> I don't think it's on my to find a better implementation for YouTube, but with all the smart engineers they have access to, I would think they could come up with something less intrusive.

So you don't even have any idea what a better implementation might look like, not even a completely technically infeasible one? And the thousands of smart YouTube engineers, whose jobs revolve around making access to content frictionless to the point of being accused of making it addictive, just haven't thought "we should make this not suck?"