I pretty much only stick to subscriber channels now except for stuff people send me. Since there's no dislikes I just don't browse the stuff available anymore.
YouTube is definitely worse off without the dislike counter.
I use this liberally for all sorts of reasons and it makes my recommendations much better.
It's the same for the "not interested" feature. I have stop to tell them, when asked, why i am not interested (mainly because i have already see the video). The same already "not interested" videos, already viewed and already liked videos show up again after a wile anyway...
Its also maddening to content creators how newly upload content lists only feature paid promotional content every time. That's also exactly what makes certain (paid) content look massively popular over everything else, even when the production values are sub-par.
"I would love to see someone look deep into Twitch recommendation system - last time I tested the thing they call "Feedback" is a rolling buffer and wont let you exclude more than ~100 things, adding more simply removed oldest entries and starts spamming you with things you already excluded in the past. This looked like performance optimization (less things to track per user)."
I learned this the hard way after watching a few videos about a particular person who had a fatal disease and then overnight my Youtube recommendations all turned into videos about cancer.