I was tempted to state that I was wrong, clearly you have thought about this, but I don't agree with this perspective at all and won't be changing my opinion.

I guess we're done here then.

The 'nobody has a gun to your head' approach to laissez-faire mercantilism likes to ignore how important free market access is.

Oh, were still going. Okay.

Erm. YouTube is free. It's only not available where countries have blocked it.

Lack of access can be just as bad as a gun to the head, if not sometimes worse.

What? YouTube is not a necessity to human existence. It's not food or shelter.

That's a stunning level of entitlement on show there.

I don't think YouTube has ever left me feeling like it had any regard for me as a consumer or even valued my time. It appears, from the many complaints I've seen by YouTube content creators, that many of them don't feel valued or respected either. By the time Premium came along it had long lost me as an interested customer.

Fair enough. So you're going the ad route then?

There's no feeling that one should honor a one-sided social contract because that requires an actual relationship. If I felt that YouTube actually cared about anything other than being the middle-man that ensures that I get served ads, and demands--but not delivers--respect for it, then maybe I would reconsider.

Ah, so you're freeloading.

Until then, I will enjoy their competing products. Ad-Blockers and supporting alternative hosting sites that make me feel more valued. They've assisted in creating their own black-market for ad-avoidance, and that's the free market working.

If you don't want to pay, or view the ads, you should opt out and use an alternative or go without. That's the ethical choice.