What are you paying for, exactly? Youtube is already free.
Actually wait, I don't want to know. I'm happy with my life, there's no way that knowing this will improve it.
YouTube gives them a platform to remain independent content authors. It's not perfect. Nothing is.
YouTube shares ad revenue with them. That's their living. If you pay for premium, you do not see ads but YouTube still pays them for your view. I don't know the full details, I'm sure it isn't perfect.
I'm not sure what part of that you were concerned about knowing, but I am glad I can not view ads and that I can consume a lot of great independently content for a very minimal monthly cost.
The amount of ads I see people watch is ridiculous, I can't stand them at all anymore.
I had trouble with pi-hole breaking things and requiring too much manual intervention (compared to browser based ones that I can toggle with a mouse click without changing screens).
> What about watching less TV/youtube?
I generally have youtube on pretty much all day for music as I haven't found anything else that approaches it for music recommendations (which is pretty sad as they're still not great).
That, and Premium views apparently pay creators more than ad-supported views [1], so I justified it that way.