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?

Hikermick,

“The calls are coming from inside the house”~~__****

Cyder,

Maybe you have the same problem I have: my wife is still a republican. When that kind of stuff shows up, I know she has been watching it on the family PC. She’s not that tech savvy, so I usually go in later and block or limit some of it. It’s a pain to fight the algorithms.

AquaTofana,

As a woman, I can never understand how other women can be Republican.

My mom was a Dem growing up, but then she fell down the religious rabbit hole after I left home and it was all downhill from there.

My little sister though? I have zero idea how she ended up Republican. It’s fucking bizarre. 🤷‍♀️

Phillaholic,

“The Leopards won’t eat my face”

ChillPill,
@ChillPill@lemmy.world avatar

Its the “Leopards eating people’s faces party”; not the " Leopards eating my face party". GOSH!

PS - is that a community here yet?

SailorMoss, (edited )

I agree with and get the point of the metaphor. But the leopard metaphor always seemed a bit tortured to me. There’s got to be a cleaner way to communicate that point.

ChillPill,
@ChillPill@lemmy.world avatar

You’d think so; and yet, so many people that metaphor is directed at don’t even realize…

Event_Horizon,

My thoughts. It never starts as full blown conservatism but reaches that point by a branching topic. My brother was always financially conservative, boot straps and all that, but over the last 12-18 months as the media he consumes moves further right he has become more socially conservative, because these people were inline with his thinking before so they must be right now of course.

I caught him going on about trans people corrupting his kids a couple of weeks ago. My brother might be a dick but he wouldn’t have been saying that 5-10 years ago.

Cyder,

In our case, we both grew up in a conservative state with conservative parents. But over time, I drifted away from it (and it drifted in crazy land). However she still hangs on. She’s come around on a few things. She often falls into the false equivalence mindset that both sides are just as bad. And whenever she starts to bring up any anti-vax or Joe Rogan BS, I try to stomp on that real quick. But I know she will always vote for anyone with an R by their name when it comes down to it.

stappern,

people in minorities are republican, the shit doesnt make sense.

stappern,

condolences…

RogueTyre,

Could probably use another account with a different profile and just switch whenever you use the pc

ChillPill,
@ChillPill@lemmy.world avatar

This is why I inist that each person have their own account on a shared pc.

Atrabiliousaurus,

machining

No idea about your algorithm problems but have you seen the Cutting Edge Engineering Australia channel? It’s so good.

EssentialCoffee,

Like others have said, the things you watch are prime interests for right wing in the US. You have to train the algorithm that you don’t want it.

GoodEye8,

I think the algorithm is so distorted by right-wing engagement that it will end up recommend right-wing content, even if you actively try to avoid it. I watch youtube shorts and I always skip if it’s Shapiro, Peterson, Tate or Pierce Morgan. I also skip the moment I feel like the shorts might be right-wing. Scroll enough and eventually the algorithm will go “How about some Shapiro, Peterson, Tate or Morgan?” Give it enough time and it will always try to feed you right-wing content.

EssentialCoffee,

I suppose if you do nothing but scroll YouTube endlessly, it just starts to recommend anything to keep you in the platform.

But I’ve had an account since they started and even watch The Young Turks and C-Span here and there and almost never get anything political, let alone right wing.

My algorithm is at the point where I get Korean commercials, which is honestly fine with me.

Dohnakun,

Just ignore the recommendations, it’s mostly bulkshit anyway.

omidmnz,

addons.mozilla.org/…/youtube-recommended-videos/Unhook "ignore"s them for me! It is available for other browsers too.

yoz,

This can’t be any more clearer

Android TV- install smartnexttube Android phone- Set private DNS to Nextdns and block all ads + install firefox w/ unlock origin Or if you want an app install - newpipe from fdroid app store

kemsat, (edited )

Conspiracy theory: All the corps are working together to push the global politics to the right, because leftists dgaf about taking money from corps (as in they’ll tax the corps & the rich).

MelonTheMan,
@MelonTheMan@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s obviously true

Contramuffin,

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.

NAS89,

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.

NightOwl,

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.

NAS89,

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.

80085,

If I use a private window, and don’t log in I get a lot of right-wing stuff. I’ve noticed it probably depends on IP/location as well. If at work, youtube seems recommend me things other people at the office listen to.

If I’m logged in, I only get occasional right-wing recommendations interspersed with the left-wing stuff I typically like. About 1/20 videos are right-wing.

YouTube Shorts is different. It’s almost all thirst-traps and right-wing, hustle culture stuff for me.

It could also be because a lot of the people who watch the same videos you do tend to also watch right-wing stuff.

In general, the algorithm tries to boost the stuff that maximizes “engagement,” which is usually outrage-type stuff.

IDe,

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.

A55A,
@A55A@lemmy.ml avatar

Just use Odysee, the YouTube algorithm is fully cooked from millions of hours of pure crap being posted every day.

OneNot,
@OneNot@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah. I never really watched shorts, but I recently started watching them and I get tons of right-wing/red-pill shit in there despite clicking on “dont recommend this channel” (or whatever it says) on like 50 of those types of channels.

ScotinDub,

I used to get reasonable content as per my interests. Now after having a kid its just baby songs and bluey. I use smarttubenext on a firestick so at least I don’t get ads but it’s not great.

angrymouse,

You did not need to watch something to be bombarded with similar content, Youtube recommends things that are watched by ppl that watch things you watch (sorry about that). And it seems to considerate the overall popularity, at leat for me, so it usually recommends stupid popular right wing things just because it is overall popular and happens to be watched by a lot ppl that also watch dota 2 for example. I had to disable YouTube tu use my history to suggest content, my front page is full of things that I already watched from my subscriptions but for its better than YouTube stupid suggestions.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • asklemmy@lemmy.ml
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #