Well some people are in the massive minority that despises modern youtube, even if its ad free.

Look at it through a few different lenses and you'll find plenty of reasons to think youtube is overall bad. People seem to love to retreat to the dishwasher repair instructions for some random old model, to try to defend modern youtube. those videos were all over youtube before it became a vile ad infested infinite scroll attention demanding app, and the product has been on a steep decline since the perverse incentives to chase attention by any means have been added.

The core of modern youtube in 2026, is a bunch of "creators" pumping out x amount of minutes per week or as often as per day, of low quality content dressed up in a video format to disguise how low quality it is, to their viewers that will click it and not realize how poorly crafted it is because its their main feed of information and that is their baseline. You can deflect this and say there is some high quality stuff, sure, but there is no way you can possibly say that the vast majority isn't absolute garbage, and that youtube isn't incentivized to keep people watching for as long as possible with no regard for which level of quality content they are watching.

Literally everyone i've talked to that defends youtube, accepts that they watch some absolute garbage at times, and deem it worthwhile for some reason. I have no understanding for why so many people are just content burning time watching actual garbage, when there is so much high quality stuff elsewhere.