Not sure what you're doing then, because my recommendations are great and never clickbait. My only problem is they're too much like what I've already been watching, rather than a little deviation from it.

Another part of it is that clickbait YouTubers continue to push clickbait and are associated with other clickbait. Just don't watch anything from them, and you tend to get less clickbait overall, because your recommendations are more likely to come from less trashy sources.

Whenever I aggressively clear search/watch history, delete YouTube browsing data, watch incognito, and/or try to protect my "privacy" from YouTube, the recommendations unsurprisingly turn into complete drivel.

Unsurprisingly, if I just watch what I like watching from the official UI, with history turned on, without removing searches, etc, the algorithm invariably just shows me more like what I've watched and works very well.