The main criticism I see with YouTube is that it has too many ads, and the idea of paying for youtube is laughable.

Basically, it's users are very entitled.

Paying for YouTube Premium has been the best $15/month I've ever spent. What's laughable is not paying for it. It's a good model that works.

You can save $3/mo by canceling your subscription through Apple and subscribing directly through the YouTube’s website ($11.99). Avoids the Apple tax.

There's premium lite for like half the price as well.

Seriously, if you spend any meaningful time on it, premium is amazing deal. Variety of the content is unbeatable.

I'm happy to part ways with a couple of bucks for an ad free experience. I use youtube everyday. Entitlement is thinking you should have a certain premium experience on someone else's dime (you).

A major benefit of paying for it is easily supporting more creators without directly donating. They get pittance for ad rolls but substantially more for premium views.

If you really don't want to pay $15/mo, sign up using a VPN in a developing country. They don't check or care. You will need a fake address as well.

Just not ARS. Apparently they now check if the credit card making the payment is linked to an Argentinian bank.

I'm in the same boat (as a user - paying for premium and consuming a lot of videos). I think app is pretty good, but search is horrible. Their recommendations in the feed are top notch, so I always have something interesting to watch. But searching for new topics returns garbage.

I don't currently pay for premium, but have and am considering it again with Netflix pulling their BS.

Nothing about Youtube the platform needs to change. It just works.

Same. Really like YT. The algorithm is not great, but compared to other parts of the internet, YT is top tier for me.