I use Youtube all the time, and yeah, it can be... annoying.
The main thing for me is that the recommendations are often not exactly helpful. If I want something new, I'm gonna have to do some more careful searching.
Doesnt help that the almighty algorithm is made entirely of distilled crazy. Which probably factors in to the idea of video creators getting stressed out. They either entirely follow the ever-changing whims of the algorithm, or their channel falls apart. And that can get REALLY stupid. Like, there's one channel I followed for the long time, SCP Explained, I think is the name, and their videos were just lovely for the longest time... and then the algorithm changed. Now, to get noticed, they must stick pop culture references in there and have them show up in the thumbnails and names of the videos. As a dedicated SCP fan, I gotta say, I wasnt exactly pleased about this. It's the equivilent of a Godzilla fan who is used to "what if" videos of Godzilla VS various giant monsters, but now they're getting videos of "What if Godzilla fought THIS POPULAR SINGER WHO TURNED GIANT???!?!?!?" and... yeah, bloody stupid. aaaaaaaaaaagh
But they dont have much choice when the algorithm upon which their jobs depend just abruptly declares that they either start doing that nonsense, or their channel falls apart.
I'll stop rambling about that though.
I've found that once I do find channels that are the sort to stick with their content style, I'll just sorta staple myself to them and watch their stuff A LOT and not look for many others. Like, there's 2-3 main channels I watch and I dont stray too much.
As for topics I dont like showing up, or things like that, that's very, very rare for me. I got into the habit of always immediately clicking "dont show me this again" or "dont show me this entire channel again" on anything I wouldnt want to watch (politics stuff in particular, I hate that stuff) showing up on the recommendations page. As of now, it's very, very rare that something gets through that isnt related to gaming or my other very narrow range of interests, simply because I've focused it down like that.
Depending on what browser you're using, there are extensions that bring it back.
I never saw the point of getting rid of the dislike counter anyway: the video maker still sees the dislikes on their end, which contradicts Alphabet's lame reason for eliminating it in the first place.
There's a couple of ideas on why it was done.
Youtube themselves put out a reason stating that it was because some creators were seeing themselves hit with "dislike attacks" where they'd just get spammed by them to get people to ignore their videos. I've seen this done to LGBT creators, for instance, or other similarly problematic reasons. Or sometimes even just to troll someone for no reason at all. It's not a phenomenon that only happens on Youtube, either. I see this just over on Steam sometimes, too, where it's even dumber. Of course on Steam, it sure doesnt hide the negative reviews, and a review bombing can utterly kill any game's chance of selling whatsoever.
Another thing that might factor in: a lot of videos put out by major corporations basically act like ads, or in other ways are manipulative, and people often dislike the heck outta them... I've seen this with videos related to the AAA side of the gaming industry OFTEN. Like, really, really, REALLY often. That hurts sales. It also hurts their reputation with Youtube... neither profit much off of stuff that's getting ignored. And these are BIG companies, which means BIG money involved... you do the math on that one.
So, what's your experience with YouTube in 2023?
