I disagree. Youtube easily has the best recommendations out of all of the big social media/content sites.
Its entirely based in what you are watching. If you watch very little on the site then yes, obviously they will just throw random stuff at you that is popular. The recommendation algorithm has nothing to go on.
["Popular" in this case usually means trash since the videos that get the biggest on the platform ARE clickbait shallow garbage because the vast majority of watch time is from kids and teens.]
If you seek out creators and channels that you enjoy/find useful, actually engage with the algorithm by subscribing to quality channels, hitting "not interested" when the recommendations miss, suddenly you'll get better results.
One very recent (1 month maybe?) change that ive noticed is that Youtube tosses in WAY more tiny channels into the recommendations. I get recommended videos with ~1k or less views all the time. I've found some awesome stuff through that.
Its entirely based in what you are watching. If you watch very little on the site then yes, obviously they will just throw random stuff at you that is popular. The recommendation algorithm has nothing to go on.
["Popular" in this case usually means trash since the videos that get the biggest on the platform ARE clickbait shallow garbage because the vast majority of watch time is from kids and teens.]
If you seek out creators and channels that you enjoy/find useful, actually engage with the algorithm by subscribing to quality channels, hitting "not interested" when the recommendations miss, suddenly you'll get better results.
One very recent (1 month maybe?) change that ive noticed is that Youtube tosses in WAY more tiny channels into the recommendations. I get recommended videos with ~1k or less views all the time. I've found some awesome stuff through that.