Being exposed to an ad is not a dark pattern IMO. And this particular pattern is IMO pretty dang obvious if you use YouTube much at all.
Someone has to pay for YouTube ... someone has to pay for this stuff. If it is ads that's it.
I think the issue involves two parties, the sites who want revenue, and the vast majority of users who want content for free. So yeah here we are on the web where most people want everything free.
In an alternate universe without this dark pattern, there would still be ads - they would just have a consistent design that allowed you to skip the skippable ones without any thought, or alternatively longer/unskippable ads.
The reason why Google doesn't just take a 15-second ad with a 5-second unskippable section and turn it into a 15-second unskippable ad is because people will get frustrated with Google/YouTube and leave.
The current system causes people to stay, and blame themselves for not skipping the ad - "I'm just being lazy, it's only a few extra seconds."
That is the dark pattern.
You still seem to be missing the point OP was making though. The dark pattern isn't that you can't skip the ad.
Help me out then, what is it?
It seems to treat the channel page as a playlist now, and for playlists it always autoplays.