Yeah the 'not being able to turn off shorts' is such a brazen, anti-user form of enshitification. Alongside not being able to hide threads in Instragram (can only hide for 30 days), and so many other examples. Like there is enough demand for this that there are literally browser extensions to block shorts.

I can see why youtube don't want you to disable; because shorts are "addictive" in a certain moorish way and letting you disable would lesson your expected youtube use time.

But it's such a wierd choice on a certain level right. Like "lets make our product objectively worse for users because (in the short term?) we'll make more money". It's the sort of choice that does't really exist in the "real" "normal" economy. Like you bake some bread, you wanna make it as good as possible, I buy it from you because you make good bread.

So anyway I get why they do it. I'm just a little surprised that in their calculations the gains to engagement from forcing shorts are worth the loss of user goodwill. And even like employee morale right. Like how would you feel about your job if you're having to do this stuff, deliberately and explicitly curtailing the choices of your users.

But yes I agree the content is great.