TL;DR The Unhook browser extentions makes YouTube usable.
Searching for something on YouTube does not work as expected at all.
At some point they started deleting older videos with not that many views, and I remember at one time that I tried to access a video through a bookmark because it would not appear in the search results, that I was asked to state if this video should be removed or kept.
It didn't get deleted thankfully, however I could not find it easily again via the search results because of all the crap recommendations.
What I have found that makes the search work again is the Unhook extension [1,2]. By applying a few tweaks, YouTube has become usable again, as it removes most of the unrelated recommendations.
As mentioned in other comments, uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock are a requirement if one values their time. There are more efficient ways to support creators instead of watching random annoying ads and sponsor segments.
Searching for something on YouTube does not work as expected at all. At some point they started deleting older videos with not that many views, and I remember at one time that I tried to access a video through a bookmark because it would not appear in the search results, that I was asked to state if this video should be removed or kept.
It didn't get deleted thankfully, however I could not find it easily again via the search results because of all the crap recommendations.
What I have found that makes the search work again is the Unhook extension [1,2]. By applying a few tweaks, YouTube has become usable again, as it removes most of the unrelated recommendations.
As mentioned in other comments, uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock are a requirement if one values their time. There are more efficient ways to support creators instead of watching random annoying ads and sponsor segments.
1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom... 2. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout...