
Also, this doesn't even hide Website ads. So you're still suffering a problem that IS UNRESOLVED, and paying the internet to do this more.
A solution for some: Just don't watch content on your phone?
Okay, well those options sound all really bad. Gamble with Apple, dance with Google, use workarounds that don't solve the core problem and use up extra space, and just pay for half the fun anyway!
Well, there is one solution. It won't work for everyone, seeing there is still quite a sizable piece of users who only own a phone (psst: i'm sorry for your loss) due to many circumstances, but for some who don't mind trying something extreme to see if it helps, let me propose what I've been doing.
Just cut out consuming content on your phone.
No really, that's it. Cut YouTube from your phone, stop using your phone to browse websites and google random ideas, stop playing games on your phone and simply use it for what it's for. Texting, calling, notifications and authentication. If you get an idea, don't google it. Let it die in your brain as many ideas have by now.
This isn't a perfect solution due to the Mobile pushback, as well as every company and their grandmother pushing you to continue or exclusively consume content on your phone... As well as all the apps designed around your phone and nothing else, such as SnapChat, Tinder and TikTok... But just trust me, you might as well.
You will probably have to find a middle ground for this. Snapchat is technically social rather than content, so I'd say that would be a fine exception, but maybe don't host all of your content on your phone. Let it be accessible on PC. That's literally the one reason your phone has a hold on you.
If your main draw to Snapchat is streaks, you probably wouldn't agree with anything I just said here, anyway.