While the company stops short of directly saying as much, it sure feels like the preposterously long ads we’re seeing here are an example of one tool in Google’s arsenal for effectively disabling YouTube playback for violators of the site’s ToS.

That makes no sense at all. It isn’t like skipping ads results in a black screen for the length of the ad.

People with adblockers aren’t going to see hour long ads or black screens when they don’t see ads in the first place.