No one (and I mean that in the sense of a significant number) is switching to Firefox over this. Our user numbers are consistently heading downwards.

Besides Google does other things to slow YouTube down on Firefox so this isn’t really a compelling reason to switch browsers for most people. They’ll likely just disable their ad blocker. For the person who values privacy that much, they’re likely staying off Google properties anyway, and for the average user, their YouTube experience is more important.

I seriously find it hard to believe that most people who are computer-savvy enough to use adblockers would choose to live with ads again rather than switch to a virtually identical product that doesn't allow companies to disturb users in the same way (at least for now).

The bar for how savvy you have to be to use an ad blocker is a lot lower than it used to be.

There’s 2 different issues here: privacy and user experience. A lot of YT users are probably signed in to YT through their gmail/google account, in which case the ad blocker is not providing them privacy. If you don’t care about privacy and only care about user experience (e.g. not seeing any ads) there will not be an alternative to YT for long that can operate free to the user without showing ads.

Most people will opt for a better content catalog, load times, and device battery life over leaving YT, even the computer savvy.

> most people who are computer-savvy enough to use adblockers

We're a drop in the ocean, unfortunately.

I don't think that's true, otherwise they wouldn't be waging a war against ad blockers.

Very much this. The fact that an increasing number of sites are fighting against Adblockers means that the % of users running them is non negligible.

It’s hard to find concrete data but I’ve seen everything from 30% up to 70% depending on the type of audience.

The FBI recommends using ad blockers to keep yourself safe online. Despite that there are still billions online who don't use any form of one, as the highest estimate is aroundd 32% of ad block users.

Same for the German BSI (Federal Office for Information Security)

"Ad blockers are an important way of safeguarding users online, since they effectively protect against malware attacks carried out by externally embedded advertising."

https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbr...

Getting offended over ethical issues about what I'm (not) allowing on my own screen is quite the useful filter to see whom I should ignore in life.

Most people know some dirty nerd that can provide help here, so even people not so affine with tech ("normal people") have them installed by now. Everyone that had an ad blocker once will never want to go back.

Ads do finance some infrastructure, especially platforms like youtube and large commercial social media sites. But that is not all infrastructure at all and I believe there is a strong ethical case that you should protect people from unwanted advertising in any case.