Why YouTube removed the Trending tab and alternatives with extension

Yes, they've removed another feature—just like they did with collections and the dislike counter.

Why does this keep happening?

I don't understand how you can remove something without offering a replacement. When developers change things, you expect them to at least keep the old functionality. Even if they want to simplify the interface by removing text and the link to the trending page, they could have just hidden it out of sight. That's always an option.

Could the reason for this removal be the computational cost of generating trends? As we remember, the trending page simply contained videos sorted by view count over a short period. This doesn't require AI; the maintenance cost is practically zero, especially since the necessary statistics are already being used for other features.

The main reason, I suspect, is simply because they can. In large companies, poor decisions are often made due to management issues and a lack of user feedback. But when a large company has a monopoly, the situation becomes much worse.

So, what can be done?
Let's take a closer look at the "trending" function. Was it really about global trends? Not exactly. If you changed your country in the settings, you would get completely different trends for each region. YouTube's trends showcased videos gaining a lot of views quickly, but the selection was also personalized to some degree.

You never had full control over how those videos were related to you. However, you can create your own trends through your subscriptions.

For example, the Channel groups and rating browser extension allows you to filter your subscriptions by view count. If you subscribe to channels that matter to you, you can use this filter to see which of their videos are getting the most traction—effectively creating a personalized trending feed.