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Seems? That is exactly the point of an advertising company's product.

YouTube sells ad-free access for $14 a month. It's as easy to avoid as can be.

Even easier: Brave Browser. ad-free YouTube for $0/month

For now. I guarantee they will start putting ads in your premium membership plan. It's already happening in other services. They will do it using the boiling frog method. There is no way they will pass up a chance to make even more money. This is not a slippery slope argument either, this is what has happened over and over throughout history.

Well, at some point they pretended to care about user experience. They could not have got their user base if they were that user hostile from the beginning.

> YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.

Google bought YouTube in 2006.

YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.

User and usage growth since introduction of ads in 2097/2008 suggests your assertion is not correct.

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