I’m not just reluctant, I completely refuse to click anything from the recommends feed at this point. I don’t check out new channels unless someone I trust recommends them.

I do the "don't recommend" for any channel that posts any AI-generated music, lost some good ones over the years, goodbye 666MrDoom.

Pro tip: if you still want to use YouTube's recommendations in some way, create lists for the videos to watch in your notes app of choice. Then under videos that you liked, look through the recommendations for related videos and copy promising ones into a list by topic (an extension like ‘Copy URL To Clipboard’ can help with this, especially if using Markdown or Org-mode). I've been using this system for ages with YouTube's built-in playlists, and it worked great — I have probably a whole year's worth of videos to watch full-time.

On the phone, you can use NewPipe or Invidious. Particularly, if using Firefox on Android, you can trick it into installing a desktop extension like ‘Redirector’ that would open Invidious instead of YouTube. And for copying page links, I use the Automate app by sharing the tab to it.

Also, if you use Android (a Pixel phone in particular), it might be possible that Google would confirm your account by sending a verification notification to the phone. This technically doesn't give them info that you haven't already explicitly provided, though of course they know the phone number anyway from said phone.

I see you, is OK. Sharing is caring my friend. Stay stealthy.