It's not really the ads that bother me. It's the "recommended videos". Is there a way to customize my view of youtube to avoid the shit I don't need to see?
The thing about youtube is that it's very easy for propaganda/click-bait to creep in during moments of weakness.
Maybe it's time to go cold-turkey? Failing that, maybe it's worth it to try and take some control over the experience?
As a general solution for us techies, you can have user defined style sheets that selectively override the site's CSS, either using a plugin like Stylus, or Firefox's built-in userContent.css. Inspect the website, find the id name (or class if it is unique enough) for the content you want to go away and put the following in your user CSS.
#<id> {
display: hidden;
}