To be devil's advocate, this is the kind of all-talk argument the parent was referring to. Once the paid option is available, people will demand it to be [cheaper / better / someone else] and still not pay.

While I don't love my money going to Google, I find YouTube's overall quality astronomically higher than Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/etc. and the amount of censorship/"moderation"/controversy has been relatively limited. When I find something I really want to keep I have always been able to download it without much trouble.

I agree with the premise of your argument but just have to point out we seem to have been given 'unalived' and a few other new terms thanks to youtubes aggressive demonetization. They haven't been amazing on censorship but still probably better than those others.

Now whether someone who is putting out an opinion should care about getting paid is another thing, but it kills your video traffic usually too.

I got divorced last year, had a rough period, watched some self-help videos, Youtube found out and started increasingly serving unwanted content. I did not appreciate the attempt at pushing my proverbial buttons. I do not need gender war content when I look for a guitar review. Youtube is excellent and has replaced television for me the last 10 years. But I just don't trust or want an algorithm trying to hook me, and I'm generally already old and wise enough to unplug when I need to. To me, this goes a bit beyond being choosy. I don't want to be profiled.

You can pay for an ad-free experience and switch off your watching history to avoid being preyed upon by the algorithm. That’s what I do.

> You can [...] switch off your watching history

Yup, and, for those who don't know, you can toggle an option in your Google account settings to do the same for your recommendations in search and for any Google-served ads you will see on all websites.

Disclaimer: I tried that with the ads, and ended up reverting that setting after a few days. Even if my personalized ads were hit or miss, non-personalized ads were just nightmare fuel of the most random things ever that I absolutely had no interest in and felt actually annoyed upon seeing.