I follow a link from a local page of bookmarks I curate usually into a creators videos tab using firefox in private mode. I don't log in ever. I might click on some recommended videos in the sidebar, but a handful of videos later and the recommendations have jumped the shark and it's time to open a new window. If I happen on a new creator, I add a link to their videos tab on their main page to my list of bookmarks.

I have removed all feeds from the homepage, all recommended feeds, all comments, all video overlays with uBO. History is disabled, watch later hidden. I hardly ever use search directly on YT.

The easiest way for me not to get consumed by trash is to proactively hide it. I leaned that I have low self control when it comes to data consumption, so I block everything I identify as dangerous.

for mostly the same reasons, I tend to use `yt-dlp`; I go on a quick foray to look for what I _really_ (and rationally, not dopamine-driven) want, get them all locally (wrote a script to batch them) and then I watch without any ads and far away from temptations :)

do this instead:

site:youtube.com <your_searchterm>

or like so: !yt <your_searchterm> !gv <your_searchterm>

Thanks! I forget that's a thing, even though I have muscle memory to use the bang notation to search !npm

Same for me. In addition, I exclusively browse YouTube in a private window, so they will have a harder time trying to compile a profile of my interests.