For quite a while by now. Three years ago or so they started recommending older content again, instead of focusing exclusively on new stuff. And since than I frequently end up on videos and tiny channels with just hundreds of views. Meanwhile on a regular Google Web search I literally never end up on somebodies random private homepage, I have to remember that Marginalia exist if I ever wanna see one of those.
Youtube of course still favors professional monetized content, but random niche content still ends up making its way to the top surprisingly often. Youtube also does a pretty good job of not recommending me popular content that is irrelevant to me, all those channels with tens of million of views I can see on the Trending-page, they never make it into my normal Youtube browsing.