The word "want" is the key there -- they have zero interest in what you 'want' to watch, they have every interest in what will compel you to watch for the longest time! Maybe a certain person wants to watch a few 2-minute cute cat videos, and subscribe to those exclusively. But research showed Google that those people's watch minutes per day can be tripled if you fill their homepage with "Trump did WHAT?" videos (or whatever effectively baits their rage, makes them more afraid, or stokes some addiction or anxiety).

Short term yes, but long term it turns people away from YouTube.

A year ago, I had a serious YouTube habit, once I replaced my trash Jellyfin server with a Plex server I can listen to my music collection on my phone anywhere… so no more music from YouTube. I got tired of asmongold and all his imitator gaming YouTubers, fell out of the habit of watching Ukraine warbloggers, etc. I saw other people who got into toxic rabbit holes in YouTube so bad that they decided to physically destroy their computers…

Gambling has been around forever. Hyper aggressive slot machines do nothing to dissuade addicts, and dark patterns on the web are the same. They are trying to build addiction, and addiction doesn't care that something hurts to do, you need it.

The few of us who go "ew" and recoil are vastly outnumbered by the billions who just watch.

Every complaint about ads on youtube is someone who can't even be bothered to download an adblocker before Chrome killed it. It was one click, but that didn't dissuade the vast majority of eyeballs.

>Short term yes, but long term it turns people away from YouTube

for some people, like me, for example, it turns them away even in the short term, and also in the permanent term, so to speak ha ha, not only in/after the long term.

because, you know, we know our rights and likes. and we wrong and dislike people who disrespect them! :) choice of rhyming words used for effect, but the point is also true.

If they give you want you want you might just enjoy it and leave satisfied. They don't want you to leave, what you want is largely immaterial except as an input to the machine designed to brainwash you into staying.