I watched a Youtube video about how birds aren't real, that the US government killed them all and replaced them with surveillance drones.

There is no doubt I watched that. Nor is there any doubt that it impacted my recommendations.

The question is, what is the likelihood of it having radicalized me into believing this? Is Youtube successfully recruiting people to genuinely believe birds aren't real/aliens/etc. on a wide scale? I do not believe that is the case. I'm not claiming it has zero impact on this. I'm saying I'm skeptical that the scale is meaningful, especially compared to legacy media.

What I know to be certain is that traditional/legacy/corporate media is constantly and successfully recruiting people into believing conspiracy theories on a broad scale like Iraq had WMDs and Trump was a Russian asset. And yet there is not serious talk about how the corporate media is "infamous for getting people radicalized."