> I mean sure, I am fine with any service I am actively using either charge me money via subscription or monetize is some other form. If I don't want that to happen, I'd not use that service.

Same. Unfortunately, YouTube is a dopamine slot machine that makes money off ads shown on (often inappropriate) videos that keep kids addicted to their phones. It's also a site that constantly invades their users privacy. It also boosts often irrevelant and trashy channels to the front page. It's also a total CPU/RAM hog, its app is constantly getting slower, and generally a piss poor experience all around. Using Invidious/Newpipe/Youtube-DL makes all of this painfully obvious. If YouTube were a service that cost $5 a month, had no invasive tracking, and wasn't 95% garbage videos by "influencers" trying to hit the algorithm jackpot, I'd pay for it.

> If the costs of managing HackerNews is so high, sure let them sell ads or offer a subscription service. But if you are comparing HackerNews hosting costs to YouTube, you need a reality check. HackerNews probably costs less than 1000$ a month to host, everything included. I am sure YouTube spends more than that every second buying new storage servers.

My point is, none of us really know what it costs to host Hackernews, YouTube, or any website on the internet, and we don't know if any of these sites are struggling financially or need our financial support.

> I don't think most people realize the scale of YouTube - it's offering anyone on this planet to upload as many videos as they want, in resolution as high as 8K, while also offering the ability to monetize their content for creators.

Yes. Unfortunately, they don't do that for creators or users. They do that so they can sell more ads.

> I am totally fine with them making money off my data via ads (when I am not paying for YouTube premium).

I am glad you are fine with it. I just wish you were fine with people being able to choose what data their browsers download.