More and more recently with youtube, they seem to be more and more confrontational with their users, from outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service, to automatically scraping creators content for AI training and now anything API related. They're very much aware that there is no real competition and so they're taking full advantage of it. At the expense of the 'users experience' but these…
adblocking "users" are not Youtube's users. What do you mean blocking ads has no bearing on their service? It sounds like you are saying user experience is "I should get this for free".
Not YouTube's users? Maybe. But I am, so by that metric there's some doubt.
I paid for over 2 years for the premium, the cost increases and it's cheaper to pihole everything and support the usual suspects on patreon.
It's become a scenario of "I've given you so many adverts, you should pay me to get less."