If they really want to prevent us from watching videos without ads, they can. They know of the ad is watched or not, we can have some kind of auto-mute-during-ad but that's it.

Question is if they will kill network effect with it.

I have already drastically reducedy yt watching because of too many sponsors... watching two minutes of sponsored material, plus two ads just to see that I don't even wanna watch the stupid video is too much.

Not to mention those laud ads in the middle of relaxing and quiet video... few months ago one ad was starting with screaming, that's when I said no way.