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?

Korne127,
@Korne127@lemmy.world avatar

Social Media in general has that habit of furthered spreading far right content and dragging people into such content bubbles.

whodoctor11,
@whodoctor11@lemmy.world avatar

Man I would turn off the activity collect and erase it’s history in myaccount.google.com, besides do the same thing with anything else, like YouTube history. Bad things still show up, but you receive more things related to your subscriptions. When you receive bad things just hit the three points and go to “Don’t recommend this channel” (for me is more effective than “Don’t recommend content like that”).

That’s a very common YouTube complain and have a simple explanation: this alt-right folks are the top adversities on social media. They pay millions to Google to do this.

WndyLady,

I very rarely use YouTube, but I’ve noticed that when I start listening to older top 40 or contemporary bluegrass, those videos drop in

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

Youtube really said “you’re old, you must be racist” lmao

perviouslyiner,

Fix the input not the algorithm - either disable watch history, or clear it of anyone who you don’t trust their viewers to recommend positive channels.

If you watch something that turns out to worsen your experience, purge it from the view history, undo any likes and remove any comments.

megane_kun,

My “YT™ experience” has gotten a lot better ever since I started avoiding it altogether and opted to watch videos through an alternative frontend. I do get a fairly different “popular” feed, but I mostly ignore that and go directly to my subscriptions feed instead.

king_dead,

You can get rid of a lot of the bullshit YouTube loves to shove down your throat by telling it not to recommend the channel. I haven’t got any of that garbage in years

CynicalStoic,

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 🤞🏼

tinwhiskers,
@tinwhiskers@kbin.social avatar

He said not from America.

CynicalStoic,

Oh you’re right, totally missed that

reddig33,

Could be paid promotion. I get a lot of suggestions in my feed for some really awful music in genres that I never listen to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the record label is paying to put it there.

ablackcatstail,
@ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com avatar

I am guessing you probably viewed enough of these videos that YouTube’s dumb algorithm is like, “Oh hey @V01t45 wants to see right wing stuff so let’s show him that.” I agree that it is very annoying. This is why we need to rally behind starting to use PeerTube and cancelling YouTube.

notenoughbutter,

you can try getting another advertisement I’d

search on duckduckgo how to

eric5949,

Even if you watch leftwing videos sometimes YouTube just goes “oh you’re a young-ish male who’s into politics? Here’s som nazi vids you’ll like.” ESPECIALLY if the leftwing videos talk about righty’s.

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

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.

skullgiver,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

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.

Rooty,

Two or three hours of skibidi toilet mashups

I hate the fact that I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Monkeyhog,

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.

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