I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:
hide Shorts
hide For You
hide Trending
hide 'People Also Searched For'
hide Search Categories
hide Promoted Videos
hide Promoted Websites
hide Suggested Products
Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It's literally a short, yet it's inserted like a video so you're forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you've watched and start inserting shit based off that.
Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities... "just let me stick it in"
My three biggest problems with YouTube are:
It sucks on desktops/laptops with bigger UI scaling enabled, some stuff just doesn't fit.
The search function on YouTube is useless and completely broken. Instead of searching normally it:
Repeats same results multiple times;
Display unrelated Shorts nobody asked for;
Instead of displaying relevant results it shows stuff you have already watched or picked by YouTube algorithm.
You can't skip sponsored segments with YouTube Premium. You need SponsorBlock browser extension for that.
I wouldn't dream of paying for premium unless they added an official version of sponsorblock across desktop and mobile. The fact that you can get more out of YouTube with a free client is laughable.
You're pretty much just throwing away money if you pay for premium.