So it’s not the best analogy.

I don’t think that’s quite right. The act of changing the channel wouldn’t have impacted the station’s ad revenue because the tech couldn’t tell if the ad was served. On YouTube you actually deprive the site of ad revenue with an ad blocker. And if enough people do it, you could also deprive creators of material earnings.

GUIs are for chumps 😂 I watch all my YouTube videos as code in a terminal like the green text in the Matrix

Unix in the 90s must have been hardcore.