>Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations.

Search a channel to get a list of smaller channels making content focused on similar interests. Our algorithm is designed to surface more obscure, but relevant, content that YouTube generally doesn't recommend.

Here is our list of relevant similar channels for SpaceX's channel:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCtI0Hodo5o5dUb67FeUjDeA/

Navigate by clicking on the channel icons in the list or by searching a channel in the top search-bar.

The recommendation system was really addictive for me for a while. I was wasting a ton of time on YouTube. Then I switched off recommendations based on my watch history and it suddenly got abysmally bad. And hallelujah, that worked like a charm. I spend almost no time on YouTube at all now. Whoever thinks that recommendations aren't predatory time sinks probably hasn't experienced both sides of that.

They can be both addictive and bad.... I find myself clicking clickbait nonsense all the time. With annoying titles like "Funniest NFL celebration fails" or "Best cheeseburger in NYC" It's inane worthless content, that my brain is addicted to. I feel utterly unsatisfied after watching this terrible content, yet I still click more often than I would like.

Actually, Youtube is the last service I like because I pretty ruthlessly go through my watch history and delete anything that might mess it up. As a result my recommendations tend to be pretty decent. Not perfect, but acceptable.

how did you disable recommendations based off watch history?

If you click on your user icon (upper right for me) then "your data on youtube" and disable watch history.