They don't make more money from showing you shorts once you've paid to remove the ads.

The default reason some feature doesn't exist is simply because no one bothered to make it. Maybe they don't think there's a big demand from their users to disable shorts completely.

I would wager some VP at YouTube in charge of shorts has their performance evaluations tied to how many hours of shorts are watched. So that's one incentive. Another is customer retention. Make current paying users addicted to shorts, and maybe they'll be more likely to keep paying.

I think you're basically right, but the comment I replied to was saying they'll somehow get more of that specific user's money. While the shorts may improve retention in aggregate, this particular paying customer doesn't want them.

What you want and what behaviors you may be induced toward via a nonstop campaign of unwanted UX changes are two different things.

When a pusher gives you some free drugs, they are not taking into account whether you want to be addicted to drugs. Not part of the business model.

It's possible that particular user, despite not wanting the shorts, will keep paying for YouTube for longer because they enjoy shorts. It's also possible that they genuinely don't like them and are less likely to keep paying because of them. People are different. What keeps some customers engaged can turn off others.

They can still use it to learn your preferences and tighten their profile of you for all the searching and other ad-enabled activities you take.

> The default reason some feature doesn't exist is simply because no one bothered to make it. Maybe they don't think there's a big demand from their users to disable shorts completely.

My guess is they know exactly what users are doing with the app and website, and know that people use shorts more often than we think.

This is one of their prime products, and they're Google, the biggest surveillance company on the planet. Of course they know how users interact with their service.

Yes, as you say, maybe there isn't a big demand to disable shorts completely.

They use your data to target ads at you elsewhere on the internet, improve their analytics platforms and give it to oppressive regimes. It also often ends up at shady data brokers.

They make all sorts of money doing that, but they get upset when people say Google is “selling” the data.