Alright, can you elaborate on these ways? You could support a particular creator via Patreon, or by buying their merch, sure. What if somebody you've never watched before releases a very good video that you stumble upon and watch? What if you don't have the financial resources to be a part of dozens of separate patreons?
As far as I'm concerned, YT Premium is the best way for me to support all of the creators behind the videos I watch. For me, I also like YT Music so this ends up being a pretty good deal overall
You can easily buy memberships for channels, which gives more money than premium. In fact, most memberships for channels I frequent are $0.99 a month, so you can definitely afford to support 10-15 of them for the same price as premium.
That’s great that it’s a good deal for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that google took features that were free to use and locked them behind a paywall. So by default it’s a bad deal on that front alone.
I don't think that's what a bad deal is. I make decisions based on what is a good deal for me and things I care about.
With YT Premium for $10/mo I get:
support unlimited amount of creators based on watch time
no ads
YT Music (which is pretty good imo)
Support infrastructure behind service
Without YT Premium for $10/mo I get:
support 10 creators directly
ads (or constantly fight battle to block them)
Now, I fully agree that removing features that were previously paid is a dick move, but those aren't why I have YT Premium anyways. I just don't think it is an objectively "bad" deal