I would argue that the ethical thing to do in this case is used Vanced/blockers and then support the content creators directly. (I happen to pay for YT Premium now, but I understand and sympathize with objections to it and used Vanced before I switched to an iOS device).

In fact, in that case, the creators see more of the money, and they get data indicating what stuff people will and won't pay for. That $15/mo. YT Premium budget could easily go to supporting content creators.

Content creators are screwed, long term, if they continue to rely on ad revenue, because both the ad companies and the platforms have incentives to keep the content creators' cuts as low as possible. Creators need revenue sources not under external control.

I agree and throw ~$25 a month to various folks on Patreon / Substack. Content creators will always have to pay the piper to some degree though if they want a platform for distributing their content, and discoverability. Patreon gets by right now by relying on external hosts for videos (See https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017431292-S...) and by largely having creators direct their audience from existing platforms. Without YouTube or Twitch or Twitter, Patreon doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. I definitely look forward to YouTube getting stiff competition from a direct monetization focused video platform though.

This doesn't touch on how easy it is for the YouTube monopoly to never pass ad revenue to users and how it's in their favor to keep revenue information as opaque as possible. If it were a competitive market, perhaps blocking ads would be the bigger problem at play for creators trying to recover revenue through it, but that's just not the case even though OP is content dismissing the much more interesting discussion as "bad faith" or "unproductive".

> My main consideration is for content creators, especially since the ad revenue is passed through to them. Any concern I have about YouTube not being able to sustain itself does not come from a place of caring about Google's livelihood.

The best solution I've found to this is to support content creators directly. Subscribe to their Patreon, Liberapay, GoFundMes, etc. Most YouTubers who sincerely try to make a living from their content already do this. Or just disable adblock for a video or two.

When the discussion is based on "negative externalities" of individuals towards tenants who are already at the mercy of a non-negotiable relationship receiving an opaque and steadily decreasing cut of revenue, and when most tenants attempting to create have to rely on more than just ad revenue to keep creating, it seems to me that the more harmful actor in this scenario to tenants is the monopoly and not those who avoid ad revenue.

It's not productive or in good faith discussion to flip the focus of an examination of negative externalities on those individuals avoiding ads once that is brought up, but again, the largest contributing problem actors are not what you care to talk about.

It's worth considering the scale of the contributing. If you give the creator 1$ directly, that's likely more than they'd get from you watching the ads on 1 year or their videos (if they're releasing more than weekly). Contributing a minimal amount in literally any other way will more than offset the loss from ads.

> especially since the ad revenue is passed through to them

Youtube could communicated the number of blocked ads, and lost revenue, to the content creators. Content creators could either push the Patreon route (this seems required for any remotely controversial topic), or encourage watchers to disable ad blocking for their videos.