Hi, I am a guy in early thirties with a wife and two kids and whenever I go on youtube it always suggests conservative things like guys dunking on women, ben shapiro reacting to some bullshit, joe rogan, all the works. I almost never allow it to go to that type of video and when I do it is either by accident or by curiosity. My interest are gaming, standup comedy, memes, react videos, metalurgy, machining, blacksmithing, with occasional songs and videos about funny bullshit and I am not from america and I consider myself pretty liberal if I had to put it into terms used in america. But european liberal, so by american standards a socialist. Why does it recommend this shit to me, is this some kind of vector for radicalization of guys in my category? Do you have similar experience?
If I accidently watch a Linus Tech tips video, that will be all it recommends me for the next month.
I watched a Some More News video criticizing Jordan Peterson, and Google thought “did I hear Jordan Peterson? Well in that case, here’s 5 of his videos!”
Almost all content algorithms are hot garbage that are not interested in serving you what you want, just what makes money. It always ends up serving right wing nut jobs because that conspiracy theorists watch a lot of scam videos.
Edit: my little jab at Linus has nothing to do with politics. I have no idea what his views are. I only mentioned it to point out how YouTube will annihilate my recommendations if I watch a single one of his videos.
I watch Linus from time to time, but don’t get that sort of recommendation (unless I watch some gun videos!). I only watch his tech stuff and don’t know anything about his politics. Now I’m worried.
I used to watch LTT a ton. He doesn’t disclose his political opinions, but from watching years of his live streams, it’s pretty clear he fits the PNW Canadian + American metro demographic quite well. Basically Seattle/Vancouver, you probably get the gist of it.
Oh I didn’t want to imply that Linus puts out political opinions. Of the few videos I’ve seen of his it’s all tech hype videos. I was only giving an example of the algorithm deciding to nuke my recommendations if I watch one of his videos.
I watch Linus all the time and almost never get these recommendations. Might be a certain combination of interests?
I can confirm, I get pushed Linus hard. I watched like 3 or 4 of his PC build videos one time a while back. Never clicked on a WAN Show episode (his podcast). But now if I let just about any gaming/tech video roll to next, I get served entire podcast episodes of his like 25% of the time. I never asked for this, I always click off, they keep coming back. I’m not mad really just bewildered. Idk the retention must be there
To be fair, you did watch a 3 hour JP video…
That’s my point, the algorithm doesn’t understand context.
Conservative proganda is a highly coordinated and well-funded network. They pay for preference.
It’s not that so much as Howard Stern theory. The people that like that stuff, click on it and move on.
The people that hate that stuff hate it enough to interact with it… That means more time on the site, more ads, more revenue.
It’s just the hate algorithms… They’re lucrative.
The best way to tune the algorithm on Youtube is to aggressively prune your watch/search history.
Even just one “stereotypical” video can cause your recommendations to go to shit.Conseratives and fascists are the same group, so I’ll refer to them as fascists.
You are talking about one of the core criticisms of corporate secret algorithms to determine what to influence you with. Fascism is forced to creep into everyones world view when you use standard social media, and the average person wouldn’t have the slightest idea. Certain key things will be more related to fascist content, like philosophy, psychology, guns, comedy. If you think about what fascists enjoy, or what they need to slander then it makes what I said make more sense.
Jordan Peterson does a lot of vids around psych/philosophy to redirect curious people to false answers that are close to true but more agreeable for fascists. An example of a psychological cooption is “mass psychosis” being coopted into “mass formation psychosis” by fascists. Mass psychosis explains too many true things, where mass formation psychosis redirects people towards a more palletable direction for them.
This is why I want to be nowhere near corporate media if possible. If you delete your cookies(or private browse for the same effect) then youtube will promote the most adjacent things to what you watch like old youtube used to do, although it’ll still promote fascism when directly adjacent. With cookies though they have an excuse to have questionable content linger statistically too often.
You actually believe that every single conservative is a fascist? Jesus Christ political literacy is dead
Maybe you need to go have a read about fascism, then tell me, are the points presented becoming more or less similar to current conservative views?
Oh, I don’t deny that a lot of Republicans are becoming fascists, but that is far from “all conservatives are fascists”.
Nooo, i finished my comment to you and then upvoted you while proof reading >_> turns out that kills the comment… ugh…
If i could rewrite my first comment to just talk about conservatives then i would have. I’d rather focus on active threats of evil corp shenanigans.
I agree that republicans are becoming fascists in the overt sense. My views are based more on that they are unknowingly fascist by actions, not awareness. Conservative policy in a nutshell is really just “We good, You bad” and power plays without any rational explanation. Can you really name any decent policies conservatives have? All i hear is hate, scapegoating, intensification of totalitarian power structures, increasing control for corporations, war and guns. Those things were key in Nazi Germany too.
I just use the term capitalism since there is no difference in the goals of either.
Not necessarily in all countries, but in the USA I’d say all Republicans are fascist, or at least complicit in the spread of fascism. The conservative wing of the Dems, nah.
He’s from lemmy.ml it makes sense
Follow up question: why won’t YouTube Shorts trust me when I say I don’t want to be recommended channels.
