Same here except I've always used adblocker. The contrast between YouTube with adblock + sponsorblock compared to stock, cannot be overstated. The site literally becomes unuseable. It's awful.

Controversial take around these parts but... I don't mind paying for services I use. A model where content is hosted and edited and provided for free by ads is already a bad and unsustainable model, and when most users use adblock too it just pushes companies towards ever more intrusive and unethical methods.

I have been paying for YouTube without ads since it was part of Google Play Music. I'll pay for services as long as they meet some criteria I consider fair:

• If I'm paying, you don't get to also show me ads. I won't even pay for HBO for this reason. They're showing ads for their own shows, not from random advertisers, but it's still obnoxious to me

• The price has to be reasonable and affordable. Netflix has passed this line now, for me, but for example Crunchyroll and YouTube Premium remain worth it for now.

• It has to be convenient. News sites are inconvenient because there's a million of them and I don't plan to use one as a central portal for news. I'd rather click on a link I see from somewhere else or that a friend sends me and be able to view. I'd kill for a service where I pay a monthly fee for news sites and it just analyzes which ones I actually used and splits the money up to them accordingly.

I find the number of people saying "well I'm not going to use YouTube anymore!" hilarious. Yeah dude, that's the point, you were just a cost to them, not a profit source. I'll happily argue that capitalism is broken, that a lot of our most important services should be freely accessible, that corporations are seeking profit in increasingly unethical ways. I just don't think being a complete leech is a reasonable answer.