Youtube is horrible more so than ever before. The recommended videos is completely broken, it keeps recommending the same videos, and half of them are not relevant to what I'm watching. It's been like this for years.
If I watch a single video from any kind of niche genre, suddenly half the recommended videos for every video are from that genre. I watched one of those helmet cam videos from a cyclist today, now youtube seems to think I'm infatuated with them. It has become slower and more bloated every time they redesign it as well.
I got the opposite impression. It got better. If I watch something I usually don't, it seems like recommendations on the topic at hand are temporary and go away after not much long. Video player is superb now as well. JKL keys still work, buffering got way better and it just works - compare it to abomination of vimeo's player, for example (that crap is just broken).
I agree the recommendations is too moody, but it has nothing to do with any redesigns per se. The same backends feed recommendations independent of what the web page or mobile clients looks like.
YouTube is a pretty trivial piece of work compared to Reddit. Nobody would lose a moment's sleep if YouTube's comment system were radically revised, and few would complain if it went away entirely. On Reddit, the comment system is everything.
The integration complaints had absolutely nothing to do with design aesthetics. There were some serious privacy concerns that arose when Google unified YouTube accounts with accounts used for other Google services.
