I'm of the same opinion. A user's subscriptions seemingly matter very little nowadays, I've noticed. The focus on recommendations is so heavy I'm very often recommended videos I've already watched, some of them multiple times; very few recommendations are videos (old or new) from channels I'm subscribed to.

I've also noticed that many content creators are now offering email newsletters (such as Tom Scott) and encouraging subscribers to connect outside of YouTube, presumably as a response to this.

Why would YouTube recommend videos from people you're subscribed to? You already have a reliable feed of those videos on the subscriptions feed. They are trying to get you to subscribe to other channels to increase your watch time.

Youtube doesn't give me a reliable feed of my subscriptions. If I haven't watched something in a few months, it's basically dead to the algorithm.

This is obnoxious since I tend to watch series of documentaries, and I prefer to watch many episodes in a row. Stuff just poofs out of existence.

https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions is your subscription feed, you can get there by clicking "subscriptions" in the left pane.

The feed on the home page is recommendations. That may, by chance, include things you're subscribed to but it will also include other recommended content and possibly not recommend things you are subscribed to as it's not meant to be a second copy of the subscription feed.

That still doesn't give reliable recommendations of your subscribed channels, it's just a chronological list of their new content.

If I subscribe to a youtuber with a back-catalog of several years of videos, I want recommendations of those prior videos, not only their brand new ones.

It did use to overwhelmingly recommend videos from channels you were subscribed to. Such videos made up a major portion of your recommendations.

And yes, there is the subscriptions feed, but it only shows new videos from subscribed-to channels; it doesn't function as a 'recommended' list for your subscriptions, which is what I miss and want.

I agree. This is actually my chief complaint about YouTube's front page. I wish there were options to categorically remove videos from channels I'm subscribed to and videos I've already watched from the recommendation feed.

It appears to me that YT is actively trying to move away from subscriptions completely, relaying on this recommendation algorithm for everything

hell I would not be surprised if with in 5 years they remove the subscribe button completely, replacing it with just the notification bell

Be thankful they still let you view a chronological feed at all.