They've also dramatically increased the proportion and intrusiveness of those ads over the last year, taking advantage of a near-monopoly position and a captive audience.
Agreed.
But they didn’t do this until after providing you with the option to pay for ad-free.
If ads bother you that much really, just put up and pay for it. Your problem will be solved across all your machines, devices, phones, tablets and TVs in less than a minute.
A better solution is to move away from YouTube, if at all possible.
To find out about Premium I have to go to my channel-> Purchases and memberships->Read More
I could buy the search monopoly position, but not video.