Business goals trump good UX. Their executives have decided that you will like the TikTokification or else. Google is certainly more than capable of saving the state of a “close this” flag..
Whenever I click a Short, I am extremely annoyed. The scroll wheel is repurposed to skip the video, rather than the typical desktop interaction of going to the description and comments. When that happens, I close the tab and visit some place other than YouTube.
By the time the parent company realises there's no money to be made hosting endless amounts of stupid, repetitive and crappy content aimed at attention-deficient children, bonuses would've been paid and promotions would've been offered - the latter is what drives this crap, not necessarily some hypothetical bottom-line impact that's hard to measure and easy to excuse away should it not pan out.
Yet when you click into one and scroll through them, instead of showing you the other shorts on the recommended list, it shows you general trending shorts.
Always thought that was weird. In other words you have to click one, then navigate back and click into each other recommendation.
Why do you keep clicking it?
By design, it's hard to avoid them entirely.
So in those cases you want them to be there?
At least, I hope it does.
E: You'd think Google's money would be most effectively spent trying to manipulate that outcome though.
It won't, because the primary rationale for banning TikTok in the US is driven by the CCP-related fear-mongering (whether it is justified or not is a separate question), with a little dash of other common "scary" flavors mixed-in (privacy, algorithms shaping your feed, etc.).
As long as YT/IG/Snapchat aren't companies based in China, the hypothetical banhammer hitting TikTok won't even touch them.
(please note the use of the word "ostensibly" as a caveat before you try to remind me about The Twitter Files)
I've seen arguments that instead of targeting TikTok specifically, we should create a nationwide law similar to GDPR or CCPA, which would also impact other social media.
I tend to agree with this stance, though I don't see it being likely to go through unfortunately.
They are not that shortsighted.
I think the GP might be alluding to:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
With the new generation of devs I'm not too sure anymore.
Which they might do if people could actually make them.