It also seems like the recommendation system is ridiculously sensitive to recent activity. Sometimes I feel like learning about swords, then I watch like six youtube videos on swords, and then my entire recommended feed is filled with youtube videos on swords. Maybe one in twenty is actually interesting enough that I feel like watching it, but I don't want to click through because I don't want to teach youtube that I want to view lots more videos about swords.

The content recommendation is just really terrible at surfacing videos on niche topics in general without greedily diving into the niche and just showing that particular subject. I want to get recommended videos that nerd out about swords, bridge design, psychology and personality, cinematography, economics, and all sorts of other topics. I don't want to watch five videos about swords and get recommendations for another hundred sword videos.

I think the fundamental problem, really, is that Youtube's core user-base is really young. Like, really young. Think six, not sixteen. The recommendation algorithm has to do a good job of tablet-as-daycare.

The suggestions are not for your benefit but for the ad buyers'. That's where their money comes from. If you keep that in mind most weird behavior from companies like Facebook or Google makes sense. Of course there is sometimes also the element of stupidity.