I don’t understand why this is top comment. Ads on youtube are skippable after a few seconds and you can pay to not watch them. It’s weird to conflate that with some adspam website, which may have a ton of flashy ads and a video.

However, more importantly, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Ads enable content creators to get paid. Frankly, youtube barely eeks out a profit. When you block ads instead of paying to remove them, you’re making it harder for Youtube to justify its existence.

Personally, I think it’s fine to block ads if you’re actually quite poor or if it makes the web unusable. But if you’re just doing it because “web advertisers deserve it” or some other kind of hare brained rationalization, then you should reconsider your position. It’s not rebellious or brave to use an adblocker when there are affordable paid ad free experiences, it’s simply theft.