Hopefully you aren’t driving any buses while you’re this high.

It’s not never ending red flags. In fact, I see lots of green flags from signal. Telegram, though, that’s a different story.

The encryption method they use was made up by them, and the chats aren’t even end to end encrypted by default. Which I would argue is a larger red flag.

I wouldn’t say USA has all the encryption keys, but the fact that it is actually possible to have a backdoor is reason enough for me to not use it. Signal complies with all search warrants, giving all the data they have to law enforcement. They have never given any data to law enforcement, because they do not have access to it. Telegrams approach is to simply to spread the data to several servers in different countries, so if law enforcement wanted access they’d have to submit requests to each country (some of which wouldn’t comply).

I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.

There you have it. If the cost of the service is not worth it, then users won’t buy it. Either enough users will pay for it that the service will stay as it is for the price it is, they will decrease the cost of the service, or improve the service they are offering. Or, given Google’s track record, just kill of the service entirely.

I will also point out that many users pay for Spotify for $11 USD a month. YouTube premium includes YT Music, which is a direct competitor to Spotify. So for users who pay for Spotify, it would be virtually $3 for ad-free YouTube. Of course this doesn’t work if you don’t pay for a music streaming service, but as far as services go it certainly isn’t unreasonably priced. Sure, it may be unfair that they don’t offer just a YT ad-free package, perhaps with all this backlash they will. Or perhaps not. It’s Google, they’ll do whatever they fuck they want.

While I think Google is a monster that needs to be destroyed, it’s silly to me that your two options are either block ads or leave. The third option would be pay for the service. If your only problem is the ads and not the tracking (which probably isn’t true, but it’s the only complaint you made in the comment), then paying for it is a valid solution. It shouldn’t be controversial to say video hosting costs money to run, which obviously includes YouTube. So giving it out for free is simply not a realistic option. You’re free to leave, but you won’t have anywhere else to go that meets the “free and no ads” requirement. If you realistically don’t want ads, you will have to pay. And if you’re fine with paying, YouTube is currently the platform with the most content to offer.

Honestly, I’m thankful paying is an option. I wish Google would offer a paid package overall to stop the tracking/data collection. I would literally just give them my money for actual privacy with their services.