It's no secret that YouTube is trying to compete with TikTok with their Shorts. Google has made a lot of changes to YouTube to ensure that people interact with these short videos. The latest, not sure if it's intentional or a bug – every time the YouTube app is opened it will continue to take users to Shorts instead of the home page.
This will be annoying for some people like videos that continue to play at a loud volume, or videos that may not be suitable for watching in public. However, this problem seems to occur randomly on various Android devices. This problem also happened to me, only when it happened I thought my finger was pressed on the Shorts icon but it turned out not to be.
The issue I experienced is more or less the same as what happened to the 9to5Google writer, namely my Nothing Phone (3a) Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL are experiencing this problem randomly. I noticed since around yesterday, the app returned to normal and when it was launched it would take users to the home screen. The only way to fix this right now is to go to settings, find the YouTube app and clear the cache before reopening the app.