I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
For an eclectic viewer like me I am the complete opposite of you; being tracked and remembered by YouTube would be miserable. I arrive at a fresh home page that shows only a search bar every time I go there. (There are no video thumbnails) I have to stop and think about what I want to watch. I click on a video after searching, reload the page to skip the ad, unmute and away I go. Any creator I want to remember I’ll take a screen shot and then copy and paste their channel name to notes.