It went up like four bucks this month for me this past month. I feel like I am in a no-win situation. I want to support the authors of the videos and music I like, make the platform sustainable, and I hate ads and data harvesting. There doesn’t seem to be reasonable way to satisfy all three objectives (or even two).
I’m mostly in the same boat with supporting the creators, however I don’t really like Google to be honest. I end up supporting creators outside the platform, such as via Patreon or by watching on Nebula. Most of my YT consumption is done via NewPipe, Piped and Freetube
There’s a little part of me that likes the fact that YouTube is burning a hole in Google’s finances tbh lol
Patreon for the ones you really like, and substituting watching my own content on Plex is how I’m weening myself off YouTube.
Unfortunately, anymore, even if you pay, companies (especially googie) are STILL harvesting and selling your data… I don’t know if there’s a way to avoid it without either unplugging entirely or going full in on dark web and anonymous browsing techniques, and even then, your data will still be harvested from other people in your life
