I can't remember what channel, but somebody did an experiment with not doing the ridiculous thumbnails and got way fewer views. Which sort of gets at the point of this article: the are huge swaths of people that are clicking on them and that sounds super foreign to a lot of us.

That seems to be the only kind of trash content that Google is interested in pushing these days.

Youtube "pushes" whatever gets more views and longer watch time.

If trashy crap is being suggested, that means other people are watching it in increased numbers.

Google pushes what you click. Stop watching this kind of content and it'll probably stop being recommended to you