I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads

Prepping the market for future fuckery is not a virtue, and this smacks of apologist rhetoric.

but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information.

This in no way is grounds for a society to handwave increasingly unethical, exploitive tactics.

Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time,

Operational costs? That's the crux of this apology for poor li'l YT just trying to make it in the big scary world? FFS. I'm sure exec profits have nothing to do with their business model. 🤦🏽‍♂️

I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways.

The logical fallacies continue...

Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else,

A plea to the plebs?

but it's inescapable

Ah, there's the "but", of course...

from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.

Gas & groceries are goods, a streaming platform is not. More accurately, you'd have to rephrase it to something like "from Chevron & Kroger...", but therein lies the rub, citizen.

It's not about the product that "has changed your life", it's the simple fact that the corporation behind the platform is using you — and you're paying them to be their fucking product. 🤦🏽‍♂️