You’ve found quite the hornets nest, it seems.
I pay for premium because YouTube does video delivery better than anyone else in the world, and it’s not free for them to provide. Lots of things to hate about YouTube/Alphabet, but theft is a corrupt way of expressing discontentment.
Also, if I pay for premium, then content creators get paid, and I don’t have to shell out for merch to not feel like a terrible person.
I imagine if it doesn’t make sense to you already, I won’t be able to help you understand, but here goes anyway.
A company pays a lot of money to have a service developed and hosted, then offers a paid teir, and an ad supported teir. If you neither pay, nor watch ads, yet still use the service, then the company is incurring fees due to your usage while receiving no revenue for providing the service.
Like, YouTube videos are great. Practically a utility at this point. However YouTube, the platform, is a company not a charity; if you cost them money, while providing $0 revenue, you’re stealing their money.
Personally I don’t think theft is justified outside extreme desparation (stealing food, basically), and given that YouTube gives you an option that does not require giving them money I find it hard to justify stealing bandwidth.
You skipped the part where, upon purchasing YouTube, Google used their infinitely deep pockets to deliberately run all other video hosting services, and there were several, out of business and create a monopoly. I’m not going to question my morals over blocking ads from a company that itself is morally bankrupt.
The user should always be in control of the 1s and 0s entering their computer. Allowing some data and not allowing others is not theft. It’s not all-or-nothing for which data Google sends me and recieves from me, that’s absurd.
