I'm trying very, VERY hard to pound the correct knowledge into my brain to be able to switch my freelance business services away from Google to something like Proton Unlimited.

Leaving the Google ecosystem will literally make me lose work, but man, this shit has gotta stop

Jokes on them, I already watch videos at 0.5x

I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can't be skipped

Thats a good one for 0.5x (soup store)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fNcYtcVn-8k

it already happened, it takes few seconds to star the video, a popup comes upa nd says, "whats slowing your video down"

i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.

i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).

Maybe people will start torrenting youtube rips if they somehow manage to kill ad blockers.

That's probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.

The problem is, nothing short of NA and EU governmental intervention will force Google to stop being such a nefarious, monopolistic, antitrust piece of shit. They're just so utterly ubiquitous for Western businesses. You cannot have a small business* and hope to be successful without partaking in either Google or Facebook/Meta's ad services. TikTok was becoming a huge threat to both those companies and look how viciously they were attacked.

The whole thing is beyond fucked, man. Kudos to you for trying to break free for your business, but I feel like you'll just be fucking yourself in the long run.

Edit in advance: I should clarify that there will of course be exceptions where a small business can be successful just fine without advertising, but for those that rely on being discovered on a larger scale versus purely local, it is essential.

Any recommendations?

If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).

Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.

Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.

i added 2-3 other adblockers

Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.

Using uBO, but have noticed a slightly longer delay of a few seconds between hitting play and the video starting, but I can deal with that over being forced to watch 30s of ads.

Yep, lol. Same mindset here. Although I doubt YouTube will ever do a hard cut on piracy. That would lead to a major decline in viewership and wouldn't look good to shareholders.

Relevent Username: If you went to Tau Zero, you can finish watching every youtube video in mere moments from your point of view

I mean, when I want to watch TV or Movies, I load it into my torrent program ‍️ and let it download in the background. I could do the same with youtube videos.

Yeah, I download whatever I want to watch and fire up vlc. 0 ads, 0 buffering.

Oh they already do as of this week. But I am sure it‘s only temporary like last time and even then it‘s better than being served an ad. Google won‘t win this feud.