Yeah I hate that curated list bullshit. It made both FB and YouTube worse, too. And both were intended to manipulate users into spending more time there. Ironically, I haven’t been on as many YouTube dives into the random following interesting videos from the recommended ones since they started curating their list based on what you’ve previously watched (and seemingly picking one or two of them to tunnel vision on).
YouTube used to work by showing you videos that other people who watched that video watched, which was really great for music discovery. Now it shows me things that I already watched with a small sprinkling of new things. The front page still suggests things I haven’t seen before related to things I watched. I think they were pressured to make that change because it was taking impressionable people too quickly down rabbit holes of extremism… seems like it still does though.