I see it from both sides. I love browsing youtube and finding relevant suggestions, I can kill hours of time clicking and watching. However I sometimes feel like a victim of some kind of manipulation. Youtube has incredible power to persuade you down certain paths (in the pursuit of maximizing # of views).

I think there is a difference here compared to other platforms: they slowly nudge you down paths of interest and you willingly oblige in watching it. And if you have lost interest in a subject, don't worry, it will pop up on your home page sooner or later, dangling it above your head "still interested? come over here, click on me!".

Sure I paint a sinister picture, perhaps it is exaggerated, but I truly believe that google knows more about me than everyone that I know personally, and maybe even myself. That is scary. If they combines all this information across their platforms, they are in possession of an incredibly accurate profile of myself. If they use this profile to suggest videos, I suppose it may not be as harmful as I have stated, but what if they were to use it for other purposes in the future? This is my greatest fear.

Same.

There is this pessimist view that Google is evil.

In my life, Google is the single best entity I'm aware of. Incredible amounts of free stuff that makes my life better.

Any addiction to their platform has been due to bliss.

Well, it catches people in thought-bubbles.

For one, it lowers their intellectual curiosity and makes them lazy consumers in a feedback loop of their current preferences...

Second, it always adds an algorithmic/editorial spin on the suggestion, so it's worse than them picking things up for themselves...