Why is youtube recommending conservative "talking points" to me?

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?

TwoGems,
@TwoGems@lemmy.world avatar

Because the algorithms favor alt right garbage heaps and the companies will never bother to fix them. Hence why we need some regulations.

winterayars,

Let’s be honest. The companies only really care about “engagement” and the Right is more than happy to provide that.

buckykat,

three dots -> don’t recommend channel

use it on anything even a little sus

stappern,

does not work. i made a point to click it everytime and i still get the same right wing shit

primalmotion,
@primalmotion@lemmy.antisocial.ly avatar

My account -> delete

buckykat,

The no account suggestions are even worse

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

I’d suggest to stop using the platform entirely.

donut4ever,

You’ve probably watched the other side quite often, so YouTube is recommending this for ya to enrage you and keep you engaged. Just good old rage bating

vd1n,

The devils algorithm.

wtvr,

It’s because you are a guy in your 30s. You (and me) are in a shitty demographic so the algorithm peddles us shit. It doesn’t matter how many times I list shitheel vids by the ppl you me mentioned as “do not recommend channel”, I will always have Rogan or Peterson popping up in my feed to ruin my day. It drives me crazy

Robertej92,

It can’t just be that though, I’m a guy in my 30s and I never get any of these channels recommended to me, just videos by channels I’ve subscribed to or similar to what I’ve been watching, even after watching political videos I don’t get those shysters recommended to me.

stealth_cookies,

Agreed, I’m in the demographic as well and mostly get science education and cooking videos recommended to me. I’ll get the occasional political video but they are definitely more left wing channels.

Obi,
@Obi@sopuli.xyz avatar

There’s a difference between the recommendations for normal videos and shorts, I’d bet OP is looking at shorts.

In the normal feed YouTube knows about my hobbies, interests and serves decent recommendations that usually interest me.

The rare times I look at shorts it starts with comedians, goes to ass&tits, and then out come the crazy right-wingers.

stappern,

fucking same and im also dude in my 30s, i stopped using it. no way to not get that garbage.

GentlemenPreferBongs,

I’ve been vegetarian since 2009 and in the past 2-3 years I keep getting all kinds of bow hunting videos.

It’s particularly amusing when my plan was to watch an old episode of “The Golden Girls.”

They REALLY misread my demographic.

TheKingBee,
@TheKingBee@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ketcham1009,
@ketcham1009@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

xthedeerlordx,

your feed should clear up.

This works for like a few days, then inevitably the cycle begins again…

TheKingBee,
@TheKingBee@lemmy.world avatar

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.

stiephel,

I’m 30 and have a small family, too. When I watch shorts on YouTube I get the exact same content you’re describing. None of the long videos I’m watching are political, yet the Algo keeps throwing them at me. I get a lot of Jordan Peterson crap or lil Wayne explaining how there’s no racism. I hate it.

AFaithfulNihilist,
@AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world avatar

The lil Wayne stuff is so strange. Usually when some specific celebrity pops up in my feed I assume their publicist is rehabbing their image after some public incident or recently exposed private conflict. YouTube shorts isn’t like that.

YouTube shorts seems to be exclusively just a pipeline to rightwing talking points and the unfunniest parts of stand up comedy framed to serve the same rightwing pipeline.

forgotmylastusername,

A while back the conservative party of Canada was caught inserting MGTOW / Ben Shapiro tags on all their Youtube uploads. In other words they were poisoning peoples social graph in order to cause exactly what you’re talking about.

This is why I use a Google account that is only for Youtube entertainment. I keep it on a separate chromium profile. I turn on all the privacy toggles in the Google account. Only Youtube history is turned on. I curate the watch history.

You cannot tell what content might have breadcrumbs that eventually open the floodgates of far right echo chambers. They do this intentionally. So it requires active measures on your part to counter them. You’ve got to manage your account with intention. I do not use that account at all for random browsing. I usually do that in incognito on a different browser.

Wahots,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

Clear your history! I limit a lot of what Google collects. If I see videos trending in that direction, I clear youtube and start fresh.

baru,

You can have Google clear things automatically so it’ll only keep things for a certain amount of months.

Without any history Google often shows pretty extreme videos, so in my experience the lack of any history is not good.

zos_kia,

I think it might be the opposite. If extreme content is kind of “default” when the algorithm doesn’t know what to give you, them starving it off history might push it into that default more often. I have a very used YouTube account with a metric ton of history and honestly I very rarely see that kind of content. (From Europe though so it might be different)

Wahots,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

What I’ll do is clear history, then watch something to seed it as a baseline. Eg, one video on low fi music, and another one on how an 18th century naval ship was built. Or perhaps they’ve just captured all my data secretly and know that extremist videos perform poorly with me?

PerogiBoi,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

macwinux,

I bought a new phone a few months back, and just for shits and giggles I tried looking at YouTube Shorts without any account logged in. I clicked on a food Shorts, and within 5 Shorts, I got a “manosphere” video, and within 10 Shorts I got Ben Shapiro.

Unfortunately, fear and rage drive engagement, and these Conservative grifters are more than happy to give it to them and more. That on top of corporations being Capitalists and thus right-wing by default.

bownt,

you are a closet conservative. the algoritham has spoken.

EtnaAtsume,

“Hi, I’m a guy in early thirties–”

Well there’s your answer.

PowerCrazy,

The algorithm wants engagement first and foremost (positive vs negative is irrelevant), after that it wants to push view points that preserve the status quo since change is scary to shareholders. So of course capitalist/fascist propaganda is preferred especially if the host is wrong about basic facts (being wrong drives engagement.)

AlexWIWA,

If you watch any kind of gaming videos, and haven’t trained your algorithm, then you’ll get flooded with this shit

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