This is not intended, I'm almost certain. Go you youtube.com and it'll play unmuted. I have an ad blocker and can't see the video but I still hear the audio.

"we did a/b testing and found autoplay ads prevented all the intelligent voters from participating in the voting process"

In what interface of YouTube ads can you buy this obnoxiousness? Or is this more pandering to avoid antitrust litigation?

I'm not seeing it. I'm running uBlock Origin w/ Firefox.