There is no "ad-free" YouTube. Even if you pay, you will still see ads - https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1gnaetv/paying_to_... ... (ofcourse, those who pay will only see "premium" ads, befitting their financial status, unlike the cheap, ordinary every day ads for the lower class masses). Note that paying for YouTube doesn't prevent collection of your personal data (i.e. profiling). A comprehensive blocker like uBlock Origin helps prevents that to some extent by blocking the trackers.

If YouTube’s servers choose to serve me data, I am free to do whatever I want with that data. That does not equate to stealing in any way.

If Google doesn’t like that, they are free to block me.

I often use patreon, make donations, buy products/merch, etc, to support YouTube creators. Everything I’ve read indicates that this makes them MORE money than me paying for a YouTube subscription would, and I feel better about not financially supporting a monopolistic company.

Stopped subscribing to youtube when they removed premium lite in my country. Costs as much as hbo and netflix here.