Thank you Google for breaking my YouTube addiction

What did it for me was disabling my history (a setting). Consequently your YT homepage is blank and it doesn’t suggest any shorts. You can maintain a kind of history by liking videos or just via the browser itself.

You still get shorts in search results :(

Their changes are so bad that someone made a browser extension to jump straight to your subscriptions so you never see the homepage (my watch history was off already and I didn't like the homepage telling me to turn it on).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ytmysubs/

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lfoephndcoilebphhdb...

And for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-short...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

Why would you disable history?

Without history Youtube doesn't know what you like and therefore can't suggest videos to watch on the homepage.

What's the benefit? You have to look at the homepage anyway, right?

I get value from not having to look at content I find annoying and uninteresting, or at least avoid the negative value of having that stuff on the screen.