Youtube gets way too little blame for radicalizing a large chunk of angry/confused people imo. I watched a video one time that I guess was alt-right-adjacent. Youtube immediately started recommending more hardcore basically racist content intended to induce more anger - leading my right down the rabbit hole if I wanted to go. I had to train it to stop doing that.

Instagram seems to have done the same thing for a bunch of people in the wellness community - pulling them some of them down into the Q-rabbit hole.

I truly despise the algorithms and blame them for most of the problem.

You can easily opt out of this. Turn off watch history and search history, then you'll have recommendations related to your subscriptions, not what you watch. I've been doing this for over a decade now.

Thank you for this; I've done similar on other sites but hadn't considered YouTube.

To solve this, I avoid using YouTube for discovering new videos because I don't believe the recommendation system has my interests in mind (e.g. spending my time more enjoyably). I've installed a free browser add-on to hide all YouTube recommendations in the sidebar (Distraction Free YouTube for Firefox).

It's more than an annoyance, they are clearly pushing an agenda.

I don't think so, those banners are pure virtue signal. An attempt to look good to the market they've determined is the most profitable to align with.

If they were actually trying to change minds, they have so many better tools than an annoying banner that only makes you dig in harder on whatever you already believed.

Aren't they 'virtue signaling' by pushing a 'virtuous' agenda? These don't seem mutually exclusive to me.

Yeah, maybe I should have said "promoting" an agenda rather than pushing, for whatever difference it makes. Virtue signaling is the motivation, I agree. Nobody at YouTube knows anything about virology or vaccinations, nor do the vast majority of the celebrity creators of most of the videos they are promoting under that particular banner.

"Google FUNDED virus research carried out by Wuhan-linked scientist Peter Daszak for over a decade, new report reveals, amid accusations Big Tech has silenced COVID lab leak theory"

If this is true now you know why Google has pushed so hard on controlling any information around it.