I feel the same way about Youtube's recommendations. They always end up showing me the most bland milquetoast videos you can think of, videos seemingly trying to bait me into watching them, or videos by people who, to be fair, are somewhat similar to people I already watch consistently, but who just don't jive with me. Clicking the 'not interested' button is a non-signal, just how subscribing apparently just isn't a signal they use as well.

I could probably get something pretty decent going if Youtube would give me access to some buttons that actually give their algorithm signals directly. Subscribing and watching every video should be a pretty strong signal. Subscribing and only watching videos with a certain subtitle should be a signal of what videos on that channel I like. There should be a 'channels I don't really care for' bucket, that it might still show me videos from if it's doing exceptionally well. But giving users these tools isn't in the interest of Youtube, so they never will.

I do much better after switching to FreeTube as a front-end for Youtube, since now I'll only be shown videos from people I subscribe to, and I can be on my own to find videos I actually want to watch. If only Youtube search wasn't hot garbage, I might actually see success more often than I do now.