The problem is the people like me who DO rewatch youtube videos. There are a bunch of "Comfort food" videos I turn to sometimes. Like you would rewatch a movie you really enjoy.

But that's the real problem. You can't just average everyone and apply that result to anyone. The "average of everyone" fits exactly NO ONE.

The US Navy figured this out long ago in a famous anecdote in fact. They wanted to fit a cockpit to the "average" pilot, took a shitload of measurements of a lot of airmen, and it ended up nobody fit.

The actual solution was customization and accommodations.

It just might be that lot of users watch same videos multiple times. They must have some data on this and see that recommending same videos gets more views than recommending new ones.

My favorite is the new thing where they recommend a "members only" video, from a creator that covers current events, and the video is 2 years old.

try disabling collecting the history about the videos you've watched in YouTube settings. There are still some recommendations after that but they are less cringe