So the article.claims that Youtube's plan backfired because uninstall rates on some AD blockers increased and a percentage of those users cited "YouTube" as the reason.

I don't know if it's just me but that's a massive stretch. I would like to hear numbers from YouTube themselves before jumping to any conclusions. These companies operate on scale and usually have enough data to back these decisions. Can it go wrong, sure. Has it already backfired. Not sure.