YouTube Shorts is a blight on humanity. It is even more sinister than TikTok. No joke. Glad that you can add an extension to block the YouTube "shorts".
Why would anyone use Threads/Facebook/Meta, is beyond me. Big Social and especially Zuckland collects so much sensitive data, and it freaked me out when I first learned about it. After that, I moved to Fediverse and have been there since. And became a much more privacy-conscious user. Of course in our day and age, escaping from surveillance is difficult but at least avoiding the Big Social is an important step, in my opinion.
Because in TikTok that is the entire point, for YouTube you are not signed up for Shorts. Also, it is intrusive as hell.