if they outright forced us to stop day one there’d be outrage, so they instead ease us in. first a popup, then a timed popup, slowly leading to their actual goal but without the risk of an initial outrage. i know this is an extreme comparison but we’re like lambs to a slaughter

At some point YouTube kind of block your account with the message instead of the video.
Honestly haven’t had that issue at all yet. If that happens, this userscript can be a solution (with something like grease monkey) https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477725-youtube-iframe-adblocker. Using NoScript to turn off JS should also work. As a last resort you can use a script that redirects YouTube videos to invidious or some other alternative.