Never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. And i think it’s fair to say the best and brightest at Google aren’t turning their attention to YouTube lately. Except maybe to make training datasets for Gemini N+1 :)

> Never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.

We were talking about Google here. (you know, former search engine, don't be evil)

In the case of industry giants malice should be assumed.

Can malice be emergent behaviour?

Well, psychopathy is an inherent feature of corporations. I wouldn't be surprised it malice will quickly develop where that appears profitable.

Their customers are advertisers, not users. By the looks of things they love them.