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"
Out of those I mentioned, Newpipe was actually my favourite (LibreTube felt too beta, only used it for a week at most) and I've used it for years. Vanced was great too. But there's always something, like what happened to Vanced for example. I don't know, I felt like I was spending way too much time installing third party apps, trying to get them to work properly after Google's endless shenanigans. Paying them is more convenient / less time consuming.