alt Hacker NewsDon't necessarily disagree - I have premium because of Google Music (although the official app is now so bad I use Metrolist).
I don't see YouTube as a streaming service - more as a social(ish) video sharing/Indy publishing platform.
For things like conference talks or training techniques and so on.
If I had to watch ads, I'd stop using it.
I'd be happy with it as a service where I search for a video, and get a decent result, and not see shorts.
In particular, what I don't want to see is a hundred videos where all the person does is use clips from other videos as background and just states talking points. An example is searching for "2026 Ioniq 5 Review". I'm looking for someone who test drove a car, and is reviewing it. While those exist, I get a lot of videos from people who've likely never seen the car, and are just narrating talking points from other videos. The video is spliced stuff from other videos, and the audio stream is that of the narrator.
Pure waste. This happens over, and over again for any review I search.
If I get so much crap when I'm searching, why the #$I&%(* would I pay them money?