Lets assume for a second that I can, through the construction of some black magic 3rd party tool, recommend you the perfect videos to watch without any tracking of your profile what so ever (not really possible but lets just assume that it is for just a moment). Would you ever pay a 3rd party for that service? If your answer is: I wouldn't so it should be Youtube that provides it for free rather than a 3rd party, then you get what we have now. A standardized garbage product that works in the best interest of Youtube rather than its users. The product isnt dysfunctional due to lack of data, it is in fact perfectly functional for what Youtube is trying to make it do. They are optimizing for watch time and all their research indicate that this is the best way to maximize for that.
If you aren't willing to signal to the market that this is a problem that you would be willing to pay real $ to solve, then it will never get solved. If there was any actual demand for proper search and recommendation engines, plenty of us around here would have created 3rd party tools to solve for just that. But the reality is, in spite of how dogshit Youtube's recommendation engine is, people are just not willing to pay for a solution.
If you aren't willing to signal to the market that this is a problem that you would be willing to pay real $ to solve, then it will never get solved. If there was any actual demand for proper search and recommendation engines, plenty of us around here would have created 3rd party tools to solve for just that. But the reality is, in spite of how dogshit Youtube's recommendation engine is, people are just not willing to pay for a solution.