Considering that Hacker News is a developer-oriented website, I half-expected the responses here to be "pfft, I don't watch Youtube on Youtube anyway, never seen any ads". There are technical solutions to this and I don't mean workarounds like ad blockers. I don't want to sound dismissive or condescending but why are we being held hostage by the likes of Youtube?

The code has been cracked. We know that by the existence of utilities like Invidious and youtube-dl yet people still behave as if we are somehow helpless in the face of Big Tech. You guys should be offering solutions but you seem content to just bellyache about it. I am sorry to see that.