There's no external program, it's just an extension on my browser, which uses APIs within the browser to instruct it which content to load and which not to load. I tell it to block all kinds of things, from malware to large media elements to ads. YouTube doesn't get to decide what content it displays in my browser, I do, because it's my computer.

Yes, I'm preventing channels from getting ad-revenue, but that doesn't make it piracy. What we call "piracy" is more correctly called "copyright infringement." I'm not violating anyone's copyright, the video is freely available to load and watch, I'm just choosing to not load and watch the optional extras that get shipped along with the video. I'm violating YouTube's TOS, but that doesn't mean I'm violating copyright in any way, and I don't even need to login to YouTube to do this either, so it's not like I formally agreed to anything here.

What the channels want isn't my concern. If they want to enforce payment, LTT can post the videos to floatplane exclusively, or join up with Nebula.

Getting free content without paying the content maker is… piracy.

That's absolutely not true. Piracy is copyright infringement, and I'm not infringing anyone's copyright here.

Here are examples of things that would be piracy/copyright infringement:

• downloading the video and reposting it as my own
• downloading the video and uploading it to another site
• downloading the video and sending it to someone else

Each of those violates copyright because I'm sharing the video with people I am not authorized to share it with. Just watching the content and refusing to load the ads doesn't violate anyone's copyright, it just violates YouTube's TOS, which, AFAIK, isn't legally binding in any way. They can choose to block me from the platform, but not loading optional extras doesn't violate any copyright.