It's not even about selling you something, it's about selling you, period. They sell the user's attention to advertisers, and don't much care about anything else because anything else is too hard to quantify in a spreadsheet.

These days I mostly go for paid content like Nebula, alternative platforms like Odysee or PeerTube, or even Newgrounds - remember them? It's not always possible to avoid YouTube entirely since some creators I follow only have a presence there, but transitions like this take time.

Same. Since... forever I maybe use youtube once or twice per year. There's nothing interesting for me there that I can't find somewhere else, and often in written (not video form), which is less time consuming and less prone to useless "padding" for "monetization".