Or even better, care about your digital privacy and ditch Google and Youtube and use an alternative front end, like invidious, or piped.

If you think people are getting paid by youtube then your are wrong. The amount per user is insignificant.

You can spend a $ directly to any creator you like and watch his channel ad free for the rest of your life and they have more money from you than they would get by ads from youtube

Its sad this is being downvoted. Ethically you should pay to use the service either through ads and personal data or subscription and personal data.

I don’t do either because I don’t like Google and don’t care about being Ethical to them. I understand why they would try and stop me and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will have to give up youtube in the next decade.

While I basically agree with what you’re saying, I’d also like to point out that the money they get from you watching ads is miniscule. I don’t remember which YouTuber it was, maybe Matthias Wandell, who said that if you donate just one dollar, that’s more than they’re ever going to profit from you watching ads.

Nah, I only ever liked YouTube because it was a site where complete randoms could share stuff for free

I’m not interested in paying someone’s salary, I just want to watch people’s videos of their pets and kids and stuff like that