I know it's a pain, but what's to stop us from using download-clis? In theory I could "collect" the urls that are recommended to me from my home page, call the clis, click all the videos to update my recommendations then close the browser.
using the browser isn't necessary to keep your watch history up to date.
yt-dlp can log in as you by reading your cookies from your browser, and, with the optional --mark-watched flag, mark your downloaded videos as watched in your YT account.
The no competition in the market, is the issue. Hope the situation improves in near future. With it innovations will gradually increase & the demand within the markets will point the directions.
Who set that expectation in the first place? Don't all cut-throat corps undercut the previous established companies and gained a lot of market share by being "loss leaders"?
Do you think YouTube would dare to go completely Pay only?
Lack of competition is not an excuse to double dip on both customer data and advertisements.
People who say that we need to pay for server costs should consider that streaming services are now asking for money but also introducing adverts. The money is too lucrative for them to leave on the table.
Everybody is happy to pay when there's 1 service or 2 services that give them everything for a nominal fee. Cases in point: Netflix, Steam.
A lot of people pay for twitch because it's the only platform they care about. Paying for A platform doesn't mean we will pay for ALL platforms.