I pay for it and I like the perks. You are giving YouTube money, but also the creator of the video. And synchronizes the view with your account. And takes it into account for the dreaded “algorithm” (which I also find useful, plenty of cool channels discovered thanks to it).
What did you expect, exactly?
Ever go to a video website, click a download button under a video, and NOT have that video in your downloads folder? Literally that. That’s what i expect from a download button.
On android the download folder is a mess. I honestly prefer to have the videos in the app. I used newpipe before and it was a bit less convenient (although more flexible).
Never used it on a computer, tho, that would make sense there.
I only use YouTube on PC. I’m kinda old school now though. My phone is pretty much just a phone now. Only app I use is lemmy other than maps and normal stuff. No social media on my phone.
I like those perks too, but if I pay more to be able to download videos (which again, I could’ve used a free tool for) I want to be able to do whatever I want with it. Download means getting a file I can watch using my own video player and store for later even if Youtube dies tomorrow, If I go on holiday without internet, or if my internet goes down for a week. Anything.
If Google is going to be “Uhm aksually, you are technically downloading it, thats why we can advertise it like that”, then I’m already downloading literally every video I watch. And thats not the kind of bullshit you give to a paying customer. That is spitting in my face for paying you. Why does a non-Premium user get better service with free third party youtube downloaders?
It’s a matter of principle.
I see your point. For videos I want to hoard forever I also use yt-dlp, but for watching colbert on a plane, the app does just fine.
Yeah, I thought it was a nice compromise. It seemed sensible that if Premium is the ‘compliant’ response to not wanting ads, the ‘compliant’ response to using third party tools to download videos was to just be able to do things more easily and with more options through Premium as well. But apparently they wanted to advertise something anyone who’s wanted to download a youtube video would not describe as ‘downloading’, which is easily out competed by free (but at times shady) tools.
