I work in tech and constantly feel like moving into a forest without internet connection for these reasons.
My main app of choice is YouTube and it's just astonishing how much amazing educational content there is on the app.
MIT OpenCourseware, 3Blue1Brown, PBS Eons, SmarterEveryDay, ... and I could go on and on....
DESPITE THIS, their recommendations and the YouTube search has gotten so unbelievably terrible over the past few years that it's just becoming unusable.
Their recommendations have nothing to do with the channels I'm subscribed to, instead it's so much goddamn crap with click-bait titles/thumbnails (because one of the biggest factors for the YouTube Rec. Algorithm is thumbnail click-through-rate).
For YouTube search, if you search for "schlieffen plan", then sure the first 3-4 recommendations will be based on what you searched. BUT after that, the fucking recommendations have nothing to do with your search query... instead it'll just be completely random stuff that the YouTube algorithm thinks you might click on.
It's gotten completely unusable with YouTube shorts now because they're trying to shove that shit down the throat of their users (99% of the YouTube shorts are complete fucking garbage).
It's really a shame because there's so much amazing content that's been uploaded to the YouTube platform, but the idiots in charge of the company are completely ruining the app... especially over the past few years.
If I find it I will link it, but here's an article in a similar vein: https://www.psychalive.org/worst-mental-health-instagram-fac...
So yes, the search is obviously geared towards engagement. But not at the cost of mental health.
Even the median length was similar, around 30 seconds, and the video responses feature for replying to one video with another certainly looks familiar. We can look back at exactly how it was in the Wayback Machine: here's a random snapshot of the 'Most Recent' page from 2006.[1] Remember the stereotypical TikTok feed full of dancing girls?
We can't get the past internet back, of course, but this realization really made me see TikTok in a different way. (though YouTube's propensity for recommending decade-old videos ought to be noted with regard to this--a social media site willing to show you some of its oldest content, that's rare!)
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060612075750/http://www.youtub...