[mrweasel]

I think it's expected. Even if YouTube have some large scale advantages, it cannot be cheap to run their infrastructure.

As a YouTube Premium subscriber, where I think the argument breaks down is how absolutely garbage their recommendation algorithm has become. While I don't agree with the tactic, I can see why YouTube would push content that keeps the users engaged/pacified and don't see why exactly they would use the same shitty algorithm on people who pay to not see ads. A great up-sell could be better control of the recommendations, perhaps set a "target profile" for yourself.

For the free-tier I still think YouTube dialed the monetization knob up way to fare. There are currently way to many ads and the quality of those ads is rather low and their relevance is questionable. I don't blame YouTube for attempting to crack down on ad-blockers, but they need also need make ads more tolerable. The current allowed ads, their runtime and placement basically makes the actual videos impossible to watch.

YouTubes current quest for ever growing revenue has resulted in an insane manipulation of its users, pushing ever more brain numbing content and its going to cost them users if they also crack down on ad blocking to hard, while not increasing the incentive to pay for Premium. It's a vicious spiral of pushing ads so hard that more and more people tries to avoid them.