Youtube also didn't have a subscription option back in the day, and it also limited the length of videos you could upload. Things cost money to run, and something on the scale of Youtube costs a lot of money to run.

Now to be clear, I don't pay for Youtube or watch ads, but that's more because I object to directly giving Google my money with how much value they already generate just tracking and selling what browsing habits I am unable to obscure from them. If there was an option to pay Google $5-10 a month with the enforceable assurance that it came with absolutely no personal tracking and data collection, I would strongly consider it.