Some interesting things:

• An article about the people who manually curated the YouTube homepage: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/youtube-homepage-editor-google-algorithm-book-excerpt/671339/
• The Vlogbrothers get onto the Homepage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4bVW8OFtM
• A long article about the history of the YouTube algorithm: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/continuing-our-work-to-improve/
• A YouTube employee gives a presentation on the algorithm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fn79qJa2Fc
• The Original Research Paper - The YouTube Video Recommendation System (2010): https://research.google/pubs/pub37742/
• The Neural Network Paper - Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations (2016): https://research.google/pubs/pub45530/

Full List of Sources (In order of appearance):

• YouTube homepage over time via web design museum: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2005
• YouTube was meant to be a video-dating website (2016): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/16/youtube-past-video-dating-website
• How System Requirements for Browsing the Internet Have Changed (2021): https://www.gwsmedia.com/articles/how-internet-system-requirements-have-changed
• Video websites pop up, invite postings (2005): https://web.archive.org/web/20200727180805/https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-11-21-video-websites_x.htm
• History of YouTube, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
• Re: July 18: Accio Deathly Hallows (Vlogbrothers on the Homepage) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4bVW8OFtM
• Just a Few People Crowned Some of YouTube’s Earliest Hits (2022): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/youtube-homepage-editor-google-algorithm-book-excerpt/671339/
• Do Things that Don't Scale (2013): http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
• More Than 500 Hours Of Content Are Now Being Uploaded To YouTube Every Minute: https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/05/07/number-hours-video-uploaded-to-youtube-per-minute/
• The YouTube Video Recommendation System (2010): https://research.google/pubs/pub37742/