Firstly: I pay for youtube premium. Secondly, I honestly do not understand what gymnastics you think I am going through. I can view and control whatever content is sent to my computer. I do not have an obligation to allow any company to send arbitrary data or to force me to view it. Do you think it's similarly bad to skip around a video, when clearly the content creator meant for it to be a whole complete video? How about if I skip ahead when the content creator has a sponsor ad section?

You are right, I could choose to just not go to youtube (or any other ad-supported website). Or, I could choose to view whatever portions of a website are made publicly available, in whatever way seems best to me. Just like I don't have to go to youtube, they don't have to make it publicly available. It goes both ways.

By that same logic I have no right to complain when a website uses 3rdparty trackers, or tries to run a monero client without my knowledge, because after all, I should have known they would do that ahead of time and not visited the site. But since I did, since I 'requested' it, I should just take everything I'm given and do exactly as told, mmhm.

> But no, it’s much better to exert your “rights” to try and control what gets sent to your computer.

But no, it's much better to exert your "rights" to try and control what gets run and shown on end-users computers.

> Also known as what you requested

I requested the video, nothing else. I don't care what you think I should or shouldn't know, I'm only trying to access the video and I am only requesting the video. If Youtube doesn't want me messing with the bytes they're sending me, they should not send them to me.

That isn't mental gymnastics.

> You know you can win this game quickly by not visiting YouTube again

Yes. You understand perfectly. YT doesn't have to enshittify much further for this to be no loss.