I think you are so dead set on seeing things your way that you have lost something along the way: the ability to step out of this for a moment and to observe that YT is infrastructure, not content owned by Google and that the difference between Victoria's Secret and YT is that there are many alternatives to VS but no clear alternatives to YT and with such a dominant market position come certain obligations. This is exactly what anti-trust is all about. If VS commanded 80% of the market for underwear and they decided you can only buy their underwear if you also inject yourself with some unknown substance (which is roughly how I see advertising consumption, it is pure poison for your brain) then we'd have a comparison.

I would respond that I think you are deadset on thinking that the YT of today is supposed to be the same as when it first started. It has new owners now. It has a different operating model. It has decided that the content it plays will be ad supported. Continuing to expect the ad free model when the model has clearly changed is the dead set mentality.

That's called bait-and-switch and a lot of people and institutions used youtube because it presented itself in a particular way and now that there is no way back out that is practical the squeeze is on.

From your commenting in this thread I surmise that you have some kind of stake in the outcome. Personally, I'll just boycott youtube and I can't wait until I'm in a position to remove Google from my life entirely.