FMHY (as well as most other instances) isn't federated with lemmygrad. See https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/instances

At least for me, and as far as I know, Pihole doesn't block YouTube ads. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I'd love a network-level solution. Currently just have uBlock Origin for blocking YT ads.

Not sure about the pearl-clutching aspect, but Novel AI maybe seems more suited to your use case