Honestly, Google did this to themselves with not properly vetting the advertisers that they sell space to, and with oversaturation of ads.

If they'd have stopped granting ad space to scammers and malware spreaders, and if they'd have stopped adding advertisements at the line most people find tolerable (which seems to be a single ad between videos... not multiple at a time, and certainly no mid-rolls), they wouldn't have triggered quite the level of ad blocking that they did.

I see this "problem" that they have as being entirely of their own making.

Technology circumvention and copyright infringement are just about the only power consumers have against the near monopolies and cartel like behavior from the tech/media industry since our government regulators have been neutered.

I am grandfathered into a family Premium plan from the old Youtube Red days. The price is close to doubling come April. In the absence of competition or government intervention to punish anti-compeitive, anti-consumer behaviour I will be relying on ad-blocking and other circumvention measures next year. I am willing to pay a fair price but costs of living have gone up a lot while incomes for regular people are stagnant. The executives running these companies are completely disconnected from reality.

YouTube is like a time killing drug. I'm trying to get rid of it. Any advice?

but i saw another article saying that adblocker usage dropped by like ... meh i dunno 80% or some awful figure that I didn't want to believe.

i'd rather live in the version of the world where this one is true, that nobody is installing adblockers, but i know better (sometimes) than to simply succumb to confirmation bias...

if youtube were smart though, it'd make ads less shitty, intrusive, and obnoxious.