It's weird how people are fine paying for Netflix, Hulu, CrunchyRoll, Twitch, etc, but draw the line at YouTube, the platform that has infinite more content and actual value.

I see your point, but I think there's a psychological reasoning behind this.

YouTube in its early days ONLY had a free option whereas services like Netfix have always only had a paid option.

YouTube in its early days certainly had a ton of ads, but they were non-obtrusive. Things like banner ads and ads on the side of the video. Then slowly, they added in-video ads. Iirc it started out only as a single pre-roll ad, but in its current form it has devolved into multiple pre-roll ads and an ungodly amount of imcredibly jarring and obtrusive mid-roll ads that violently break up the content you are consuming. YouTube then has the gall to say that if you want to consume the platform how you used to, you have to shell out money. YouTube hasn't added anything with its subscription service. Instead it wants you to pay them money to return the service to the usability it had prior.

Discord Nitro has a subscription feature that ads something. They didn't take away say, the ability to voice chat, and lock a feature it used to have for free behind a paywall.

We can also examine Spotify with this. Unlike YouTube, Spotify has always had both a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier has between song ads and the paid tier has always had no ads. It's less jarring to have to pay for something if it has always been there. Imagine also if Spotify started putting ads in the middle of a fucking song and forced you to pay to remove them even though there never used to be ads in the middle of a song.

Tl;Dr - A twofold issue. 1. YouTube sort of shot itself in the foot in a way by not starting out with a paid tier. 2. YouTube did not really ad anything with premium, but instead is making you pay to use the service as you used to be able to for free. Obtrusive in-video ads are cancer and one of the worst types of ads.

I'd pay money to break my Youtube addiction completely to be honest. There is good content, but I don't like the way it's served. Not just ads, but recommendations. I don't get addicted to Netflix in the same way, though I do sometimes binge watch shows. Certainly wouldn't pay for Youtube, and if they made it impossible to watch for free without ads by preventing ad blockers working I think I'd rather just quit entirely and pay for Nebula, since it focuses on the kind of content I value more and don't get as addicted to watching.

Because you can always just use adblock... for free

I'd pay 5$ a month just for YouTube, I don't want all the extra bullshit. YouTube doesn't produce any content themselves, they don't have to hire actors writers and make big budget movies.

They are literally just hosting content and paying creators cents. Yet they want to charge Hulu / Netflix money.

Gtfo with that. I cancelled Netflix earlier this year because it was getting too expensive as well for what it was providing.