I really had no fucking clue how bad it’s gotten and had heard people complain. I went on my partners apple tv to show a cool youtube video I thought they would be interested in. 30 min video, Ads every few minutes, no skips (shows skip in: but it’s literally the entire length of the ad), multiple ads every break, and if you’re not sitting on the button you’re about to watch a 90second to 5 minute ad.
I personally grew up on local broadcast and cable tv, Youtube is so much worse now and way less regulated. At least local advertisers and customers got something out of it. I think it’s about time to permanently ditch youtube, plenty of the creators I watch have alternative ways to view now. Just like Reddit, I think I’m ready to move on because of how the company truly is regardless of my hyper-customized way of viewing it. There will be niche resources that will still exist on those platforms (from creators mind you), but the company shouldn’t get my leisure and entertainment time with how they treat their casual viewers.
Local broadcast and cable TV were already bad, but their ad breaks - at least here in germany - were generally less than 5 Minutes and they only appeared every 15-20 minutes. It was annoying, but at least you had a reasonable time to actually watch some content, before it got interupted by a 5 Minute ad-break, that allowed you to go to the toilet or fridge or whatever.
Ad-breaks on youtube videos now appear so frequently, that it cuts the actual content into short-form content that is often less than 2 Minutes long. On the video I mentioned above, it took youtube exactly 1:38 minutes of actual content before it showed me the first ad. If I wanted to watch youtube shorts, i’d watch youtube shorts, I am not interested in having long form content cut into short-form throw-away content, seemingly at random points in the video, often mid-sentence.