“You made me do it” is a standard gaslighting technique, common in abusive relationships. If they want compliance, they just have to be nice. A sequence of 3 ads, some of them uninterruptible, before a 10-minutes video, plus breaks in the middle is not being nice, particularly as they jump up the volume to painful levels every time.
No amount of content justifies subjecting ourselves to this brain washing. And I’m not even talking about malware in ads (not on YouTube, but since you mention Adblock…)
Part of it is justifying the ad load by comparison with American broadcast TV (up to 18 minutes of every hour), while not recognizing that that level of ad load is not well known in Europe, for one thing.
That’s a false equivalence, actual power is only on one side. I was personally affected by this; I used to watch YouTube regularly until their ever more obnoxious ads put me off for a couple of years. So yeah, my behaviour is the consequence of their abusive behaviour over the years. I did not start this and I am not trying to shame them into compliance.
Now I watch without ads, so sue me. I’d grant them the moral high ground the day they stop tracking me across the internet and put a reasonable amount of ads time before their videos (interrupting a video is a deal breaker, I cannot believe that so many years after TiVo some companies still think it’s a good idea). They want to play whack-a-mole, that’s their right. But then it is my right to control what’s running on my computer. In the end, if they persist to treat me as a nuisance even though I used to be a model consumer before their hostile behaviour put me off, then they’ll lose me for good and I’ll just send some money Nebula’s way. At least they seem to respect their users.
It's wrong. In a magical world with zero ad blocking, advertising is still multiple different players all competing with each other who will jump at ramping up effectiveness no matter how damaging it could be. It's a competition for a limited resource and there's a ratchet effect.
No amount of content justifies subjecting ourselves to this brain washing. And I’m not even talking about malware in ads (not on YouTube, but since you mention Adblock…)