> You'd think they'd want to notice that I _absolutely never_ watch shorts, and stop showing them to me, instead recommending something else.

Oh they've noticed, and they just haven't found the right recco just yet to get you to watch. Bear with them, as they will eventually find you something. Even if it is just a video you would normally watched cropped to format.

Shorts are treated as a privileged feature; they aren't going to simply hide them just because a few of us have the unmitigated gall not to watch them. That's not to their benefit. Youtube and the other platforms want to manipulate users into getting on that particular hamster wheel, and the app's UX reflects that. In that, it's not dissimilar to how streaming services routinely prioritize engagement maximization over user experience. If it takes you a few more clicks to find your continue watching list, that's your problem.

I'd be surprised if the algorithms have much say on when and where shorts show up in your feed versus just inserting them into specific spots in your feed that were determined by a whole lot of user testing to see what's most effective. There might be some logic to tweak it, but overall placement is probably fairly uniform across users.

I would expect (but cannot prove) that these hostile patterns decrease engagement on the individual level.

But maybe the effort to cater to people who avoid this stuff isn't worth it, or maybe they find it doesn't really discourage us from finding what we want, or the value of this stuff is so high that they find a sufficient number of converts over time.

At some time you watch one (maybe by mistake,) and then they gotcha.

They are playing the long game.

You gotta try though. Just one hit. Listen. Next time you buy weed from me I’ll throw in just a few fentys for free. You gotta try it, man.