You can see your YouTube watch history through the account settings. I've found the watch recommendations are VERY sensitive to oddball videos watched a long time ago. Through the same interface though, you should be able to seek out and delete watch history for garbage that may throw off your recommendations. It's mostly worked for me.
Watch history now include videos you've only hovered over. Very annoying since if you hover over something and then watch it later it doesn't start from the beginning, it starts from where it left off from the hover.
Interesting. I have autoplay turned off in my browser, & I don't get recommendations of the like you mention, which makes me think that that's enough to keep that "feature" from activating.
