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.
If you are paying for premium, you are paying twice.
Once with money, a second time with your data.
I’d gladly pay for an option where they stopped tracking me.
You can literally change that in your settings.
But then YouTube doesn’t know what you have watched or anything it’s pretty bad for user experience
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.