The funny thing is that the cookie warning only applies to tracking cookies, for stuff like session cookies you do not need it.

But it is always easier to just nag the user too many times than to risk something, so everyone just adds the warning anyway.

Also, IANAL so don’t trust me!

Yeah, that is just how youtube works. You as an individual can say you don’t like annoying thumbnails and titles, but they 100% work. And channels that don’t use them are just not getting as many viewers.

More often than not that is corporate speak for “we fired the old team and replaced them with cheaper workers. And we didn’t want to pay them to learn the old code/they tried but failed, so we are dumping features now”

There is a reason clickbait images and titles are used, they work. If they didn’t work, no one would use them.