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.
I’ve been a youtube premium subscriber since like 2017, long before the enshitification went terminal. I have a family plan so my kids can watch videos on the TV or on the tablet for the older kid without being bombarded by ads. I get not wanting to encourage youtube’s shitty behavior these days, but I’ve always gotten plenty of value out of my youtube subscription, more than I ever did out of hulu or even netflix or paramount most months.
Yeah, It would not be uncommon to see my largest use of data by far on my phone would be YouTube.