Fuck this article. No, ad blockers and not “to blame”. Google’s ad network is a massive delivery system of malware, and a significant contributor to climate change - orders of magnitude bigger and arguably even more stupid than crypto - as half of all internet traffic are ads at this point. It also makes unbelievable, pointless amounts of money that just doesn’t make sense and in itself serves as a major counterargument to the current capitalistic system.

Google is not content with this however, they want even more ads, they want even more money.

Most of us hate YouTube ads at this point. What started off as minimal intrusion into the viewer experience has gradually become longer and more intrusive, to the point where many of us prefer just paying for YouTube Premium

Or rather than that, users can just opt for just using the data they requested and discarding the data they didn’t - namely ad blockers. It’s as if you ordered a pizza and they also gave you a bunch of shit, and they were the ones upset that you threw away the shit in disgust without eating it, when they should happy that you don’t bill them cleanup fees.

YouTube has long been inching towards longer and more ads for free users. At the same time, the service really hates ad blockers, too (for good reason, as they hurt their bottom line and what they can pay creators).

Google has assets worth more than 310 billion dollars. They could end world hunger several times over. They can afford to pay anyone. They want to extract more of the world’s wealth however.