How to get WordPress to ignore the search parameter in the frontend?

How to get WordPress to ignore the search parameter in the frontend?

What you can try, is hooking in earlier, to remove the public search query variable, like (untested):

add_filter( 'request', function( $qv ) {
    if ( ! is_admin() && isset ( $qv['s'] ) ) {
        unset( $qv['s'] );
    }
    return $qv;
} );

We are here hooking into WP::parse_request() where query variables are first registered into WordPress from GET/POST request parameters.

I can also unset the query string variable s using the parse_query
hook. This then loads search results as if the search was for an empty
string.

Note that query variables are restored soon after the pre_get_posts hook runs, in case they were unset:

// Fill again in case 'pre_get_posts' unset some vars.
$q = $this->fill_query_vars( $q );

https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/6.5/src/wp-includes/class-wp-query.php#L1887