I have a “Shorts blocker” installed and only watch channels I’m subscribed to or recognise.

If thats how you use youtube already, I highly recommend installing Freetube. It doesn't even have a "recommend" page, it only shows the channels you subscribe, it has built in sponsorblock, no ads, no data sent to google, the "trending" and "most popular" feeds rarely work (thats a good thing!), you can disable pretty much everything you want, shorts, community tab and so on. And its light, I have a ancient laptop that takes 3 hours to load all the bullshit that is on the youtube website, with Freetube its some seconds and off it goes.