Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much do you use YouTube? Because as a fairly substantial user, this doesn't match my experience at all. When I wasn't watching Shorts they were present but not in-your-face. Search pretty much always returns exactly what I'm looking for, there's no clickbait except for the low level of clickbait that the channels I like use... I pay not to have ads, but that's about it. Honestly, I really enjoy it. The app could…
My experience is much closer to parent than yours, and I don't use any third party app. Yes, I have paid. And no, I'm not "just a sufficiently light user". That's pretty dismissive actually. The official app sucks, and the desperate Shorts push is annoying at best. Shorts are injected into the search, and search is otherwise as bad as discussed. On the bottom menu/bar, the five things are "Home", "Shorts", the plus/c…
Apologies, certainly not intentional. I've just observed users in the past who just don't use the product much and as a result have recommendations that are much closer to what I see when I open YouTube in an incognito tab with no history.
This is all fair criticism. I do (now) use Shorts, although I resisted for a long time. I actually get very different videos on Shorts to my regular watching, and it found what I wanted pretty quickly.
I get that the weight of the app judging by the nav bar is partially shorts and uploading, but home/subs/profile would I think be valuable to you? They certainly are to me (for playlists/downloads access in profile for example). And then many other users do use Shorts and uploading, so this doesn't feel too out of balance. Instagram having a "shop" tab, or WhatsApp having an "updates" tab are similarly of little use to me, but I understand why the products have them and don't begrudge there being users who use the product in different ways.