I've only noticed the difference for a very specific set of technical help videos: how to open an X, how to fix a Y, how to pronounce Z. Now I just have to check the comments.
The YouTube recommendation algorithm also broke globally about 3 weeks ago. Most people have not noticed it yet, but I haven't asked a single person about it who has said that their recommendations are normal. They've suddenly been full of crappy compilations, conspiracy theory videos, and weird clickbait. Please comment if your YouTube recommendations did not go nuts around 3 weeks ago because I'd love to see whether or not this is a worldwide thing.
Huh. My recs have been worse, but not to the degree you are talking about. Though similar to someone else I feel like recent views are over-impacting suggestions. Maybe I've just watched the right things to not get any of the conspiracy theory etc videos (though I'm getting flooded with 3rd party uploads of sports content)
The problem is that the comments section can be fully managed by the uploader. It's easily possible for them to delete negative comments or even to add filters to do so automatically.
Yeah I've seen some channels switch to "sort by new" by default for their comment section, making it a lot harder to get any useful signal at first glance.
The YouTube recommendation algorithm also broke globally about 3 weeks ago. Most people have not noticed it yet, but I haven't asked a single person about it who has said that their recommendations are normal. They've suddenly been full of crappy compilations, conspiracy theory videos, and weird clickbait. Please comment if your YouTube recommendations did not go nuts around 3 weeks ago because I'd love to see whether or not this is a worldwide thing.