Do they not have a little sponsor skip thing? Where like if many people skip a segment, itll pop up like hey, wanna skip? I mean, thats about all they can do besides forcing youtubers to disclose exact segment lengths which would concretely hurt them whereas this provides a little sort of breathing room, or just straight up ban them, both of which would dramatically hurt the platform.

I understand they have an opt-out feature now. With positive interaction one can skip one sponsored segment (which works most of the time). The problem is that it's not automated. It required digging one's phone out of their pocket, or reaching for the remote. That's still really annoying. To point: it's still full of ads, even if they have the skip button now.

YouTube could tell content creators not to include sponsorships. The terms are long and onerous. Of course content creators would be upset and they would make less money. Ultimately my issue is that YouTube advertises an ad free experience with Premium and it still has a LOT of ads.

YouTube Premium now has "skip ahead" which is basically this. Or you can install SponsorBlock and get a much better version for free.