I use YouTube a lot. Looking up a clip from a TV show or movie, a movie trailer, or a specific old TV ad works fine. Searching for a specific how-to works. And

I use YouTube a lot. Looking up a clip from a TV show or movie, a movie trailer, or a specific old TV ad works fine. Searching for a specific how-to works. And that's where YouTube's searchability begins and ends. Looking for content of a certain variety is essentially impossible. YouTube's categorisation is vague to the point of uselessness. There's almost no metadata associated with videos (even algorithmically) and most of it isn't exposed as a search facet. I follow a number of channels on YouTube that I enjoy: finding similar channels is no easier than it was before I discovered them. YouTube doesn't intelligently recommend me similar things, nor is there any facility to look for similar channels unless the creators of those channels have gone and curated such lists manually. The "because you watched" recommendations on YouTube's home feed are always of the same variety, with weak relationship to what I follow, rather than genuine similarity. Some examples: - I watch an educational video about repairing an old engine; YouTube gives me tonnes of promotional videos about car brands instead of educational content by other makers/fixers. - I watch an academic critique of the Bechdel test; YouTube gives me Hollywood trailers and popular movie clips - I watch a documentary clip about traditional food in Italy; YouTube gives me BuzzFeed millennials tasting things The latter recommendations are not because that's the only content, the former content exists, it's just not pushed by YouTube because it doesn't lead to addictive content consumption cycles.