No, there was an extremely quick and obvious drop-off in quality that is not excused by "vertical short video has different dynamics"

Before the change my shorts feed roughly aligned with my main homepage feed (which has also gotten worse since they made the dislike button a placebo there). After, it's mostly AI voiceovers reading out Reddit or Twitter comments about life situations, placed over Minecraft gameplay. This is probably a convergent point in the algorithm as you said but it's also extremely relevant that I have no way to tell it "stop that"