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?
You most probably viewed these types of videos a few times and the algorithm started recommending them to you. It only takes a couple of videos for the algorithm to start recommending video of the same topic. You could easily solve this by clicking on the 3 dots next to the video and then selecting “Not interested”, do it enough times and they’ll be gone from your feed.
This, the algorithm doesn’t care whether you
likeenjoy it or not, it cares whether you engage with it or not. Even dislikes are engagement.I’m not talking about liking the video, I’m talking about viewing the video. Viewing the video, especially a large part of it, will contribute to the watch time, therefore affecting the algorithm’s recommendations.
It’s also kinda dodgy what YouTube considers “viewing” a video. 3 seconds of autoplay? You viewed it. Misclick an ad trying to skip? Viewed it. AndroidTV previewed the video when you left it highlighted for too long? You guessed it, viewed.
Fortunately figuring out what it considers you to have viewed is pretty straightforward: if it’s in your watch history it considers it viewed. You can also go through that and manually purge things.
Of course there’s still the question of why YouTube will so consistently recommend videos that get people started down this downhill slide of absolute dogshit atrocious content.
If you don’t disable the feature where it plays the videos directly in the thumbnail by hovering over it, it also counts as viewed if you let the thumbnail play for like 3 seconds. I hate it.
I meant like as in “enjoy” not as in click the thumbs up button, sorry for the confusion. Even a video that pisses you off, that you thumb it down along with every comment is considered engagement and it not only feeds you more but also boost the video as a whole.
All it cares is whether it keeps you on YouTube. It’s like news, outrage is profitable even if everyone hates it.
Ohh ok, I know get it. You’re right.
I am constantly bombarded with Jordan Peterson videos despite disliking them and telling the algorithm to show less like this.
I’m not sure how it profiles people, but it sucks.
Disliking is engagement. Instead tap the three dots and select “not interested”
I’ve been doing that too
Go into your watch history and remove them after disliking it. I find removing stuff from my watch history to have a bigger impact over disliking stuff. You can also have YouTube stop recommending specific channels to you. Odds are if they’re posting Jordan Peterson content, you’re not missing anything of value by blocking them
The thing is I’m not sure what I’ve watched that’s triggering the JP spam.
Maybe I need to just nuke my entire history and start again.
If you leave youtube/close the app everytime Jordan Peterson opens his big mouth, the algorithm will get the idea quick enough
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I don’t know how much a Not Interested designation does. I’ve done that for channels where I don’t want to see THAT video, but still like the channel in general.
What I do is just block the channel: if this is what the channel wants to espouse then I’ll do better by eliminating it entirely.
Yeah, I get those too. Am always a little surprised, but I’ll be honest I’m interested in knowing what the other bubble is telling themselves… If it gets to be too much I’ll click not interested, but right now it’s just a bizarre break in my feed.
Edit: Just remembered this quote that fits “I’m fascinated by trash TV. The poet must not avert his eyes” - Werner Herzog
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You don’t even have to watch those types of videos. I got watching Star Trek lore videos etc. And got off on to one channel in particular. Whose videos always ended up devolving into rants against SJW and leftists. This from someone who posts lore videos on a show about luxury gay space communism. But simply because of apparently a large portion of his viewership also engages with the bigotry and hatred. I started getting tons of recommendations for shit that I have never watched and would never watch.
But yes Mark not interested and delete from history was the best way to get it out.
My shorts is the worst. Regular seems fine. Especially the pods dunking on women. “So who should pay on the first date?”…
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.
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
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.
To be fair, you did watch a 3 hour JP video…
That’s my point, the algorithm doesn’t understand context.
It sees you like standup comedy (POTENTIALLY ANTI-WOKE) and gaming (POTENTIALLY INCEL) and in your 30s (LIKELY HAS SOME DISPOSABLE INCOME)
So it’s pipelining you to the annals of YouTube that check those boxes, have very good viewer retention and have good user engagement.
The ones with good user engagement are the ones that raise your blood pressure. They make you angry. So, politics, or dirty cops, interrogations, murder stories, stuff like that.
You can resist them all you want, but stuff that makes people angry and chatty and commenty and re-watchy is like cocaine to the algorithm. It makes them money, so they spam it everywhere it even remotely makes sense to try to get you stuck in their quicksand.
This is the real answer. It’s easy to forget that for most people who are famous for their unusual political views, most of their overall content has nothing to do with that. There’s something about politics that can turn even the most open-minded of individuals into raging idealogues.
