yes video quality has dropped, video suggestion algorithms have become a weird uroboric/echo chamber even if you have dozens of subscriptions, and the YouTube shorts reel refuses to be trained (no matter what I do, if I dislike every video I don't want to see and like all the ones I do want to see and log off if it suggests too many bad videos in a row, it still feeds me an endless loop of unwanted brain rot after 5 or 6 scrolls). I hate YouTube.
At the same time, they've found a good way around the ad block situation which is to promote ads as thumbnails on your "for you" video main page. I don't know why they didn't just do that in the first place, because honestly I don't mind that. It's when they constantly interrupt my videos ever freaking minute and a half that I start to get pissed.
these subscription models don't work. What these morons don't count on is that everyone actually hates the technology deep down. We don't want it! But it gives us a dopamine hit. And when they stack on subscription prices and lock up content and shove ads down our throat... well, the dopamine stops hitting and just get pissed. So we leave.