There's an add-on called sponsor block, which works remarkably well, that will just skip sponsored ads inside videos.

Depends on the Premium tier.

But yes, uBlock and Sponsorblock together do a much better job of removing the ads.

There's also a button to skip commonly skipped sections - basically sponsor skip.

SponsorBlock will help you to get rid of those!

It depends on the Premium tier.

I pay for YouTube premium, it absolutely removes YouTube-placed ads. Creators also get a kickback when premium users watch their videos, as they don’t make money off the YouTube ads anymore.

I wish it would also remove YouTube's internal advertising. I pay for YouTube Premium, but I can't permanently hide shorts or prevent it from popping up whatever random topic they want me to engage with. Every 30 days or so, I have to click "Show Fewer Shorts" and every week or two, I have to opt out of the topic du jour, and I have to do this separately on every device.

I asked kagi’s llm for a recipe on theater quality popcorn (which I do all the time), and it gave the basic recipe (though it suggested butter, when clarified butter is superior in my opinion) with a list of tips. I’ve been having trouble with unpopped kernels (maybe a few dozen per batch), and one of the tips pointed to an excellent tutorial on avoiding unpopped / burnt kernels:

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_popcorn/

This took me far less time than watching YouTube videos, since that’s one of 5 references the LLM summary included, and the other 4 are information I didn’t need.

Youtube premium can look very different between places/people. Many with premium still see them. Youtube seems to be testing various markets to see how many ads it takes before people cancel their subscriptions. Also, you have to accept google cookies and such for them to identify you as a subscriber, so many privacy-focused users will see ads regardless of premium subscriptions.

Sponsorblock is a god send. It automates all that

Sure, that would have been one honest option. Dumping an artificially free option into the market crowded out other options from being adopted or even developed.