is adsense still a 'good' way to get some passive $$$?

Well, we both know that isn't true, but I'll answer it for you.

Your question, based on the grammar, is this:

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't use an adblocker on YouTube?

Get ready for the answer, Brent:

There are indeed people who don't use adbockers on YouTube.

I hope that helps, matey.

- Tom

Opinions are mixed, mate.

I believe you're spot on with your thoughts on adblockers, but I sit on the other side of the fence with AdSense income. YouTube is by no means the perfect platform. As a creator on YouTube myself, I'd be the first to tell you that YouTube need to look after us far better. The biggest gripe I have is with transparency and timely information disclosure. We need to be told about upcoming infrastructure and policy changes much sooner than we are being told at present. We can then reshape our approach accordingly. The best example I can give you are the policy changes that came into effect after Adpocalypse One.

But here's the thing. I know of no other platform that looks after their creators better than YouTube. It doesn't look after us well enough but (I say again) it does look after us better than anywhere else. You've had an exodus of many gaming creators leaving YouTube for Twitch or incorporating Twitch into their business model. IMO, the sensible creators stick with YouTube. Fact is, YouTube need us to earn money. And they need us earning money better than anywhere else. The strength of YouTube is entirely the creators behind it, and YouTube know this. In the last 24 months, especially, we've seen a decline in average creator income, and this is entirely in response to making YouTube work better - IMO. It needs to work for advertisers just as well as for creators and viewers and it hasn't been doing, and still isn't.

Don't take my word for it, though. Just look at your own favourite influencers on YouTube. Yes, many of them complain, but - they're still on YouTube. 2018 is going to be one hell of a year to be a creator. Never before has YouTube had such nose-to-nose competition. Amazon want market share. Twitch want it. Facebook want it. IG want it. From a creator perspective, this is going to mean only good things. Namely: you should be seeing far more love from YouTube. To hold their market share and to grow, they're going to embrace the creator stronger than ever before. The last thing they want or need right now is an exodus of influencers. It almost happened over Adpocalypse One and Two. They won't be letting it happen, IMO. We're also seeing infrastructure changes in regards monetization - positive ones. At a guess, I would say "sponsorship" will become widespread in 2018, phasing out the use of Patreon.

Overall: if you earn from AdSense, then YT is the place to be, as far as I'm concerned. As I say, though, opinions are mixed. It's important to keep in mind that creators have always been very vocal about income on YouTube (as we should be) so it's a hot topic and I don't know anyone who's 100% happy. It's also a good topic to grab traffic.
From where I sit: we're a great deal happier on YT than elsewhere.

BTW: I've seen your videos. You're a natural.

- Tom

Going from memory here...sometimes a scary proposition.

Seems as if it was somewhere in the early 2000s. I lost my Adsense account in 2006, and it had already happened.

Slightly off-topic...

Last time I looked, G's webmaster guidelines had a section telling people to report sites violating the guidelines.

If you use Adsense, don't do it.

I reported several sites that were scraping my content and republishing it without attribution or permission. Turns out that all of them were owned by the same syndicate. Since it wasn't hard to figure out that the sites they lost were the ones with my content, they proceeded to click-bomb my sites out of existence.

How do I know?

I went through the entire appeals process and then went through several layers of support on the phone until one of them finally shared the reason. When I asked to have my account reinstated, I was told that even though I had done nothing wrong, I still represented a risk to advertisers and my account would remain suspended.

Since the split dropped CPC payouts dramatically, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I have no doubt that there are still keyword groups that pay well, but they are hardly a secret. (The article I linked gives a list of the highest CPC keywords.) Therefore, they have a lot more competition. Add in G's increased ability to determine the nature of entire sites, and adding a page about one of the big class action lawsuits or DUI lawyers to your knitting blog doesn't really work anymore.