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"
Louis Rossman is my Alex Jones. He's angry, compelling, and talking about something that makes him seen like a conspiracy theorist to normies. Unlike Jones, though, he's usually right (if not always, I haven't fact checked everything he's ever said). It's extremely cathartic to see someone use such extreme rhetoric to talk about privacy and software ownership and right to repair; e.g. it's not "advertiser's entitlement," it's "rapist mentality."
Ironically, youtube's inability to completely differentiate between people at the same IP has accidentally gotten my non-techie roommate into him too. I never shared his videos with her, never said anything about him, and one day I hear his voice as she browses the web. I'm so proud of her.
My least favorite thing about the "engagement friendly" slop in youtube's search results is that it takes up HALF of the results. Because clearly what I expect from SEARCHING for something is to dredge up a bunch of shit that ranges from tangentially related to completely unrelated.
For example, I too just searched a song. Let's see how that went:
7 results
4 "people also watched" videos
5 results
2 "More from [band name]" videos
2 results
3 "people also searched for" suggestions
2 results
3 "For you" vids (IS IT THE FUVKING SEARCH RESULTS I ASKED FOR???? BECAUSE IF NOT, IT'S NOT REALLY "FOR ME," IS IT?)
2 Results
3 "From related searches"
2 results
That's 20 results to 15 irrelevant pieces of ADHD triggering visual clutter. Luckily the results were actually relevant, unlike whatever you're getting.
To all the commenters saying "I have X, I don't have this problem": I have adblock, I don't have this problem, YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT:
YOUTUBE SEARCH IS BROKEN BY DEFAULT. The largest video sharing site on the internet is BROKEN BY DEFAULT. It shouldn't require extra software to function properly when functioning properly requires less work on the server's side
It's not that it's broken by default, it's that it's broken deliberately. They don't want you to just be able to find what you need and then leave, because that's the civilized way of doing things, and they are GREEDY FUCKING BARBARIANS.
Deliberately broken by default?
Broken As Designed is generally broken by default, yes.