I think the truly uninteresting insight is the flippant assertion that people "just want to get stuff for free", rather than the numerous other reasons someone might want a different frontend, or to use yt-dlp.

Edit: Take me, for instance. I can tolerate ads, much as I hate them - waiting 15 seconds and hitting "skip" twice isn't going to kill me. But good christ do I not like YT's UI/UX.