I’ve taught him about “low quality” content and we’ve watched a couple so he could understand what I meant. Now, when he wants to watch something like that, I say “no, that’s going to be low quality,” he seems to understand and we move on to find something else.

Honestly never thought about how I would teach my kid this stuff. I have the benefit of a decade of experience learning how youtube works and living through the clickbait endemic.
I guess that’s why it’s so important for parents to navigate YouTube together with them. My first experience of YT was also watching cool stuff like VSauce and Lego animations with my family.