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If i am correct, YouTube is trying to say "If you don't watch the ads, you are harming the poor, small content creators!"

Maybe, but that doesn't matter for this case. This is specifically about the view count, not whether you see the ads. But I've seen this was in the meanwhile merged with another thread, which is about the statement(?) from YouTube.

> YouTube can track what you watch anyway.

If YouTube could track what you watch anyway, they would have no trouble incrementing their view counter. But apparently that's an unsolved problem of computer science, so they were using something ad blockers and privacy extensions could block.

Requests that have no benefit for the user need to be blocked on that premise alone. Do your tracking whatever nonsense on your own computing, thanks very much.