One of the most annoying things YT does to me is recommend videos I've already watched. Like I get it, they are perfect for me, exactly the type of video I watch. That's why I've already seen them. And because I don't have the memory of a housefly, I actually remember what the video was about. If I wanted to watch it again, I would navigate to my history or the channel it's from and rewatch it there.

It makes absolutely no sense to me, why recommend videos I've already seen?

I use a browser plugin to hide those videos, but it doesn't fully work.

I miss when people made stuff because they loved making stuff, not because they wanted to get rich.

Sort of like how girls used to post sexy photos of themselves because they wanted attention, now they do it to get rich.

Do I want to know what Elsagate is?

The new youtube definitely promotes small channels

Most of my subscriptions are for small channels that youtube recommended to me

I really don't understand the complaints on the "new" side. Most of them aren't even real, and it makes me wonder whether or not OP actually even uses YT at all.

• Only promotes large channels - This hasn't been true for a while, and YT's actually been recommending a lot more smaller channels more often. I'm constantly being suggested channels I've never heard of, with sub-100 view counts. They even announced fairly recently that they were further stepping up recommendations for smaller channels, too.
• Does nothing about Elsagate - What year is it??? The Elsagate trend has almost entirely died out, largely because the target audience has grown up and the newer generation of kids aren't engaging with that kind of material. There's only a very small handful of channels still making that sort of content, and they're not getting anywhere near the views they used to, because YT has filtered a lot of that out from child viewers now. The only Elsagate videos that I can see right now are "Elsa and Spiderman do something normal, nothing weird with vomit or syringes happens and Spiderman doesn't get pregnant".
• No dislikes - They never mattered to begin with. Videos were almost always either 5% liked or 95% liked, and to glean any reasoning for those scores required more research than any user was ever putting in, anyway. It rarely ever represented the quality of the content, and it certainly didn't discourage YouTube from recommending disliked videos, because they recognize dislikes the exact same as a like; it's user engagement, so disliked videos were still recommended all the same.
• The videos are forgettable slop - Subscribe to better channels then, that's 100% a you problem. There's still plenty of excellent content available, and it's not that hard to find. If you subscribe to trash channels, you're going to see trash videos. Play with the search more often.
• Soulless channel layout - It was never anything more than a grid of thumbnails, what sort of layout nostalgia could you possibly have?
• Makes a shitty TikTok clone - Then don't use it, it's super easy to avoid; the videos have a special icon, a vertical thumbnail, and are in their own section on the page. It's hard to accidentally watch YT Shorts.
• Makes the site kid-friendly despite having an app for kids - I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. What about it is "kid friendly" at all? The fact that you can't put tits in a thumbnail? I have no clue what this is even referring to.
• Age restricts videos for content that can be found in G-rated films - I think you may overestimate what is allowed for a G rating in films. Age-restriction occurs for more than just sex, violence, and profanity. In most cases, the subject material, itself, is what warrants the age-restriction.

I hate having to defend one of the biggest corps on the planet, but this is just not real.

After they abolished the 5 star rating, things only went downhill. The newest bullshit are these "Posts". I had to unfollow some interesting accounts because they started to post images on YouTube which plastered my home feed. I don't want a TikTok clone, and I don't need social media bullshit, I just want a decent video hoster.

Edit: I just saw that revanced has a setting to hide Posts!

I must be using a different YouTube as everyone else since I'm not really experiencing any of that myself.

I remember when YouTube was used to be a very good video platform site under Chad Hurley

WHY DIDN'T LET NEAL MOHAN AND YOUTUBE EMPLOYEES FIX THE PLATFORM AND MAKE IT FAR MORE USABLE?

*manually promoted Logan Paul's suicide forrest video

Find someone else to give you free video hosting then? If YouTube wasn't profit-driven, YouTube would be dead

I might be imagining things but for a brief period of time it showed a bit of analytics about video views. It was visible to everyone.

Hey now, me playing my flute with myself in an edited duet isn't "forgettable slop"! I'll have you know, my 15 views and 1 Like that I liked myself are the pinnacle of my music career.

What the hell is elsagate?