An ad loaded at the end of a video, so I paused it. What caught my eye was the background was moving when I moved my phone, which turned out to be the room I was in. The ad was overlayed on whatever my camera was looking at, but the ad appeared stretched from a single point in the middle of the screen, which was even weirder.
Edit: The ad was using the rear camera, not the front facing one.
I've looked through my phones settings and there are no options to toggle YouTube's camera access either, so I feel like it's safe to say this is being forced on users (surprise /s).
Needless to say, that app is no longer on any of my devices :)
use uYouEnhanced (it’s iOS only and on github). gotta build it yourself with your own decrypted youtube IPA. haven’t seen an ad in years because of it. it also includes sponsorblock and free downloads
due to apple’s stupid side loading policies, you gotta sideload this through a service like AltStore or Sideloadly so you can actually launch the app. i personally recommend sideloadly because they allow 1 more app to be signed than altstore, and they let you enable file permissions for apps you download
of course! i recommend downloading an older version of youtube by at least 2 builds (if the newest is 19.30, go for 19.28). i also recommend taking a while to go through all the settings. there are a ton of things you can tinker with to make youtube better
forgot to mention but because of apple’s stupid side loading policies, you gotta sideload this through a service like AltStore or Sideloadly so you can actually launch the app