On the current state of YouTube
Over time, but especially as of recent, YouTube has become extremely hostile to users, particularly those who make use of an ad blocker. An arms race has broken out about it, even, to the extent where yt-dlp has started having to include Deno, a Javascript engine to be able to succeed at performing the challenges sent.
I spend a surprising quantity of time now following what is going on with YouTube's anti-ad-blocking changes, since it now regularly tells me about how I am violating their terms of service.
This is happening simultaneously with the AI enshittification of the YouTube experience; AI summaries, comment reply suggestions, chatbot to talk about the current video with, automatic dubbing in languages that do not match that of the content and more.
AI content in the form of videos and shorts is being pushed into feeds by algorithms which do not in any way prioritize or share the concerns of the end-user / consumer of that content.
Google's most anti-user and anti-consumer behaviour is the total crippling of Chrome's extension system via Manifest v3 to restrict the capacity to which ad-blockers can function on their platforms.
All I can think on this is, if Google and YouTube had not existed in the first place and the web had been more decentralized with regards to where we archive and share our multimedia content, we would be in a better position because of a lack of that centralization. YouTube stands as a monopoly over amateur to professional internet shared video where it does not concern traditional publishing and we are all the worse for it, regardless of how Google and YouTube want you to believe that "ads help YouTube be available to billions".