alt Hacker NewsWhere did you get the impression that it's controversial to pay for YT Premium? Most threads I've seen on this topic are composed of roughly half of the comments endorsing YT Premium, while the other half endorse adblocking from a privacy/autonomy perspective similar to the opening paragraph of the uBlock Origin manifesto [1].
What minor controversy I have seen is a small minority that argue either 1. You shouldn't pay for YT Premium because it enables user-hostile business practices or 2. You shouldn't use ad-block because it's effectively "stealing."
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md
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Many people I know are not technical enough to know about ad blockers, and refuse to admit to themselves how much YT they watch—eg that they would get value from either blocking ads or paying—when I mention the options
Quite a few of those threads have a sizable contingent of people who say they would pay for YT Premium if it removed all ads but since it only removes ads that YouTube puts in the videos they will still see any endorsements or promotions of sponsor's products that were put in by the content creator it doesn't really work.