Advertising being illegal would be completely different story: no ads in the content itself. No 'sponsored' videos, no ads meant for other people (inside a browser in the video, on the street in the video).

Also, it's just not feasible to say 'let me pay money to not see ads'. You can pay for netflix, youtube, google search.. but what about the long-tail of all the sites you visit? I think Brave or somebody tried solving it with micro transactions but automatically deducting money also does not work that way because most of the content is trash I would not be happy to pay $0.005 for.

No. Paying money not to see ads is completely backwards, it's just extortion. Why should I pay to avoid having my attention stolen or my mind programmed with corporation trademarks? It should be illegal for them to even attempt to invade my mind like this. My mind is mine, it's not a blank slate for them to insert their little brands at will.

Paying any amount of money just drives up the value of your attention. If you can afford to pay off the advertising platform, then you obviously have enough disposable income to waste on the products the advertisers wants to sell to you. In the end, you're helping them segment the market and paying for the privilege.

In YouTube's case, you're paying to avoid ads but you're still being advertised to since videos now have hardcoded sponsored segments. You're also being constantly tracked by Google's surveillance. So you're still gonna have to use uBlock Origin and Sponsor Block if you want to avoid advertising or tracking.

You are paying directly for servers, admin, content creators, and bandwidth in real money.

Instead of wasting time watching annoying ads.

I think it’s a great deal.