I have done it for at least a decade, as soon as I watch something outside my sphere of Tech, History, Electronics, Transportation, Gaming, Amateur Radio, Lego, cool old objects, Acheology, Car, Programming, Long form documentaries, and similar videos I delete it from my YT history.
This has a huge impact, it feels sort of as if you constantly need to fight for your balance on a knife's edge, falling either way will massacre your yt feed.
I'd be happy to post what channels I subscribe to if you want to get started
When a video pops up that you find upsetting or irrelevant, click on the "Not interested" option. You'll have the chance to provide feedback on why you don't like the video. This helps YouTube understand your preferences better and refine future suggestions.
To keep YT under control: Firefox is my web browser, with the uBlock Origin extension installed. So, all Shorts/Suggestions, 'News' and 'Related content' are now automatically removed from YT '(easy to achieve with uBlock Origin when using Firefox).
😍🥰 Firefox + uBlockOrigin
And whenever Google/YT suggests me some turd content, I dislike it and ask it to not suggest the channel/content anymore.
In the end, my feed is mostly made of stuff I enjoy watching, with so little noise that it can not be considered an issue.
Stop clicking on them. YT shows it to you because it has seen you open them and watch a chunk of the video. The algorithm is dumb and can't tell whether you watch because you like it or hate watch them. It just knows you make engagement and revenue whenever it shows you that, so it does it more.
Go into your watch history and delete all of the rage inducing videos. YouTube generates recommendations directly from your watch history (as well as subscriptions etc).
Then subscribe to channels you really like that don’t enrage you! I highly recommend hobby-focused and science-based channels. There are tons of them out there and they have great content!
On a video in a video list page there should be a "..." menu next to the title. It has options for "hiding" the video and "don't recommend channel". I can't comment on how effective those are, but they might give the algorithm some hints about what you want to watch.
In addition, if you have stuff on your watch history that you don't want to see more of, you can go to https://www.youtube.com/feed/history and remove them. Allegedly that stops them being used to decide what videos are recommended.
I use YouTube almost exclusively for ASMR, metal forging, and engineering disaster documentaries. That's all my recommended feed is now. YouTube wants you to watch things on there and keep watching them, the algorithm really doesn't care what you watch to do that. The more you watch non-political stuff and avoid/immediately click away from political stuff, the more it will recommend non-political stuff.
Clear or curate (remove anything political) your watch history, start liberally (hue hue) blocking shit. Install BlockTube. (uBO and SponsorBlock are also a given, just slightly less on topic)
I'm not subscribed to anyone on youtube, but my feed is pretty good. Every time i see something i don't like or care i hit the three dots and choose: don't recommend channel, and then they slowly go away.
Turn off history. It makes the homepage blank, and you will only see your subscriptions. But, there are still recommendations in the side bar you will have to ignore.
Some shit gets injected by region or time of day. I live in a red state and get obnoxious red state hobbys that I am either not interested in or only minorly interested in and the ads are even worse.
Stop clicking, interacting, hovering or looking at the thumbnail for too long. Clear your watch history. Search up lots of unrelated content that you enjoy, thumbs it up, subscribe to unrelated channels you like. It will stop doing that. Mine basically only shows video essays an, science, technology and gaming content
I don't understand why people don't turn off youtube watch history. I nuked my account about a year ago and have since made a new account with a burner email adress. Turned off all tracking and history for YouTube and all affiliate Google accounts and all the recommended videos are completely random shit. They're basically sidebar ads to me now, I dont even notice they're there. I want to watch a video - search it, watch it, thats it never see any other shit about.
Delete Google, the apps are trash. If you want web based content go directly to the source. Highlights::Your Team Page, space videos::space website, political info::unbiased news sources, silly memes::giphy, etc. The Google algorithms are severely flawed as well as the algorithms of all generative content sites that collect your data.