It just runs as a proxy front end and fetches the videos as you use them. You have to set up your channel subscriptions and then if you go to your Feed, it just shows the channels, and nothing else. No algorithm spamming up your feed. No ads, uses Sponsorblock
It's the way Youtube should have been. There's a bunch of public ones, https://piped.video is the one run by it's creator. Make an account and play around before you decide if you want to run your own instance.
It's pretty good what little I've used it. It was just a bit of a pain to bring over your my subscriptions at least when I did it on mobile with the NewPipe app. I had to like download my data from Google, find the archive with my subscriptions data and give that to the app so it could find the channels I was subscribed to.
I feel like I must be one in a million, because I actually think the algorithm is being pretty good to me. It's giving me so many interesting new suggestions and my Watch List keeps building up to where I will never have time to catch up and I just keep adding more and more.
I guess I've just been very disciplined in watching videos that are interesting to me, and not allowing anyone to watch their shit on my account. If they do, I remove that history.
I think a lot of people who complain about the algorithm don't actually have that many subscriptions set up. So there isn't really much of a guide for the algorithm on what to show people. I never get sports videos recommended or conspiracy theory videos because I never watched that kind of thing.
My subscriptions are all science channels, and people building their own computers. The algorithm knows what stuff to recommend me and what not to because I've told it.