It’s hilarious to me that Joe Rogan is now known for his like 3 conservative views when I mostly remember him as the guy who hosted Fear Factor, did every drug known to man, interviewed scientists in every field out there, and did that really popular interview with Bernie Sanders a couple years ago.
The point is that every hobby and niche interest has someone who gets way too hung up on one particular issue and devotes way too much time to talking about it, dragging the whole community down with them.
Could be they are using k-nearest neighbors, and op bracket fit into those content.
Because ‘conservative’ content gets a lot of engagement (ie ad money). The more they recommend it the bigger the audience, the bigger ad payout. They’re literally monetizing hate.
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.
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. 🤷♀️
“The Leopards won’t eat my face”
Its the “Leopards eating people’s faces party”; not the " Leopards eating my face party". GOSH!
PS - is that a community here yet?
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.
You’d think so; and yet, so many people that metaphor is directed at don’t even realize…
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.
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.
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Some like to hate on others, so maybe that’s why.
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Could probably use another account with a different profile and just switch whenever you use the pc
This is why I inist that each person have their own account on a shared pc.
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.
I get them all the time. Pro-gun crap, Jordon Peterson, Joe Rogan, and other trash. I constantly hit “don’t recommend this channel” or “show me less of this” but they still come. I honestly think Youtube is getting paid off.
Anger drives engagement because your m more likely to comment when you’re angry. If you’re fine you probably just move on. So the algorithm prioritises stuff that makes people angry.
Machining and blacksmithing are highly correlated with right wing BS in the US. Check my uname and ask me how I know. 😁
This one may not be so obvious, but I’ve seen someone lose their marbles over the crazy idea that they get recommended stuff for children when all they watch on YouTube is Minecraft videos and sometimes Roblox. And people in the comments agreed…
The YouTube subreddit wasn’t full of bright people.
For me if I ever look up warhammer 40k it immediately starts sending me losers like quartering or other channels like him.
Like, bo youtube, I don’t want to hear about how feminism and “wokes” are ruining warhammer. I also don’t want to be sent Sargon of Carl videos. Uhg. Lmao
My interest are gaming, standup comedy, memes, react videos, metalurgy, machining, blacksmithing,
Because a lot of the type of guys who like seeing those stupid conservative videos also like many of the same things as you. Gaming^™ is well known to have a problem with the alt-right, react videos have a very similar structure to conservative “libs destroyed with fact and logic” types of videos, and finally a lot of conservatives like to think of themselves as an old fashioned man’s-man so they enjoy things like metalwork and other typical “manly” careers.
Pretty sure this is it - I see them as well but my interests are science education, gaming, and 3D printing.
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Mine only shows me tech, science, and games related things. I’m glad I am one of the lucky ones.
I’m getting the exact same shit on shorts constantly. Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Piers Morgan, some kid explaining why women should stay in the kitchen, another guy screaming that trans people don’t exist, some imam thinking he’s making people look stupid for not believing in god, etc
I’m not sure if I’m impressed in my ad/content blocking and general internet hygiene that google/youtube knows me so badly or worried that so many people, particularly young/impressionable people, who may not have such strongly opposed views to that hateful crap, are getting brainwashed and radicalized into having extreme conservative views.
Not to be that guy, but you can say “don’t recommend this channel again” to YouTube. I haven’t seen Quartering, Asmogold, etc for years now. Unless you search for them.
I had the issue that I got Andrew Tate shit recommended. I said don’t recommend that, and block the uploader. Youtube still suggested me that video. Exactly that video.
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I’ve only been recommended weird stuff like this maybe twice a year, but maybe that’s because I’ve used YouTube since it was new, and it learned my tastes before all this dodgy stuff showed up at all. Maybe I got ahead of it?
Now I mostly just get recommendations for niche electronic projects, dumb skits, and callmekevin. Just how I like it 😎
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Your interests have a strong correlation with people on the right aside from maybe react videos.
But even if your interested were not so strongly correlated with the right, you would probably still get right wing ads or videos suggested. They garner the highest engagement because it is often outrage porn. Google gets their money that way. My subscriptions are to let wing political channels, science, and solar channels but I still get a decent amount of PragerU and Matt Walsh ads. Reporting then does not stop them from popping up either.
Yeah big tech loves to throw dumb stuff your way to piss you off and keep you engaged, even if you’ve never shown an interest before.
Algorithms. It’s why I use newpipe on mobile and freetube on desktop. Both allow me to import and export my subscription list, and block ads and have sponsorblock support.
But, most importantly it doesn’t make use of the Google algorithm to try and recommend me videos that might be of the radical nature on misinterpretation of past viewing history.
Right-wing media is well-funded.
