For me, I think the problems all started when creators themselves wanted to be paid for the content they created. When “content creator” started becoming a legitimate profession. YouTube was always going to need to have ads. They started adding more ads when creators started to establish themselves and want paid for the work they do. Don’t get me wrong, creators should absolutely get paid for their work. But there were better ways to ensure that those who made quality content got paid for it AND keep the servers that host their content up and running than embracing full enshittification.

EDIT: You can downvote me all you like, but it does little to change the fact that once the costs started increasing to more than simply keeping the lights on, they started looking for places to put ads. Like the meme itself says, They could have had one skippable ad at the start of the video and just passively made income that way, but then their operating costs went up when it was determined that the pay for content creators should come directly from the platform’s coffers.