EDIT: I have my YouTube history off for years. However, I still had the home feature but based only in subscriptions, likes and dislikes. It was a crap, and was crap in the time I had history on too. Recently, YouTube removed the home feature for me and made that.
They sell this crap feature, that basically serves only to sponsor right wing media for no reason, as if it was a greate and modern feature, and as if it was worth enough to give Google the commercial right to my activity on YouTube. This shit is so useless that I am using only the subscriptions tab with PocketTube, since the default one is also crap.
I keep hearing about it recommending right wing media, but I have not had this experience. It recommends me stuff that is almost exactly the same as things I watch regularly which is super weird and creepy to a degree in and of itself because of how exact it is. Like, not just the topics are similar, but the film style and even the voices and looks of those on camera are extremely similar to the point where I’ve wondered if they actually are people I know but posting to different channels at times.
That’s weird I watch almost entirely tech/news/commentary that is very much on the socialist bend yet have to block far right wing channels monthly from the recommendations.
I have the same experience. I police my algorithm aggressively to the point where I can immediately tell if they’ve made adjustments to it. I’ve blocked american sports channels repeatedly over the last couple years, for example. Youtube shorts contain the highest ratio of right-wing rage bait. Despite never, ever engaging with these videos and actively downvoting and blocking these creators outright, right-wing rage politics are regularly injected into my recommendations, a feed that is mostly focused on music, games, science and technology.
I wonder if using the same account since 2003 makes it work better? I’ve been on YT since its inception, and have never completely cleared my history; only removed certain items to prevent it using that data because I didn’t like the content.
That is likely a part of it it’s slowly gotten better over time. I’ve also noticed if I stop watching YouTube for a bit it starts putting those back in. I guess it assumes people will get hooked off the watch then