So…many…dancing…trends. And they keep sending more.
YouTube algorithm only cares about engagement not likes or dislikes. It has a neutral impression of likes and dislikes and only cares if people are actively leaving impressions. Whether it’s from liking with joy or disliking with anger engagement is a sign to show more. I’ve heard contrary to logic it’s better to just skip immediately and not press anything signifying reception to the content shown, since it’ll perceive it as recommendation to show more.
Yeah I can understand that for likes/dislikes or comments of “this is dumb”, but after hundreds of “do not recommend this channel”, the algorithm should be able to tell a lack of interest in a particular content.
You need to learn how to properly prune your feed. I got some of that stuff briefly, but I kept blocking it and choosing not interested and eventually it stops. My feed shows me nothing I dont want now. Its just a matter of shaping it into what you want.
You can see what Google (thinks it) knows about you.
- Go to your Google Account (https://myaccount.google.com)
- Manage your Google Account
- Select Privacy and personalisation.
- Under this Data & privacy page you’ll find History Settings, Ad Settings, and more.
- For example, go to Ad Settings and click on Ad Personalization.
- Now you’ll see How your ads are personalized.
I think you can even remove stuff if you want.
metalurgy, machining, blacksmithing
That could be it. I don’t know YouTube’s algorithm, but typically they work by finding what other users watch the videos you watch and recommending you other videos those people also watched. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys watching blacksmithing videos also tend to watch Joe Rogan and the like.
I’d argue that gaming and memes are much bigger contributors.
Because the algorithms favor alt right garbage heaps and the companies will never bother to fix them. Hence why we need some regulations.
Let’s be honest. The companies only really care about “engagement” and the Right is more than happy to provide that.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean about regulations, but I think regulating what political views can and can’t be seen on the internet is a very slippery slope. I completely agree that their viewpoint is garbage, however, countries like China and Russia made laws with the same justification, and now they completely control the media in their countries and control the political views of their citizens because of it. That said, as much as I distrust my government, I don’t believe they are as bad as Russia or China. However, a day may come where they are just as bad. And if that day comes, I don’t want them to be able to control what political views we are allowed to put on the internet.
What state do you live in?
I know I’m doing good WHEN I get served this kind of content. I don’t browse YT logged in, my browser always deletes cookies upon closure, and I run Ghostery/add block plugins.
Living in Texas, I kinda assume that is why I constantly get this right wing content (ads, vid recommendations). I figure my location is all they know about me and so that is why I get served this content.
It just tells me they don’t know anything about me so my countermeasures are working 🤞🏼
He said not from America.
Oh you’re right, totally missed that
Those types of videos have the most engagement. YouTube is trying to show you whatever it thinks will keep you there longer.
Turns out conservative radicalization keeps people longer there. I’ve never googled or watched any Andrew Tate videos but my recommended has at least 3 videos front and center.
You need to train your algorithm.
When you hover over those videos there will be three dots in the lower right hand corner use either not interested or don’t recommend this channel to clear the right wing trash from your feed.
On videos you do like you need to do some engagement, watch complete videos, thumbs up (or down it doesn’t matter) and comment.
Do that for a few days and your feed should clear up.
And make sure to turn off The setting that auto plays the videos in browser if you mouse over them (don’t remember the setting’s name). Hovering your mouse over it counts as you watching/playing the video if the setting is on.
your feed should clear up.
This works for like a few days, then inevitably the cycle begins again…
I’m a daily youtube user and this has been not been the case for me.
My feed, outside the occasional straggler, is pretty free of nonsense.
Idk I’ve spent the last year doing what OP says and my youtube algorithm knows me so well I lose hours upon hours. It is like a firehose of all my hobbies. I don’t get any politics recommended to me at all, right or left.
I’ll see major swings in the algorithm from time to time (a week of bass guitar video recommendations for some reason), but I can usually trace back a video or two that I watched that it just decided to try and cram the topic down my throat. I would just say make sure you keep avoiding the conservative vids to try and get the recommendations to stop. I wonder if maybe one of your kids is watching videos on your account and skewing it?
(a week of bass guitar video recommendations for some reason)
Sometimes I wish youtube’s algorithm were sentient so I could shake it and ask why the fuck–
For me it was a week of growing your own backyard basil. Not herb gardens, not vegetables, not self-sufficiency in general. Literally just basil. I don’t even own a single plant.
It can also be linked based where it recommends videos that conservatives have enjoyed that seem unrelated. Like maybe watching home improvement videos and historical war videos then the algorithm feeding new content that seems unrelated but actually is according to it, since it’s trying to expose you to new interests to expand the time you spend there.
Best I found is just not using YouTube with an account and having cookies cleared on exit, or using newpipe (Android) and freetube (desktop) which let’s you have an accountless subscription feed with Adblock and sponsorblock support.
I get right wing stuff only on YouTube shorts typically. And I think it’s because I’ll watch them. I find it interesting in a detached sense.
Good to know what you’re up against. Same reason I try and watch as many Trump speeches as I reasonably can.
