You can disable shorts on grayjay, of course you need an android device.

so, they enable it the least disruptive place (for their shorts) at least IMHO, because more likely people on their phone would look at shorts over a set top / desktop environment watchers. Hopefully it rolls out to these as well

Not defending Google, but how many employees do they have? Did they all get raises this year? I bet license deals from the music industry probably went up too. (No proof but assuming)

But I agree 100%, they are without a doubt no longer following “don’t be evil”. But it’s disingenuous to believe they’re annual costs are not increasing along with literally everything else.

Speaking for everyone?

I pay because I use yt music and my PRIMARY tv watching is YT, and I use one or the other all day long.

YT has no ads, and I can skip with the press of a button most creator ads so it’s kinda nice and easy. (Yes I know what sponsor block is and it’s installed on Firefox so one less button press on my pc)

Do I pay YouTube FOR the creators? Nope I pay so I can sign in / watch yt or listen to my music anywhere without jumping through hoops.

I also have / sometimes use grayjay on my phone (and I paid futo for it to support it) I have smart tube next on my Nvidia shield too. My wife/son use it mostly.

I sync yt music to my Garmin watch for running, I run about 20 miles a week so add that to feature I’m paying for.

I downloaded a handful of videos before flying to CA earlier this week, but the flights had WiFi so that didn’t really give me anything special ;)

Can I do all this without paying, sure, but I don’t mind paying for stuff I get value from.

Am I happy about $4/mo increase? Absolutely not, but it’s not gonna break me either. $4/30 is .13c a day.