This doesn’t seem geo related as most people I was speaking about share the same country and we’re all tech people so more or less similar setups an abilities do get around things.

Btw, just so you know, today after updating ublock and whatnot I get a new situation, the youtube popup doesn’t appear anymore however the ads play with sound only / no video.

if they’re using clever and calculated deception to divide people and make helping each other out difficult someone needs to analyze and document exactly how it’s being done.

Sounds like Google doesn’t it? :P

What I see with this is that Google might eventually lose more with this new policies than just leaving things as they were. Lets be real, if this shit show continues I guess I’ll just move to an alternative frontend such as Piped or Invidious and they their ability to harvest data and forced ads will be considerably restricted.