No it absolutely does not. It's entirely a personal preference to be okay with that. No need to be this savage.

This is their job, after all.

It definitely ain’t quid pro quo, but that is too nice, they shouldn’t be tracking full stop. I use ublock origin and premium btw

The primary benefit that many pay for is to not see ads and to support creators you enjoy, not to avoid tracking.

Why not use an ad blocker?

Because they don't work on mobile apps, TVs and other non-desktop devices.

You can block ads on mobile apps

And many of us don't care all that much about ads, we're mostly opposed to tracking.

I’m honestly not asking to be obtuse, but what difference does this “tracking” actually make? I block ads on the web because they’re so obnoxious and usually so utterly stupid (One weird trick to blast belly fat!!”), but I couldn’t care less if an ad profile exists on me or on some GUID tied to a browser I use[1]. What’s your pitch to someone who doesn’t care, that they should care?

[1] also, if tracking can help to replace idiotic ads like that with ones for some b2b software product I’d actually be interested in knowing about, please track me.

[delayed]

The idea that if you are willing to give up some privacy, the ads you see will be high quality and relevant. That sounds like a great trade and for twenty years I waited for those useful ads.

They still haven't appeared. When I consider what I trade for the ads I'm getting now, it's no where near good enough. My data is valuable and Google et al just aren't offering enough in return. The only place I ever see decent ads is on Google's search page.

I think the reason we see shitty ads like the belly fat ones, is because Google isn't actually trying to serve us first. Their main concern is ad dollars. So even though Google knows you watched a video on changing guitar strings an hour ago and now you are standing in a Guitar Center, instead of showing you an ad for guitar strings, you're going to see an ad for belly fat because that advertiser is willing to pay a fraction of a penny more.

So to answer your question about why you should care - it's because you are greatly overpaying for the service you are getting. Of course there are other reasons too - avoiding ads containing malware is one. Protecting yourself from tyrants is another. If you are socially or politically active, you may not trust that the government now or in the future can resist grabbing the data that shows you support abortion rights or attended a BLM or LGBTQ march or were part of the crowd on Jan 6.

Let me ask you this - if you learned the tracking is actually a person on the other side of the planet watching in real time, everything you do online, every conversation you have, every site you visit, and mix it with the data they can get from your phone (location, phone calls, music preferences, who you are spending time with, etc...) and they manually log it into a database, would that change how you feel about it?

So do most entities you buy things from.

I think there’s an opportunity cost not considered explicitly here, which is heavy users of YouTube (such as myself) find $13/month cheaper than wastes time watching ads.

If I added up the total ad time I’d have to see on a free account, the math would heavily favor paying to not see them vs my (or really most software engineers at the level of YouTube I consume)’s hourly rate.

It’s made decisions much easier for me if I take my hourly post-tax rate and compare it to services I’m using. If math works out, it’s generally worth it.

I’d love to fight the good fight against ads and stuff, but between working 9-5 and a side business, relationships, hobbies, I just don’t have the time.