Thats a super fair stance.

Consider looking into something like freetube (pc, there might also be apps for android that do the same, I don’t know) Its logged in as an anonymous account so you can subscribe to stuff, but you can go into the settings and disable all the distractions, which is what they call everything thats not videos :) All I ever see is stuff from my subscribed channels, and if I go into the individual channels, the only thing that remains is the main videos feed, everything else (about, shorts, community, etc.) is disabled. I also have sponsor block enabled to auto-skip all promotional content including self-promo.

The algorithm is basically non-existent on freetube, in that your recommendations feed on the side of the video player is going to be mostly the same channel you are watching now, not just random shit. Maybe a few things thrown in that are closely related -like if they work with another channel a lot that other channel might come up- maybe some weird bug videos that aren’t related at all, but those are all semi-sciency so that could be from my own watching, idk, I think the dev included some basic channels for the main feed so it wasn’t empty, they don’t really change and I’ve had other people mention seeing the exact same videos in their feed, years apart. I haven’t seen much, if any, questionable or undesirable content without explicitly searching for it, though.

I find the distraction-free mode of using it to be very much like back in the day when you had to know what you wanted because there was no algorithm. Its not addictive or changing my opinions, imo, because I genuinely struggle to find new channels, what with no algorithm shoving shit down my throat, so I get what I’m looking for and nothing else. I check it a couple times a month, quickly run out of new content, get bored, and go do something else. Perhaps thats a workable option for you, as well :)