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Try to turn off YouTube watch history.

You get no feed at all. It’s marvelous.

I blocked them from my suggestions page with ublock origin

Yeah but that doesn’t work in the app, or does it?

It doesn't. I "worked around" that by setting a 5 minute daily timer for youtube on my phone - just enough to mark a few regular videos as "Watch Later". Gives me an incentive to scroll past the shorts.

I'm on Android and I use "one sec" with "In app distractions" enabled for YouTube. no idea how it works but when I click on the shorts tab or any shorts in my feed (in the app, not website), it immediately gets blocked by a heroic looking polar bear saying "No shorts for you!". I believe it can block some other in app stuff like reels in instagram as well

I suggest to use the browser even on phones and tablets. Once you get used to YouTube with extensions you realise how aggressive and enshittified the app is