> I'd like to see a serious investigation and discussion around the recommendation engines [...] Something is seriously wrong with youtube's algorithm

I had a pretty surreal experience last year. My youtube use is almost exclusively for learning; coding, maths, astronomy, science, and so on. Recommendations were never great for me, usually recommending videos I've already watched. At some point I inadvertently clicked a link to a teenage girl's vlog, and watched maybe 5 seconds of it before closing. Instantly half of my recommendations were teenage girl's vlogs. I then misclicked a video in recommendations a few days later, and it turned into exclusively teenage girl vlogs. A year later, it's slightly recovered, but I still get them.

I am pretty confident their recommendation would not be overrun with science if they inadvertantly click a video.