I have an extension that can individually disable all the most useless/addicting components of the Youtube site, such as shorts and whatnot. On the search page, I have turned on:
hide Shorts
hide For You
hide Trending
hide 'People Also Searched For'
hide Search Categories
hide Promoted Videos
hide Promoted Websites
hide Suggested Products
Do you know what Youtube has started doing? They are now inserting engagement slop DIRECTLY into the search results, as seen in the image above. It's literally a short, yet it's inserted like a video so you're forced to see it. The only possible way to remove it is by using a privacy frontend, as even on incognito mode, Youtube will look at the three videos you've watched and start inserting shit based off that.
Louis Rossman is right, they all have rapist mentalities... "just let me stick it in"
Here's an extension which turns YouTube into an Invidious-like site, removing all addicting elements.
If you're using Linux, I wrote the youtube-tui a few years back, very similar to the extension where you get nothing but the search bar and subscriptions.
Holy shit this is incredible. I have wanted a way to permanently hide shorts forever, thanks for sharing. Also it's actually recommended by Mozilla which means it has active security audits on it, impressive.