It’s a recurring pattern on the Internet: people unashamedly claiming they’re getting X for free, and will gladly pay if Y condition is met. Then Y condition is met, and people (possibly the same, possibly different) unashamedly come up with new excuses of why they’re still getting it for free and won’t pay.
Never believe “I’ll pay if …” if you’re running a business.
Or this could be evidence that YouTube is coming up with new ways to be bad faster than they're fixing their problems. Shorts, removal of the Dislike button, repeatedly and retroactively changing the rules on 'advertiser friendliness' without warning, degrading their own search feature in favour of algorithmic content, spurious bans, a guilty-until-proven-innocent copyright strike system that's easily and openly exploited by bad actors and the inability of even million-subscriber channels to reach a human in support should any of those problems suddenly destroy their livelihood. Fixing any one of those things won't make YouTube good, nor does it inspire confidence that by the time any of them are fixed they won't have some up with some new form of awfulness.
Never believe “I’ll pay if …” if you’re running a business.