What's your argument here? That if you don't pay you shouldn't get a decent user experience, and paying solves every issue so we might as well give into the enshittification?

The SponsorBlock and DeArrow argument only works some times: clickbait and sponsors can be an indicator of poor quality (see Linus Tech Tips), but they aren't always: even Tom Scott video thumbnails and titles used to get DeArrowed, and I bet no one here would argue that Tom Scott used to push low quality content.

It's normal to pay for products and services which you use and which gives you value. But I also know that hackers have time to argue for at least 13 hours per day why they shouldn't have to pay.

YouTube offers the option to not pay, and instead have horrible interruptions with ads. Maybe in the future they will stop this nonsense and put everything behind a paywall, who knows?

But for normal people wanting to watch YouTube on their TV, there's really no option besides Premium. And it's really an incredible bargain compared to the value you get from it.

> clickbait and sponsors can be an indicator of poor quality (see Linus Tech Tips), but they aren't always

Agree. But I'd rather see a clickbait thumbnail from one of my subscribed channels than be fooled by a cleaned up thumbnail from a clickbait channel.