[islon]

Disclaimer: this is just my opinion, I have no idea what the actual reason is.

I think the problem is not malice nor stupidity.

Most youtube users are non-technical/layman people who don't really know what they want. They type "fun cat videos" or "minecraft" or whatever and want suggestions of popular things to see.

The technical people who know what they want are the minority so it's not profitable to create a separate search mode just for them, because they are tech-literate enough to figure out the idiosyncrasies.

[blikdak]

True, it's not malice or stupidity, it's just "making money".