It all checks out if you recognize YouTube clearly doesn't consider the app and the website to be your turf. You are in their home, they have oreos all over the place and they will offer it to you over and over again. You'll ask if they have water, they'll bring it with a box of oreos. You'll ask where the bathroom is, and find an Oreo waiting for you by the sink in case you'd like to indulge.

This is the correct model.

If you want your own home you can use something like Urbit.

Generally in the web as it is, we are all serfs on other people’s computers.

In my analogy, YouTube was the grocery store, not my home. I don't think of it as a place that I own, but a place that I go shopping for vegetables (educational long-form content). I already made the decision not to enter the candy store on the same block (TikTok), and while I accept that the grocery store sells candy too, I would find it intolerable for them to be following me around waving Oreos in my face as I browse the vegetable aisle, when I keep telling them I don't want Oreos because I'm on a diet. In fact they're the ones asking me if I want to see candy in the vegetable aisle and I keep telling them no.

I don't think it makes sense to say that they are forced by the market to do this to compete with the candy store, when they already know I don't want candy in the first place. Instead, this sort of annoying practice pushes me to leave and visit the organic market instead (Nebula).

I don't think "revealed preference" is the right explanation here either, because these kinds of settings preferences are tailored to an individual account, and I never click on Shorts and always select the "hide" dropdown, so the preference that I have revealed is one that is strongly disinterested in Shorts.

I think the correct explanation is that someone's KPI is attached to increasing Shorts viewership, and they're trying to earn their bonus, even if it's at a cost to the success of the organization as a whole.

They’re all fighting for the finite amount of attention - literally hours you are awake.

That’s a very competitive arena and while you and I may be health conscious - they’re fighting a trench war, you and I don’t matter.

>find an Oreo waiting for you by the sink in case you'd like to indulge.

this is a hilarious image. "ooh, don't mind if i do".

"Thanks, but I asked for heroin..."

> why can't I keep YouTube Shorts disabled?

> why would I go to a grocery store that insists on slipping a pack of Oreos into every third bag of carrots?

You can see how these are not analogous. The store _is_ slipping Oreos in your vegetables. So yeah… don’t install TikTok _or_ YouTube. I get that you’d rather YouTube to be YouTube-without-shorts, but it’s not a thing anymore, vegetables-without-Oreos is not an option at this grocery store

I think the thing they got wrong is it’s not a grocery store. It’s a casino - you can have a good time there, but the house isn’t interested in what’s best for you, but what’s best for them.

Even that’s imperfect because Zuck really was interested in the interactions he thought were best despite them not being highest engagement, but you can’t only do that and stay alive in a competitive market.