It's quite amusing, isn't it? YouTube seems hell-bent on bombarding those of us who are decidedly averse to adverts with yet more adverts - all in a futile attempt to cajole us into parting with our money for their subscription service.

What, pray tell, is the purpose of this relentless advertising assault? If I'm already disinclined to spend my hard-earned cash on their offerings, no amount of ad-induced coercion will sway me.

Besides, it's not as though most of us have the financial luxury to splurge on such non-essentials. We're skint, YouTube. Do keep up.

YouTube is pushing through with huge hikes to premium rates this year "to fund new features". I told the YouTube staffer that the only feature I want is "no ads".

"But the music you get included" he whined.

"-every streaming service is throwing in music already". I'm not paying for it again.

So I cancelled my family subscription. The only way I could make it slightly feasible would be to convince friends who are paying for YouTube already to join my family plan.

So YouTube either loses some subscribers entirely, loses some to a cheaper plan or I use my time better and watch less ad-supported content.

And now, please look why google has been pushing chrome. They control it and are actively undermining the ability to use content filtering (ad blockers) in the extensions.

It is the standard book of the monopolist. Control all parts in the chain and then squeeze and squeeze a bit more.

"And now, please look why google has been pushing chrome."

But why do people use it? 63% or something now? Why??!

Noticed recently that despite my Premium subscription, I now get a top suggested video that's "sponsored". And nothing I'm interested in.

Way to undermine your own model, Google...

The last time I disabled my adblock for a site that I very explicitly wanted to support, it took about 5 minutes before my antivirus flagged up than an ad was trying to breach containment and access information that it shouldn't have.

That's the big issue for me. I don't mind (too much) having uninteresting ads. The problem is that ad networks are STILL bad at preventing malicious ads.

Oh, and ones that break out of their spot on the page and cover up content.

Ads should be adding value. If your ad is preventing me from doing what I want to do, then I'm not going to want to purchase your product. You've just annoyed me. If anything, you're now blacklisted. If I happen to notice your ad while I'm doing stuff and it peaks my interest (without interfering with my activity) THEN I might further investigate your product.

It's like running an app that asks you to disable your firewall; that app is never run again. Please disable my ad blocker? Sure, if you stop pushing turds through my digital letterbox.

It's not so much the addition of an advert to a video you want to watch, it's the increasing number of adverts rammed into the videos. Time was when you'd have an ad you could skip past after 5 seconds at the start of the video, but now it seems to be two adverts to start with and a load more throughout the video which just get in the way, which is why people started using ad blockers.

YouTube (and others) need to rethink their whole strategy on this and be sensible: I'm not averse to a subscription model for a service I use but it's the cost that dictates whether I use it, and these companies seem to think that $10/£10 (or more) a month is a reasonable entry price. It isn't, it is way too much and could easily be half or a quarter of that while still allowing them to make a profit. I would happily pay $2.50/£2.50 a month for YouTube to be ad free and would allow it through my ad blocker, but unfortunately the corporate greed with these companies is so rampant they wouldn't go for such a low subscription price which is a shame as the cost to set up and collect a subscription is exactly the same. What do you want: A minority paying a high subscription fee whilst also having to try and block millions of machines using and blockers to avoid embedded adverts, or a majority of reasonably happy subscribers paying a dirt cheap subscription each month? Or I'll put it another way: $2.50/£2.50 a month every month for a few million subscribers for potentially years, is much more that $0/£0 a month from no-one.

c.f. Lord Alfred Harmsworth: a thousand people will hazard a halfpenny where one will risk a shilling...

So set up pay per access sites.

Ohhh, nobody will pay for your 'content' and your children will starve.... Well, tough luck, maybe your 'content' is crap and you should go back to your old job.

As for the so called news site. Yes, the ones that became click bait traps for ads. Go back to journalism, set up pay per access, have a special subpage dedicated to ads (you know, like you did in the old paper only times) and let your readers decide if you are worth it.

Buy a computer magazine and it would be full of adverts for computer stuff – much of which you'd actually want to look at. The publisher didn't demand you have to see ads for butter or cars or some dodgy crypto. That model has gone away, which is why we need ad blockers.

This! I remember the good'ol days of buying a couple of inches of PCW or Byte magazines that were mostly advertising. But the adverts were relevant, and often I'd see stuff I wasn't aware of, and actually wanted to buy. In the online world, despite all the data rape, ads mostly aren't relevant and so become annoying. Then again, content online is often more specific and eclectic. So at the moment I'm watching michaelcthulu sculpting a Buffy Scythe. Maybe it's just me, but I find the process of craftspeople turning lumps of hardox into stuff strangely fascinating and relaxing.

But the ads frequently aren't at all relevant to the things I'm watching. How hard could it be to categorise a video like that as 'crafting' and show ads from tool & crafting suppliers? If I'm watching that video, why am I shown ads for pregnancy test kits, or crypto scams? But that's also one of the oddities around YT in general. Content creators don't seem to have any control over the adverts shown, even though they know their audience. Why not let content creators pick from a list of advertiser categories? That would make ads more relevant, improve the creator's monetisation, and allow advertisers to target audiences more effectively.

Charge a sane rate (the $2.50/month seems reasonable) but:

- once charging, no adverts, ever

- no data gathering beyond 'users who follow this content also like this'

Or no adverts, but as The Eel points out: provide adverts which are relevant to the subject being watched. And let me skip them after a few seconds if I'm not interested. And never in the middle.

Back in the day I used to buy electronics magazines and relished going through all the ads in there, looking for bargains like mixed bags of electrolytic capacitors etc. Online ads are just so irrelevant, intrusive and some a security risk. So I use an ad-blocker. If YouTube hits me with "Unblock Or Eff Off" I'll be effing off. I like YouTube to play background music while I'm on the computer, but not enough to turn off my ad-blocker. I'd maybe pay £2 per month for ad free, but no more. Even then I'd be reluctant to part with my CC number to Google, trust is in limited supply.

Because the content creators aren't paying for the eyeballs.

Now you are thinking of the content creators - their bottom line is irrelevant for YT / Alphabet.

But I wholeheartedly agree: show me relevant ads! I'm actually good with that (ok, mostly). Don't show me crypto scams, pyramid schemes, irrelevant stuff - instead, when I'm looking at, say, a video on repairing some bike stuff, show me ads for a cycling rag, or a bike parts dealer, or maybe even some equipment like jerseys, or maybe even nutrient supplements for athletes (I'm not interested, but they might be relevant for others in my position).

The current system is broken.

On purpose.

Never attribute to the incompetence of Alphabet what can be explanied easily by greed and malice.

Or a site that demands you turn on scripting, without which no content is accessible.

For every site that serves malicious entities via ads, there are gazillions that do so via javascript. In the toss up between the annoyance and minor risk of ads and sure fire exposure to malicious content via javascript, the priority is obvious. But then hardly any site on the web is accessible these days, ads or no ads.