YouTube is expensive to operate. They give me an option of paying by watching ads or paying money. That's much better than my options most other places, which is just to be forced to see ads.
You pay for a specific thing that is produced by a creator and provided by Youtube. "Pay to remove the ads we're pushing" is none of that.
On Youtube being free, this is their business choice, and also the way they crush the competition and cement a near monopoly on the market. If it was a public service NGO I'd see it from a different angle, but it's not.
We're in a skewed situation with a near monopoly that only companies at the size of Bytedance can challenge, and I'm not sure why we should see the status quo as something to be protected or encouraged.
That'd be something most people wouldn't agree with. People always ask for free link anytime a paywalled article posted.