Ironically, you see a lot of replies to people that seemingly said something negative, but the original comment is very hard to find. I guess YouTube just hides (or shadow bans) negativity on the platform.

The creators can shadow ban people if they want as well. Most of the time, it's probably creators who are sick of seeing low quality critiques that aren't helpful. Things like "I don't like the way your voice sounds", or "Bruh, do you even know how to code???". I'm all for creators shadow banning these low quality remarks as well because it adds no value to a meaningful conversation, and it's disheartening to see.

Youtube has been filling search results with random unrelated videos for years, and it seems to getting progressively worse. Now there are multiple different subsections of unrelated videos intermixed with actual search results and some of the results are hidden behind a tiny "show more" link.

Thanks, "growth hackers", for maximizing "engagement".