To add, I use some uBlock Origin rules to make the home page blocked or empty. Blocked if you access directly, and empty if you navigate to it from another YT page (since SPA navigation is not blocked with uBO). Then another picker rule to block the recommendations sidebar. This one is a bit more fragile since they can just change the hierarchy and class names.

||youtube.com^|$doc

youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]

www.youtube.com##ytd-item-section-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope