Interesting how all these tech companies are actively making themselves shittier at the same time. Reddit, Google, Twitter, Netflix. It's like they forgot what made the industry leaders. Why everyone flocked to them over other options.
My gut says that high interest rates have a lot to do with the timing. The era of free money is over and so all these companies are trying to squeeze every dime out of their customers they can. The problem is, this is the internet and their services don't have to be unique, any one can duplicate what they used to offer. The only reason they are dominant now is because they have gotten so big and did not actively try to tank their service.
Now that they're actively making things shittier, people will just find an alternative. Speaking of which, is there a federated alternative to youtube? Probably harder to implement do the video file sizes.
I think it’s a little more complicated with YouTube. They actually pay their content providers, some of them very well. This could benefit them in the long run so people will probably put up with ads to watch.