I’m under the impression that Google deliberately hinders their YouTube platform just because you have ad-blockers. With videos taking time to buffer, seems to signal this, because it almost makes up nearly the amount of time for when ads take if you had to watch them. So since you’re ad-blocking and they don’t like that, they’ll make your experience miserable until you want to pay their service or not use ad-block.
I forgot the exact quote, but the gist was that wealthy people don’t need to actively collude, because their interests naturally align: Lower taxes, less oversight, less restrictions what to do with their wealth, undermine any effort that might threaten existing power structures.
That also explains why they naturally seem to support authoritarianism and facism, because those systems offer exactly that.