I've been saying it for months now: note the language on the YouTube ad-blocker messages.
It's not "Please turn off ad blockers", it's "Ad-blockers are not allowed".
They're not asking, they're not being polite, they're not trying to coax you, or imply the site won't work if you leave the ad-blockers on.
They're drawing a line. They're telling you, from this point forward, they are the authority and they are declaring ad-blockers as verboten.
That language is extremely telling, and it signals a very troubling future for the web, because the rest of the internet is going to follow their lead on this. As soon as Google provides them the means to enforce this authority, they will.
Correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm a bit tired for parsing through the deliberately opaque wall of legalese and buzzword bullshit, but is this android api basically their way of killing YouTube frontends such as NewPipe, SmartTube and LibreTube to force their dystopian adscape on all of us again?