From the article: “In some ways, the current situation has spurred an arms race. YouTube has inadvertently improved ad blockers, as the new knowledge and techniques gained from innovating within the YouTube platform are also applicable to other ad and tracking systems.”
Compared to other sites, and their relative costs to run, and amount of ads. YouTube has been fairly ok. They have balanced the consumer friendly skip this video and sometimes short ads with the probably higher engagement metrics from them.
However YouTube the lite plan being discontinued right before this mostly means I’m going to move from Gmail to Zoho and wait for the ban.
The final YouTube lite plan didn’t include removing ads from music, which seems to suggest the reason why YouTube music is bundled and maybe even exists, is in part the music industry being shitty.