I use youtube across different devices with the same account. sometimes, i even use it in multiple browser profiles or apps on the same device (with the account logged in).
the ad reminder got me. it actually stopped serving any youtube video on my laptop. so i made a new profile in firefox, logged in, and it was fine. for a couple days.
so i made a new profile, logged in, and… was foiled. but not to be deterred, i did what any reasonable person would do: i sought out one of the DOZENS of alternative frontends and used youtube’s recommendation algorithm on the main site to pull videos from the alternative frontend.
for one day.
today, on my laptop, with my old profile, never changing logins or browser settings, youtube started working again.
did we win?
They caused you a major inconvinience that is enough for a % of people to turn it off, even temporally. I doubt there would ever be an ideal anti-adblock, or that they even target those who would figure it out, but swing users who can be easily pressured into surrendering. The most popular channels aren’t about tech things after all, and average session\video is probably small enough to bear ads while scrolling shorts for 10-15 minutes per sitting.