Its not free. They harvest your data and sell that. Ad revenue is secondary. And all of this is ran by the most powerful company in history. Adblock doesnt even put a dent in Google's profits. And content creators? Ad revenue is basically dead now that YT is pushing for child friendly content. And they make millions in corporate deals and have patreons and direct donations in addition to being able to work a stable job in addition to making videos.

This isnt being "owed" anything. Im already paying with my privacy.

And even if I wasnt already paying, fuck Google. Evil company that more than deserves loosing the $0.02 my ad viewership would have earned.

Also highly recommend setting up Invidious. Having a self hosted youtube frontend with built in youtube-dl and 0 ads has been a game changer

Do you have any idea the amount of money they get from data harvesting your usage?

They are tripple dipping and acting like a niche browser extension is enough to have an effect on the most powerful company in history.