I feel you (or your family). Call me whatever you want but I really like the algorithm, I get exposed to so much stuff I wouldn’t otherwise. 90% of my subs are channels I found through YouTube suggestions.
The missing recommendations for me is the main reason why I’m still using youtube instead of freetube, that and watched videos being synchronised across devices.
In the time before ubo fixed the popup I would browse yt on the browser, get recommendations and copypaste urls into ft.