Honestly its getting out of hand. I have everything blocked I can think of [1], and even browsing in private mode, I still sometimes get the "recommended for you" on YouTube. Stop invading my privacy.

I looked up some DevOps stuff on reddit through a proxy with adblockers in private mode and all of a sudden my front page was filled with posts about depression, men asking advice about how to talk to women, and advice about getting a job and moving out of your parents house. These were based on sessions cookies, but I was still kinda offended it pegged me as a sad loser just because I wanted to know more about NGINX and Heroku.

rchaud

There is almost no action you can take on Youtube without it recommending a deluge of god-awful 'user generated content' videos on these topics. The only solution is to frequently right click and select "Not Interested" and then "Not interested in the channel: [channel name]".

The recs are poor enough that I don't mind blanket-banning an entire channel from my feed. Youtubers so frequently "compete" by using clickbait titles and thumbnails, I'm glad I at least have this method to punish that kind of behaviour.

pzmarzly

Another solution - block the recommendations altogether. On PC, you can use specialized extension, or just Stylus (the latter works especially well with old Youtube layout). On Android, use NewPipe[0] or Youtube Vanced[1]. On iOS, perhaps Ivory[2] will do. Or at least delete your watch & search history[3], so the recommendations will be related only to the video you are currently watching.

If you are subscribed to enough good channels, you won't notice anything aside of suddenly having much more free time. And whenever you're bored, unlock recommendations for a while to learn about new channels (I do it once every few months).

[0] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

[1] https://vanced.app/ , beware of scam sites

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ivory-video-player/id129434748...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/feed/history (on old YT layout)