I also love Youtube (I've learned a staggering amount from it), but maybe qualify your "anyone" here ;-) > nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee

I also love Youtube (I've learned a staggering amount from it), but maybe qualify your "anyone" here ;-) > nor why anyone would not just pay the very small fee for YouTube Premium and do away with all the ads Assuming you mean the no-ads-plus-music offer, in the UK that is £12.99 a month. So the yearly cost is worth more than a whole month of food for me, and I don't eat badly (I just shop well). A month's worth of food for a single adult is objectively not a very small amount of money, spread over a year. Me, I skip the ads, for now.