I agree: In a way (but not legally), YouTube does basically give you the ability to watch without ads. The reason this is generally allowed is because Google kn

I agree: In a way (but not legally), YouTube does basically give you the ability to watch without ads. The reason this is generally allowed is because Google knows that the perceived value of keeping their stranglehold of viewers allows them to keep their monopoly on those viewers' eyeballs, thus forcing creators to keep uploading their videos to YouTube (lest they upload to eg. Nebula and get 1/10000th the viewership). If they did do something extreme, they risk triggering some mass exodus from YouTube to other platforms; their monopoly on non-television video advertising would crumble overnight. Now, i'm sure that if everyone did suddenly download Vanced and Youtube's largest profit funnel, mobile devices, ceased to exist, they could quickly whip up a system that does all it can to block video views without an attestation ticket vended when the ad server thinks you've watched the ad(s). At that point it'd be pretty clear cut that watching without any sort of indirect or direct payment is not allowed. Morally, if you really get that much value out of YouTube, you probably should be paying for Premium even if you use Vanced or newpipe, if just to resist YT's shorts feature or other features that don't improve the quality of the main video experience. Premium views payout much more money per view to content creators than any ad would, especially if you have otherwise never bought something by clicking or engaging with the ad.