I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:
hide Shorts
hide For You
hide Trending
hide 'People Also Searched For'
hide Search Categories
hide Promoted Videos
hide Promoted Websites
hide Suggested Products
Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It's literally a short, yet it's inserted like a video so you're forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you've watched and start inserting shit based off that.
Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities... "just let me stick it in"
The problem is no other platform has that much content. Looking for an obscure scene from an old tv show? It's probably on YouTube. Wanna know more about Brigitte Bardot's career? Someone has a nice channel about her. The fact that the platform sucks amd his own by effing google doesn't change that there is just so much great niche content to be discovered. Hopefully we'll have a fully working foss alternative soon enough. I'll gladly pay for that if the money goes back to creators.