I see YouTubers claim that YT does this, but personally, I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed. I've also never seen direct evidence, it's only YouTubers claiming that this is happening to their subscribers, as a way of explaining some downturn in the number of views. I suspect many of them are confused about the "notification" feature, which I don't know I've ever seen anyone actually use. (Also, sometimes a video can get stuck in "processing", in which case it won't show up in the feed until it's finished processing.)
Do you have some examples of this happening? I'm almost certain if you could provide screenshots, e.g. of the channel and of your subscription feed, showing the missing video, that YouTube would consider this a bug. The subscription feed is supposed to show all the new videos from channels you're subscribed to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3lnEJVuGA
See comments, this was definitely happening to several subscribers.
This is also my experience, I've even closely paid attention to the videos of YouTubers that claim this type of thing is happening and I still have always seen their videos appear in my feed.
We have to take control back!
However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.
At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy.
It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply because I don't want to get spammed.
You are so not interested in him that you a) know his name and b) watch his videos?
If you want to get rid of something you only clicked once, click something you like 2-3 times and it will not be listed in the first results anymore. After some time it will disappear if you really do not watch this kind of content.
This works with and without account.
EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.
It's not been blocking youtube ads for me for a week or two.
Yes to the point where looking for content on prehistory can lead to flat earther conspiracy theory rubbish.
Maybe if youtube did not keep you in an etertainment bubble you would find much more music you unexpectedly enjoy from artists or genres you haven't heard of.
For example, when I'm in the mood to watch sailing videos, I don't want to get bombarded with Taylor Swift's latest concert (which I have absolutely no interest in) in the recommendations. My interests don't necessarily align with what's "popular", and anything bubble-less will necessarily have the popularity of something as one of its inputs.
Compare that with news, where some events are important enough that _everyone_ should know about them (COVID-19, for example), local events affect you more, etc. There, the bubble is a hindrance to your situation awareness.
As for music, I mostly use Google Play Music for that, through which I have discovered a lot of new artists.
In general it seems that social media regarding news and politics is almost always toxic and should be avoided.
Twitter in particular is entirely awful because the format prohibits any intelligent discourse.
But now that I have my personalized "bubble", I'm utterly disappointed. At least from my observation, it mainly uses three strategies: 1) repeating what I've seen, 2) offering video from the same channels I've watched from, and 3) suggesting really popular videos.
The repeat is the worst, especially since it seems to favor interviews, funny clips, etc. which are not really re-watch worthy, even if they were a good watch for the first time.
Then, since I haven't subscribed to a lot of channels, 2) is melding into 1).
At this point, I don't even look at the "Home" tab anymore. I do a refresh on my subscribed list, and if nothing is there, I just move on.
It shows what the homepage looks like for someone in a variety of different bubbles. You knew it was happening, this exposes how it looks.
What I find good, in a way, is that I get bored quick and get off Youtube, otherwise it could be a serious time blackhole.
I think the only way to escape their recommendation engine is to use an outside source to index youtube videos and control/randomize it better from there.
This is one thing that infuriates me. They do SUCH a poor job of branching out compared to other services, including Google Music.
Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start repeating.
I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones and so on.
It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's why it is like that.