Way way more recommendations for stuff I'd never consider watching, recommendations for "big" youtubers (I almost exclusively watch smaller channels based around niche hobbies), stuff like that.
I used to think their recommendation engine was amongst the best of any service I've used, now it's junk.
In fact, I rarely find YouTube's recommendations to be useful. Occasionally, yes, but typically I just get that "more of the same" problem.
However, that may be explained by how I use YouTube. The article is pretty vague and hand-wavy about how the recommendations really work, but it's possible that the fact that I don't drive my YouTube viewing from the recommended videos list makes the video recommendations worse for me.
Instead, I have to explicitly go into "Subscriptions", and hope that it was posted recently-enough for the channel to show up in the 6-or-so sorted-by-recency channels at the very top, rather than in the alphabetized list (since there are so many channels in that alphabetical list, that finding anything marked as new in that list is basically impractical.)
This is how I've always used YouTube, and it wasn't that long ago that I learned most people don't do it that way. My usual pattern is to go to the subscriptions tab and scroll down to where the last video I viewed was, then start watching from there up towards the top of the list.
It would be really handy if the YouTube app had some way of making that easier.
At this moment, my homepage's first 10 videos include 7 that I've already watched.
I just right-click those videos and tell YouTube I'm not interested in it. That helps keep my homepage fresh while still being pretty good about recommending stuff I like.
One thing I think must be deeply challenging about recommendation on YouTube is that many videos like DIY informative stuff only warrant being watched once. But music, DJ mixes, livestreams, etc. I will watch over and over. So the signal "did I watch this" might mean "definitely do not show it again" for some videos and "definite do show it again" for others. It's probably hard for the system to distinguish those.
It also seems to have some classification issues, too. It lumps a lot of stuff into "DIY", and woodworking is part of it--but so is a lot of stuff that more fits under "construction" or "carpentry". No shade thrown, that stuff can be interesting too, but there's a large gulf between "crotchety woodworking dork going on about tablesaw safety" and "refinishing a backyard shed with glamour shots of a Home Depot sponsored miter saw set to bouncy stock music" that the algorithm does not seem to grok. Maybe it wants me to hatewatch that stuff, I dunno.
However, it becomes this echo chamber of only recommending the same content over and over again because they don't want to suggest something you don't like. That's because to their metrics, you don't watch it all, you don't see the ads, and then you "potentially" leave their platform because there's "nothing you like on it".
To pick an example, my YouTube recommended section is full of videos of people reacting to the things I actually like to watch. I don't want to watch people reacting to the things I like. I just want to watch the things I like. I try to tell YouTube that by saying "Not Interested" to all of the reaction videos, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
www.youtube.com###dismissible:has-text(/Vice/)
This way, any channel that has the word Vice in it will never show up to me in recommendations, be it on the main page or the sidebar. This "has-text" regex is really useful, not just on Youtube. I use it a lot, all over the internet. In your case, switch "Vice" with "react" and I believe you'll get rid of 99% of these videos showing up on your feed.
A has-text condition always has this risk of matching too much.
The issue is that we don't really have a good method for measuring uncertain interests and since most algorithms have an underlining "make the company money", we don't get anything beyond the same ol' same ol' recommendations.
[1] Underwater Basket Weaving is a placeholder for anything - yoga, video games, cooking, politics, essentially anything you are currently NOT getting presented.
SELECT DISTINCT videos.*
FROM videos, followers
WHERE videos.creator=followers.creator
AND followers.user = $MEComes, because statistically those youtubers are able to latch on to some viewers and this drives engagement. I believe some of that has been pay-to-win stuff, where the youtubers actively advertised and paid directly for engagement. Some of those folks are subsidized by outsiders.
Goes, because YouTube knows from studying its own business that they're capable of driving more engagement by turning people into video-obsessed alt-right Nazis. And if it's too obvious, they'll be called on it, or actively punished as a platform over essentially selling themselves out as a propaganda bullhorn to whoever's able to pay.
That being the alt-right Nazis, and those who fund them.
So it goes back and forth. YouTube doesn't always do this. It does as much of this as it possibly can, but is systemically aware that running with it causes other problems, and dials it back to stay out of trouble (and because some of the people minding the algorithms are not, themselves, alt-right Nazis).
YouTube always wants to find an algorithmic answer for everything, and is not afraid to go meta and look at larger contexts for what they do. It's a google thing. So they want, and don't want, the 'own the libs' paid-for content. It's both simple capitalism, and looking at it on a larger systemic level where there are risks to allowing their ad buys to stoke outright revolution of the country YouTube is based in.
Separately there is nothing wrong with people who have opinions different from yours.
If you blindly follow some pratfalls or kittens video, you'll get served up junk. If you happen to be researching some specific topic (how-tos, explainers, academics, technical topics being among my favourites), you'll tend to find you're getting recommendations that follow from that initial topic.
I still treat recommendations quite warily, but at least the ones that come up in such sessions are somewhat better than standard fare.
(I never use YT whilst authenticated / logged in.)
I’ve tried the “Don’t recommend this” trick, but because the kids are subbed (or otherwise watch it), it still keeps coming back.
We hypothesized this might be because you're less likely to be hooked yet, so it wants you to really get the good stuff and hope that you then want to subscribe to or comment on something? And once you're signed up, you might stay on the site longer if you need to keep looking for stuff you like and generate more ad impressions.
I should really do a comparison logged-out vs. logged-in because I could swear those ads are different amounts and durations. Also it's percentage-wise about as much as the free legacy TV channels, except of course YT doesn't need to pay the production company -- ShadyVPN already takes care of that.
I remember about a year ago, it got into a weird state where I watched an old Cat Power music video, then every time I looked at recommendations on other videos it was recommending it, again and again... I'd watch the video again to hopefully make it go away, and it would still keep recommending it. It was very strange. I ended up just choosing "Don't recommend this" on it.
Of course, that'd be a pain to manage, so I haven't gotten around to it.