I think their “here’s our worse model for free, pay for better ones” is a fine monetization strategy, and is a fine compromise for getting people like me to use the service at all. I mean they are still clearly collecting and using my queries for training and feature expansion.

(Even better is their idea to allow a few uses for a better model for free that resets in some time frame to let me see what I’m missing without using those better models, unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, that is buggy)

Hiding QOL features seems like a foot gun.

They hardly tilt the scales on cost, like a better model would, and make people who you have yet to convince to pay think even your paid service is worse than it actually is, making them less likely to want to pay in.

For instance, apparently the feature I requested is already implemented, and as an accountless user I was unaware that it was even an option had I paid or signed up.

Does YouTube consider PiP an account generating feature? For me, it pushed me away from their service.

The only reason I used invidious was so I could listen to YouTube audio with my phone screen off while I went for a run.

Provide for free the features that would make people want to use your thing, and charge them for the features that cost more to serve.