But they don’t let you to entirely block them either but only to hide them for 30 days at a time.

I’ve been using this:

https://github.com/Vulpelo/hide-youtube-shorts

since YT started the “shorts” bullshit. Highly recommended if you are civilized person who is not OK with vertical videos.

They probably figured that shorts don’t generate as much as a video with an ad break every 2 minutes.

Can I set the timer to 0 seconds?

I wish they would just get rid of shorts all together. Vertical video shouldn’t exist.