Users in at least seven countries are now receiving an email about the increase. YouTube started a massive campaign against ad blockers, preventing those...
Good luck. Itโs been three days for me and itโs insufferable using it with ads. Iโm not even actively looking through the app, just coming across videos for work and personal projects and Iโm already fed up.
For Android, LibreTube seems to be the best solution. You can also try NewPipe. On desktop, you can use FreeTube and if you want a reliable ad-blocking solution, it's best to switch to a browser that actually supports proper adblockers. MV2, the API used to block ads is not available in Chrome or Chromium-based browsers, so if you want proper adblocking, use Firefox or LibreWolf with uBlock Origin. Alternative frontends for YouTube like Piped or Invidious are also an option, you can use them in combination with LibRedirect to automatically redirect any YouTube link to the frontend of your choice.
It requires the proprietary YouTube app that collects all of your data whereas all the apps and services I listed are free and open source as well as privacy-respecting.