I've seen it do both. I remember the days when it shoved you towards literal Nazis, and then years later I got in a friendship-ending fight with somebody who was far more pilled than I had imagined. Among the wild stuff he was trying to tell me, was the idea that YouTube pushed people towards moderates, and he had a study that was fairly recent.

If this study was anything like accurate, then AT THE TIME it was pushing people very gently towards more moderate YouTubers, in a subtle way. My nazi-adjacent former friend was really upset about this.

Thing is, both he and I remembered and acknowledged the time when it was feeding people extremist views really noticeably. His problem was essentially that it had stopped. I guess my problem is: who stopped it, why, and when are they going to switch back to doing that again?