I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
If Youtube’s algorithm is swayed too easily, you can disable a lot of it in your account settings. Without your watch history or personalised ads, the algorithm seems to be a lot less random.
I’ve worked around the “embedded videos fucking up the algorithm” problem through a combination of Multi Account Containers Temporary Containers. I open all the random websites I browse in temporary containers and force content websites like Youtube and Lemmy into more special containers, but I open videos I don’t want associated with my recommendations in a temporary container.
Containers are like two separate browser sessions, they can’t see each other’s data directly. That way, Youtube doesn’t connect the random shit I encounter on the web to my account. Tricks like being logged into multiple accounts at once on some sites (Gmail etc.) is just a nice bonus.
Youtube still does its IP-based recommendation thing, but it’s a lot more streamlined than it was before.
I ended up getting rid of looking at recommended videos entirely. I use Unhook to get rid of recommendeds.