Yep.
On paper she's about as incompatible with the south as you could get apart from that. A liberal WASP that never practices religion (a WAS?). I used her as an example because I think she represents the relative indifference of much of US society on these matters. Politics starts and ends on election day; thinking about the South as a political entity and how their culture and political identities are tightly linked is anathema to her. It's just getting too involved. Whereas she always hears how nice the people there are, and her books reinforce that idea, so it must be a wonderful place.
That's about the level of thought most people will put into it. "I heard they're nice; the media I consume broadly comports that. Therefor I don't hate the place." Younger, online generations that are in discussions like this are atypical.
I support making OP's opinion a popular one, I wholeheartedly agree with it. I just suspect that it actually is unpopular overall (not on Lemmy.)
That really depends on what their goal is.
From a business perspective it's not worth fighting to eliminate 100% of ad block uses. The investment is too high. But if they can eliminate 50% or 70% or 90% of ad block uses with youtube? That could be worth the effort for them. If they can "win" for Chrome and make it a bit annoying for Firefox that would likely be enough for Google to declare it a huge success.
People willing to really dig all the way in to get a solution they desire are not the norm. Google can be OK with the 1% of us out there as long as we aren't also making it possible for another huge chunk of people to piggyback off it effortlessly.