You’re free to put ads and I’m free to not watch them. What the issue ?

How is blocking in-video apps stealing from creators? If the advertiser pays them per view, your view still counts. If they pay a commission per purchase, it doesn't matter if you skipped the ad if you wouldn't have bought the product anyway, and I doubt you buy every single advertised products to support creators.

I respect your stance. A couple counter points from personal experience: even if I can't skip the ads, I'm not paying attention - I immediately mute/tune out. And the ads are typically so obnoxious that the reflex to ignore/avoid is only magnified. Is that so different from having a mechanism to auto skip/mute?

Posting YouTube videos can just be a hobby - it was in the beginning, and that was fine. It's OK if posting a video isn't a profitable career path. Enthusiasts > "creators".

And in-video ads like these are even less defensible given that they still show up when people are paying YouTube (and creators by extension) to not display ads.

Out of the options "creators released content only behind paywalls", "users steal from creators", and "creators incentivised platforms to lobby to remove user freedom so users can't steal from creators", what actually happened was, by far, my least preferable option.