Spotify is king IMO. Their 'discover weekly' playlist turns up gems every time.

But that's because they dive into other user playlists that contain the same music you play. Pretty simple. I assume Youtube do somthing similar.

If Netflix had playlists or a 'want to watch' feature I bet their recommendations would improve.

I tend to agree with you. The only thing I dislike about it is when I happen to open a link I'll randomly be sent or notice in an article that's something unlike what I normally enjoy or something I close right away and then for the next few days, or until I watch a bunch more of what I usually enjoy, the entire suggestion list is only things to do with that one random link.

I don't think it's possible on a phone, but in a browser you can remove videos from your watch history. Click the three dots next to the video for options, and select not interested. Google actually seems to take these into account, I had watched an Alex Jones video that was linked from elsewhere, and while it is good to not have too much of a bubble there's just certain things I don't need to see more of.

Or, just use a separate browser. I typically only use opera for YouTube & anything where I don't mind Google tracking me, but if I open a YouTube link in Firefox I'm not logged in (and w/ opera's VPN enabled it doesn't appear to affect YouTube recommendations). I'm sure Google does correlate traffic between the two to some extent, but this seems like the only useful way to use operas integrated VPN.

Youtube does better than Netflix for me, but they still suggest stuff that I have already watched. Sometimes stuff I literally watched an hour ago. And I watched one Joe Rogan episode and it will not stop suggesting it to me but fails to notify me on things that I watch every episode on; like 3Blue1Brown, Robert Miles, or Rare Earth.