alt Hacker News100%. I've always used youtube on desktop (connected to the TV usually), and it seems to me they're just making all versions of youtube into a mobile app optimized for shorts type content. Recommendations are hugely influenced by what you watched very recently. What used to be related videos in the side panel of the player is now just the home page again, but vertical. Even just generating a recommendation from "Whatever (part 2)" to "Whatever (part 3)" is hit or miss now. Some of the recommendations are actually quite good, but at least for the way I like to watch, it's only getting worse over time. The category labels on the home page are also pretty telling - horrible labels (e.g. I watch some cooking/recipe videos and the label will be "Baking sheets" or something like that), plus it emphasizes the recency bias when it shows 5 categories that are basically just the same content with different labels and forgets what I've always liked watching.
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For me my home page is now 95% videos I've already watched. The side bar is the only reliable source of new content. Until recently I had no subscriptions but that never used to matter. I had to subscribe to Patrick Boyle in solidarity when they demonetized his Epstein video.
> Recommendations are hugely influenced by what you watched very recently.
Ah, well, I don't know that I fully agree.
I watch channels that are people building things, repairing tools, or goofing around in an easy-going way without a lot of product placement or sponsored content.
And yet, all of the recommendations I get are either sponsored unboxing videos with AI voiceovers or click-baity channels with ugly reaction faces in the video thumbnails. I guess those probably make more money for Google.