I’m saddened by this aspect of YouTube whereby you’re afraid to explore the site without tanking your recommendations. I wish there was a site that focused on finding YouTube videos in a more focused way rather than some rogue ML algorithm that decides to spam you with weird topics. I don’t feel like I have any control over my YouTube account anymore.
Sadly this feeling is only going to get more common
If you forget to enter incognito mode, you can just clear cookies for the day as well.
recommendations are not driven by cookies.
What are they driven by then? My youtube recommendations reset completely every time I clear my cookies.
Only if you use Youtube without logging in. Otherwise, your watch history is stored in your account so the cleaning of the cookies does nothing.