Here is my take on this.
First, I am with OP on this, but with mild counter points:
- I block ads because they are intrusive, contain scam and viruses
- I don't want to pay YT because I am already the product, and my trust is long gone about them saying they respect my privacy
- "Hosting is expensive" is what we hear left and right but...
- letting people upload many hours long is not what YT was supposed to be,
- 4K vids and up are huge, so is HDR, do we really need such fat video files/streams? I don't...
- for those who need 2000inch TV size quality, yeah, they want to charge those.
- I would be OK to pay, but google will rise the price eventually and it feels like changing a contrcat I signed to begin with and I dan't agree with that. (price raising reason are the previous points above, I am not concerned by those and I don't see why I should pay that much)
- I am a google pixel user, google already got some of my money anyway, which I am happy with.
In the same vein, I wait Netflix to raise their price again (I bit the bullet twice) but there won't be a third time.
Same for Spotify.
Those services should realize they are not essential, just bare useful, and should be priced as such.
Just my 2cts.