It's not strange. It's about power and control. Google and the other big names could care less about user satisfaction: their customers are the ad buyers.

It's too bad because even 10 years ago Google and the internet in general were magical. You could find information on any topic, make connections and change your life. Now it is mostly santized dumbed down crap and the discovery of anything special is hidden under mountains of SEO spam, now even AI generated SEO spam that is transparently crap for any moderately intelligent user.

For a specific example I like to watch wildlife videos and specifically ones that give insight to how animal think and process the world. This comparative psychology can help us better understand ourselves.

If you want to watch Macaque monkeys for example google/youtube feeds you almost exclusively SEO videos from a handful of locations in Cambodia. There are plenty of other videos out there but they are hidden by the mass produced videos out of Cambodia.

If I find an interesting video and my view history is off the same video is often undiscoverable again even with the exact same search terms.

Search terms are disregarded or substituted willy nilly by Google AI who thinks it knows better what I want than myself.

But the most egregious thing for me as a viewer of nature videos is the AI generated content. It is obviously CGI and often ridiculous or physically impossible. For example let's say I want to see how a monkey interacts with a predatory python, I am allowed to watch that right??? Or are all the Serengeti lion hunting gazel videos to be banned in 2025? Lol. So I search "python attacks monkey" hoping to see a video in the natural setting. Instead I am greeted with maybe a handful of badly shot videos probably staged by humans and hundreds of CGI cartoons that are obviously not real. In one the monkey had a snake mouth! Lol. Who goes searching for real nature videos to see badly faked stuff?

Because of how I can not find anything on google or Youtube anymore without picking through a mountain of crap I use them less now. This is for almost any kind of topic not just nature videos.

Is that a win for advertisers? Less use? I don't think so.

In about 20 years of using the product the number of times a google or Youtube search has led to me actually purchasing a product or service DUE to an ad I saw, is I believe precisely zero.

Recently I have been seeing Temu (zero interest), disability fraud (how is this allowed), senior, and facebook ads. I am a non disabled, 30 something man. I saw an ad for burial insurance today.

Why is facebook paying to advertise "facebook" on youtube in 2025? Is this some ritual sacrifice to the god Mammon or something? Surely in 2025 everyone who would be interested in Facebook has heard of it. I have the Facebook app installed. Why the hell do facebook investors stand facebook paying google to advertise facebook non-selectively on youtube. It's the stupidest thing I ever saw.

I have not watched any political content in years. And yet when I search for a wild life video I get mountains of videos about Trump and a handful of mass produced low quality wildlife content interspersed.

Today I was treated to an irrelevant ad about "jowl reduction."

I know many of you use ad blockers but this is how horrendous it is without them. You can't find what you want, even what you just saw, and you are treated to a deluge of irrelevant, obnoxious content and ads.

Clearly it is about social control, turning our minds to mush to better serve us even more terrible ad content.