DRM

You're acting like A) it's not part of a company pulling down billion dollar profits and B) any loss isn't being used to depress tax paid by other arms of said company

The problem isn't ads or subscription fees, the problem is ads and subscription fees in addition to the data scraping. Google, and by extension Youtube, harvest your data from all over the internet and use it to sell ads. The data and CAPTCHAs you see all over from Google are trackers (that's how clicking a box can determine you're human) that ars harvesting data and fingerprinting your device to make you easier to identify.

In 2025, do you really want a demonstrably evil company that supports the American kleptocracy to have access to your data?

In comes freetube and invidious: responses to the above problem. By acting proxy to youtube you avoid the ads (which contain spyware) and you avoid downloading site data from Google (which likely contains spyware).

It isn't a payment issue, and the pirates aren't upset about costs, it's just that in the age of glass walls online, we want our fucking privacy back.