YouTube is, beyond any shadow of doubt, the most popular video hosting site on the Internet. While alternatives exist, YouTube has no serious contender, to the point the videos you want to watch might be only available on it because their creators don't bother to upload them elsewhere. The ground is laid for a dangerous Internet monoculture.

YouTube has been attempting to boost its profitability quite aggressively for a number of years, surely aware that their dominant position will keep video consumers engaged in their platform even if subjected to massive advertising pressure. As a result, watching videos over YouTube has become an exercise in masochism, with an ever-increasing flow of advertisements blasting out of your screen. The alternative is purchasing a YouTube Premium plan, which the company labels as a "subscription service that lets you watch and listen to YouTube and YouTube Music without interruptions." Considering the way advertisements are being pushed into your brain with the free service, you would think they are attempting to break your will and to convince you of jumping on the paid service rather than enduring the torture of continuous advertising.

Ad blockers are the main defense left for users who can't afford a paid plan but won't surrender to the will of the tech giant. Unfortunately, the obliteration of ad-blocking technology is an integral part of YouTube's strategy. First blood in the war on ad blockers was drawn when YouTube attempted to make videos unavailable to ad blocker users in 2023 [1]. Google Chrome also proposed an attestation mechanism – known as Web Environment Integrity [2] – that, deep down, was just a fancy way of letting website owners decide if a given web browser was to be accepted or rejected. According to the popular Internet theory, the goal was to ensure only authorized web browsers without ad blockers could use Google services – including YouTube.

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