I'd always assumed you could block specific ads or advertisers since there's a button on each ad with a menu for that (on the circled i button). But when I just tried it, it refused because it said personalized ads were turned off, even though there were turned on. So I guess that's just another weirdly broken pretend-feature.
Before I got YouTube premium I'd try that button on some ads that were annoying and repetitive (Grammarly) but it made no difference and the same ads kept showing.
This reminds me the days of free hosting w/ banner ads, then you'd get a whole month of surgical banners. I'm sure YT has good metrics on what level of discomfort will prompt certain folk to go paid.
For me it's not about pressure, I run an ad-blocker anyways. Youtube is one of the services I use the most in my every day life, and considering the amount of value I get out of it, giving 10$ back is the least I can do in my mind. I find that many people take online services for granted these days, and don't take a step back to look at how much value these services bring them. I get 50+ hours of entertainment per month out of Youtube, if that's not worth 10$, then I don't know what is.
Besides the protection racket vibes mentioned you are paying Google first and foremost not the actual content creators. I would argue paying for the hosting actually creates the wrong incentives and empowers the platform over the people whose work you enjoy.
According to Youtube [0], a part of the Premium cost goes directly to creators based on how much time you spend watching their channel. Also, you're not only paying for pure hosting, but for the millions of engineering hour that went into creating the platform. I understand average users not realizing this, but HN should know more than most how much work goes into implementing these services.
And going back to the ad discussion, if you compare it to traditional media, you get to pay more than 10$ and still have to sit through 2-3m of advertisement, compared to the 5-10s long ads on Youtube.
