Even with just 2 people it's cheaper than to each have your own account
Bazoogle
My understanding of grandfathered is that you pay the rate you signed up for, and when it increases, new users pay the higher rate but you keep your rate as long as you stay subscribed. If that is not what you think grandfathered means, what does it mean to you? And if my definition matches yours, how is this not the correct use of grandfathered?
$23 for a family account. Which is cheaper than the single user ($11.50 a person if you were to have two people, $4.60 if you used all 5 accounts).
Even DNS blocking wouldn't work. DNS blocking only works if they serve ads via a different name server than they serve their content from (like content from videos.youtube.com and ads from ads.youtube.com). If they give you both ads and youtube content from the same domain, then your DNS blocker can't selective block the ads. So DNS blocking doesn't work on YouTube, and plenty of other streaming ad-containing streaming service.
This isn't the second price jack. There was one price increase, and then there is now the phasing out of grandfathered users. All users will have to pay the new price (which hasn't gone up again). Not defending YouTube, but just pointing out there isn't another price increase
That covers 5 accounts. If you are using all 5 accounts, that's the cheapest it's ever been. Even if you're only using 2 accounts, it's cheaper than to buy two individual accounts
Nobody can afford to be a YouTube alternative. Upload whatever you want, as large of a video file as you want, entirely free for everyone (costs no money, not freedom free)? Nobody can afford to do that. If someone wanted to make something similar to YouTube without the resources of Google, they'd need to at least limit uploads. Potentially even charge for uploads. But this would be punishing for new creators, especially if their broke. Except new people are exactly who need the strictest limitations, because random people could use it as personal video storage, like many do with YouTube.
Then there's the matter of making money. Trying to get enough advertisers would be a pain in the ass, content moderation would be a nightmare and very costly however you decided to do it. If you tried to just make the platform a paid platform, then you're highly restricting viewership. To try and make a YouTube without Google's resources is nearly impossible. I'd love for it to be done, but not enough people care either. Most people who just say "why not just use YouTube" just like that insane masses sticking with Reddit.
I did answer your question. I said the delivery for television is when it is broadcast through the air or cables. Which it is, regardless of if your television is on. Just like how radio waves are in the air whether your radio is on or not. Even if the radio never plays the sound, the data is still being broadcast (aka delivered).
The mail comparison quickly falls apart, since you do not benefit from spam mail. You do not get a service in exchange for getting the spam mail, so what could you steal by not getting spam mail? If you put up a sticker that prevents the delivery (kinda like an ad blocker), then you did not get that ad delivered. But again, you are not using advertising mail as a means to pay for a service you are using, so it cannot be stealing.
YouTube is not free. Period. It costs money. Google has to get money from users to run it. It can either do that from ads, subscriptions, or donations (which we know isn't going to happen). If every user blocks ads, no ads are being delivered, and they would not be able to run the service. In our world, ads are tracked by delivery and not by eyes seen. End users can choose to look away, ignore, walk away, turn off their monitor, or whatever else. The ad was still delivered. Ads delivered means a small percentage will learn about their business through those ads, which makes it profitable for businesses to keep paying for them. Therefore, to block ads, you are not paying for the service. To not pay for a service that you are expected to pay for is stealing.
You can make it sound gross, but you may be damn well surprised if you ever try some of it.
You regret the most? I've made much worse purchases. I just use a custom launcher, which the fact that it's an option is more than most services can say. It's nice that it's running android so I can install any APK I want (thank you SmartTubeNext). And the fact I can quickly control it/type from my phone is nice. Not to mention, I think every remote should have the "find my remote" button that makes it ring. And while it's decently expensive, and there are certainly other cheaper options, I would say this is far from one of the worst purchases I made.
Not OP, but some cars don't have bluetooth. My 2009 honda civic didn't have bluetooth for music. It had bluetooth, but just for the handsfree calling (really dumb), but I also swapped the head unit myself to an android head unit. While there are adapters for USB-C to aux, I found the ones I got weren't super reliable. My phone doesn't have an aux, but I wanted one. I made the sacrifice of no aux to get 5G on a different model phone instead. It's worked out, but when looking for phones in the future having an aux port is a point in that phones favor.