Same experience! I watch on NewPipe and the recommendations are very good: videos related to the video I'm watching. I open a video “How jet engines work” and the recommendations are more “engineering visualisation”-type videos, I open a lecture by Yanis Varoufakis and the recommendations are more lectures and debates on economics, I open a CCC talk on the Amiga and the recommendations are more excellent CCC talks. But the key is: not being logged in, or the “enhanced recommendations” (ironically the value-add part, supposedly) fuck everything up.