Alternatively if you’re never logged in and reject all cookies, then you never have this issue at all.

You also get to see just how low the lowest common denominator of society is for the default recommendations.

If you find it here and delete it, I think it will cease to influence your recommended videos.

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

We shouldn’t have to jump through these kinds of hoops. Their recommendation engine is smart enough to discern between a one off video watch and a genuine interest, but youtube gets stuck on recommending conspiracyland videos. It’s at the point where I just ignore the entire section as if it were ads.

I want a tool to work without having to sift through hundreds and hundreds of videos and try to guess which one caused the drift into crazy town.

I have YouTube history turned off along with other publicly visible tracking and this kind of nonsense still happens to me. Their algo is working on more data than just what they make visible to the user.

"The only winning move is not to play."

You have to evict all Google tracking cookies. Just disabling a few features won't cut it.

Yup. It's just what do these recommendations do to the society? If you are suspectible to believe certain content for whatever reasons you are basically doomed as you get caged into an echo chamber that only validates the bullshit that is fed to you.