Nothing this extreme on my end. Mind you, the recommendations have gone completely off rails. I will give them that, it's no longer the same popular stuff everyone sees and I do see content from small time creators who have less than 500 views and whatnot, which is good(I do occasionally find something good in there). The big channels I am subscribed to have really dropped the ball when it comes to quality or outright abandoned youtube altogether.

But on the subject of blocking, I have two things going on: ad blocker, courtesy of Brave and a plugin that removes youtube shorts, which I hate with a passion.