Sounds like YT is trying to mobilize creators and influencers against adblocking.
And extensions such as SponsorBlock [1], which help user skipping sponsored sections or useless intros in videos.
It would either be trying a revolt or stop youtube.
There's also Tubular, a YouTube client and fork of NewPipe with Sponsor Block built-in. If you don't mind installing apks from outside the Play Store: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular
Another example of that is their ridiculous strike system. Look at what happened to Gamersnexus recently.
I pay €14/mo to not have ads on YouTube. It's good they have the skip feature for those sponsor segments, since they're just embedded ads.
Creators still benefit as my view has a higher $. Well... not anymore I suppose with the view attribution endpoint being blocked by my adblock.
Whether or not you consider that an issue shrug but it's not directly YT's fault.
What they are missing is proof I’ve watched the ads - which I haven’t.
Turns out that pi-hole was blocking the endpoint that records the watch history! IIRC allowing queries for something like s.youtube.com made my watch history start working.
I agree that they should know w/o all this client based nonsense but :shrug:. They don't, somehow!
This might temporarily lead to a collapse in video creator business, but in the long run might result in more viable businesses for creators, without them having to push shit onto their viewers. Make videos and enjoy them being seen, or make paid content and have people pay for that, but don't try to shoehorn it into viewing videos that are accessible for anyone running a Youtube search.