Vivaldi with uBlock Origin here. A simple refresh of the page makes the popup go away, often for the rest of the session. For me, it's YT without ads as usual. I might need to clear uBlock cache and refresh filter lists to make it work even better. There's also a Tampermonkey script for blocking the popup, but I haven't tried it yet.

As a side note, I've seen a lot of talk about boycotting Youtube. There are 3 things to consider with this:

Boycotting YT will give Google exactly what they want, getting rid of the "freeloaders" who don't pay for Premium and block ads.
Boycotting YT will hurt small creators who don't see much ad revenue (if any) anyway. Views and likes are what make small creators visible to the algorithm, if these drop off, their reach will diminish.
Boycotting YT won't affect big creators with sponsorships, healthy Patreon community, millions of subscribers and views.
Best way of defiance here is not stopping to use YT, but on the contrary, generating as much traffick to YT as possible while blocking the ads.

[–] RVMWSN@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I don't agree, the best way would be to start using alternatives like lbry and/or peertube. These platforms are in a catch 22, creators won't upload because there are no viewers, viewers won't watch because there is little content. Every new viewer and/or creator on a YT-competitor has quite a big impact in the long run. This is a perfect moment in time to motivate people to boycot YT.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

start using alternatives like lbry and/or peertube

Sure. But actively using YT without paying for Premium and blocking all the ads will affect them more, and if enough people do it, might actually catalyze it to go Twixxer levels of enshittification, which would be just as beneficial for growing the userbase of those alternatives with the side benefit of getting rid of one of the gatekeepers. Fediverse saw a huge growth in popularity following the recent enshittification of Reddit, after all. "Build it and they will come" has a corollary that goes "Destroy it and they'll go elsewhere" :)

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's not that creators won't upload because there are no viewers. It's because on other platforms there is no way to earn money. "Because there are no viewers" doesn't make sense, because it costs a creator literally nothing to upload a video multiple times, to more platforms, instead of only once, which would theoretically only increase their reach in total. However, creators want their viewers to watch on YouTube because that's where the money is earned.

[+] Shea@lemmy.world -10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Dude just watch the ads so people get paid... It's like a simple 30 seconds out of your day each time (AT THE WORST... Most ads are not that long and can be skipped). You're not automatically entitled to free content, the content is generally provided to you under the assumption that you will do your absolutely minimal part by watching an ad. This is such a disgusting attitude.

[–] Starshader@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

You're part of the problem.

[–] Shurimal@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Dude just watch the ads so people get paid…

I don't care. Hypothetical incomes of other people are not my problem or obligation. Next you'll be saying I must eat at restaurants at least three days a week and attend all concerts and drama plays in my town because otherwise people don't get paid.

You’re not automatically entitled to free content

Correct. First I need to manually set up my tools, and then these tools get me free content automatically. But I don't care about entitlement; it's a spook. It's all down to risk-benefit. The risk of blocking youtube ads is basically nil, but I benefit by wasting less time and not having loud, imbecile and completely irrelevant audio-visual crap annoying me. I also pirate all my music, movies and shows. Because I don't care. I like free stuff. Copyright is a spook, anyway.