2. Search. YT search is ... reasonable. Not great, but it typically turns up what you want.
3. Incognito mode *ONLY*.
4. Invidious, if at all possible.
5. Watch, or more often, listen, through a third-party client. I generally "experience" YouTube via mpv. I'll cue up a list of URLs I'm interested in. This is the most effective and convenient way of curating a playlist I'm aware of. VLC can also play YT video directly. (Both support many, many, many other sites and formats, typically through yt-dlp or youtube-dl).
6. When using the YT client itself, disable comments and suggestions through a CSS manager, or uBlock Origin's "block element" feature.
Benefits:
- No ads
- No idiotic recommendations
- No tracking and pigeonholing
- No comments (excepting Invidious, though that offers the option of YT or Reddit comments should you prefer)
Actually, I HATE youtube search. Any search engine that changes and reorders responses when I click back to it drives me up a wall.
I infrequently use youtube (maybe 2-3 videos a month) and because the search sucks so badly, I never search using youtube, but rather with Kagi or DDG video search.
What I do know is that I can plug in terms and filters (typically dates / video length) to turn up something relevant most of the time.
Given that most of my searches are for lecture / podcast type material, that tends to work reasonably well for me.
Recent/current major news is of course a shitshow, though it can occasionally be useful. Increasingly I turn to major journalism channels for that information simply because the chumming around no-name submissions is so abysmally bad.
2. Search. YT search is ... reasonable. Not great, but it typically turns up what you want.
3. Incognito mode *ONLY*.
4. Invidious, if at all possible.
5. Watch, or more often, listen, through a third-party client. I generally "experience" YouTube via mpv. I'll cue up a list of URLs I'm interested in. This is the most effective and convenient way of curating a playlist I'm aware of. VLC can also play YT video directly. (Both support many, many, many other sites and formats, typically through yt-dlp or youtube-dl).
6. When using the YT client itself, disable comments and suggestions through a CSS manager, or uBlock Origin's "block element" feature.
Benefits:
- No ads
- No idiotic recommendations
- No tracking and pigeonholing
- No comments (excepting Invidious, though that offers the option of YT or Reddit comments should you prefer)