I remember around 2019 the suggestions got noticeably worse. Before then, I remember just browse YouTube in the evening after work, I would find lots of intere

I remember around 2019 the suggestions got noticeably worse. Before then, I remember just browse YouTube in the evening after work, I would find lots of interesting content from channels I didn't follow, it was really fantastic. I still follow many of the channels I found during that time and am thankful to the YouTube algorithm for allowing me to find them. Suddenly the quality of the recommendations dropped. It was sudden and marked. Around that time YouTube was getting a lot of criticism for e.g. keeping people in "bubbles", and for showing people who were into right-wing content right-wing content. I mean in a way I would say that sounds like the algorithm is doing exactly what it was supposed to do, showing people content they're interested in. I can only assume they take your preferences into account a lot less now, and show much more content that they consider harmless, so they get criticised less.