A business model based on taking away basic web browser functionality like being able to play videos in the background and removing unwanted content then selling it back to the user is a toxic business model. Anybody who pays for a blatant scam like Youtube "Premium" is part of the problem.
You can like the content while hating the delivery mechanism and trying to fix it up to the best of your ability.
In reality, I once had monetized videos until one day they changed the rules to “number of subscribers” and none of my videos mentioned “subscribe” so I didn’t have enough. Oh well.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Most people will never see a dime of the money made from their videos. One-hit-wonders on YouTube are now pointless.
Free storage of data uploaded by willing users = hosting the data hostage?
This is untrue. As there was significantly less users on Youtube early on, it's highly likely that most of their total content consists of recently uploaded videos. This becomes more and more true as time goes on.