This is why I’m in favor. I’m not the hugest fan, but if the alternative is YouTube or facebooks like system then I’ll take the downvotes. Otherwise you get the low quality like farms where minions memes are uploaded everywhere and there’s no way to say “we hate these, stop posting them”
I like the way it was here. Points seem to be working correctly or did. I think it’s a bad idea to put point totals on a users profile for everyone to see. I don’t think totals are or should be important. But upvotes and downvotes are indicators of how much value a reader thinks a post/comment has. You can’t tell the temperature in a room without numbers. But I would rather not see a reddit-like karma system.
I would wager a guess that it’s your regular interests. YouTube sees that people who like machining, blacksmithing, etc. have a good chance of also being conservative. You probably are just part of the odd cases where you like those hobbies but aren’t conservative.
Your post raises an interesting point, though: even if YouTube didn’t intend for their algorithm to be a pipeline for radicalism, simply by encouraging engagement and viewership, their algorithm ends up becoming a radicalization pipeline anyways.
I made this simulation to show how effective attraction to a bug light can be an emergent property of a mosquito’s navigation and confinement, even though they are not attracted to light innately.
My YouTube recommendations are usually spot on, but I do get Joe Rogan videos sometimes. I could see people sliding into radicalizing garbage easily from there. Rogan’s so big that he gets cool guests, but they’re wasted on him as a host.
Both left wing and right wing people are vulnerable to bullshit and fake news, but extreme right wing media is easier according to troll farm content producers themselves. It’s easy to fall for hateful outrage, especially if you can find an “us versus them” narrative to build your hate upon. Whether it’s “capitalists versus socialists” or “gay people versus Christians”, if you can create the illusion of two (and only two) positions, you can easily attract attention.
The “I just want everyone to be happy together” crowd is a bit harder to put into two opposing camps, but as you can clearly see on Reddit, blaming “capitalists” or “employers” or “landlords” or billionaires or any other group that has shit you want to have is an easy way to build outrage for the “enlightened” mind. Neither “side” is immune to this crap, but conservative ideas just seem to catch more people. It’s quite sad, really, I would love people being converted into egalitarian progressives through algorithmic bullshit much more, even if it’s still unethical of course.
As for why Youtube would do this: if you can get dragged into an hour long Joe Rogan podcast, you make Youtube money. Attention = ads = advertiser income if you apply this at a scale large enough. Right wing outrage media just manages to trick more people into watching more stuff, and that’s why the algorithm defaults to it even on new, fresh IP addresses. Even Youtube’s own people don’t know entirely for sure why some topics or videos are featured, it’s all left to an automated AI that optimizes for certain tasks (watch time etc.) through any means it can.
If you don’t want this, you have options. If you have a Google account, either opt out of personal ads (yes you can actually do that) so you only get generic recommendations based on your IP address, or manually select your preferences in your account so you get ads and content that work for you. The stuff your partner or kids watch will influence the ads you see.
You can also try poisoning the algorithm. You have kids, so getting your account recommendations to focus on kid content shouldn’t be too hard. Two or three hours of skibidi toilet mashups in the background (mute the volume, but not through the browser, and make sure Youtube thinks it’s playing in the foreground) should mess up their recommendations. There are also websites and tools that will open up a ton of videos of certain stereotypical characters from time to time.
As a final note: I don’t know how old your kids are, but if they’re old enough it’s possible that someone in your household has fallen for the Tate bullshit. The “alpha male” bullshit is frighteningly common among teenage boys who are trying to figure out who they are/want to be/what they want to do with their life, and the struggles of wanting to fit in. It’s far from the only reason (I live alone and I get that crap in my feed sometimes) but it’s better to be on the lookout for this crap.
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.
I think that the current downvote system is far from ideal, and ideally there should have some piece of “forced” feedback when you downvote someone, but keep in mind that a downvote is just “this should be less visible”. For example, people often downvote OK answers because an even better answer popped up, and they want the later to rise to the top. So a lot of times there’s no actual hostility in the downvotes.
And for other Reddit behaviours that people often call toxic (I call them SNOO - stupid, noisy, obnoxious, obtuse), I think that it’s cultural. The Reddit admins bred that behaviour into the users; and users are likely to carry it with them elsewhere, including Lemmy. I think that most of those individuals will get better over time here, and the ones who don’t will end leaving.
I feel like the issue with forced feedback when you downvote is you’ll get a lot of comments where its just 1-2 words, doesn’t say much, just a “No” or “Bad”. And if you require a min characters like the bneg forums you’ll just get “No. 10chars”
Requiring comments will cause people to half ass it at best, I think. Which, sure then people can downvote them, but are people going to write a well thought out comment for every “No”?
Is having 40 “I disagree” comments really better for discussion than just 40 downvotes?
By “forced feedback” I was thinking more like having multiple types of downvote (“off-topic”, “rude”, “incorrect”, “I disagree”, “unfunny”…), so users need to pick one when downvoting something. It gives people a better clue on why a certain piece of content is being downvoted than just letting them assume, and it’s way less noise than 40 “I disagree” comments.
I believe there are a few Lemmy instances that don’t have downvotes enabled. (Beehaw might be one of them, but don’t quote me on that.) If downvotes are a stress point for you, you could try joining one of those instances.
I personally find both upvotes and downvotes to be useful as a way for me to quickly see the community’s reaction to a piece of content. If I’m scrolling through my feed and see a post with many downvotes and few upvotes, for example, I know that post is unlikely to interest me and will move on. Conversely, a highly upvoted post or one with a mix of both upvotes and downvotes is more likely to have a good conversation in the comments in my experience.
If I make a post that receives a large number of downvotes - or if most of my posts tend to be downvoted - that’s a signal to me that I’m either not communicating my message well (confusing, passive aggressive, etc.) or that my message itself may not be welcome (hate speech, misinformation, etc.). In either case, I use that as a mental trigger for me to reflect on my posts rather than a reason to become unhappy with the community/platform as a whole.
I would also add that getting a post mass downvoted can be a sign that a community might not be a good fit for you.
Like, using reddit as an example, if you see someone spreading anti-lgbt hate and getting upvoted, but when you try to be like “Hey that’s not cool” or explain why they’re wrong you get massively downvoted, it can be a really good sign that maybe it’s not a great place.
I agree, and I would extend this thought to also include situations where it’s simply the wrong audience for your post. The content itself may not have anything wrong with it, but if you post a casual joke or comment without much depth in a community that’s built on deep conversations and well thought out replies, for example, you’re likely to be downvoted simply because the context wasn’t appropriate.
I barely posted on Reddit due to the thought of people hating what I said or posted 😊 I think here is more friendly since it’s not huge, I share what I like and if people don’t agree that’s cool! As long as it makes someone happy it’s worth it ✨
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