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?

foggy,

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.

DarkMatter_contract,

Could be they are using k-nearest neighbors, and op bracket fit into those content.

ScrimbloBimblo,

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.

sacredbirdman,

Gaming + memes + few hot takes -> hey can I interest you in this alt-right pipeline. Seen it myself too. I usually go and thumb down a few of the recommendations and it may take the hint. But yeah, Youtube seems much more likely to steer young men to right than left.. or well, probably everybody.

stappern,

youtube is a right wing propaganda machine. im convinced of it at this point.

i cannot look at shorts without getting a fucking piers morgan or andrew tate or joe rogan with the antivaxx guest . FUCK ME.

no matter how many times i click “dont reccomend this channel to me” or click dislike they always come back. it cant be a coincidence. i even tried with a clean account, 30 min in you get some shit from that sphere.

DubiousInterests,

Mine only shows me tech, science, and games related things. I’m glad I am one of the lucky ones.

dizzy,
@dizzy@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

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.

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.

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.

erogenouswarzone,
@erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

If they piss you off, you will stay on their platform longer, and they make more money.

That is the sad truth of EVERY social network.

Lemmy might not be that advanced yet, but as soon as they get big enough to need ads to pay for bandwidth and storage, soon after they will add algorithms that will show you stuff that pisses you off.

One way to combat this is to take a break from the site. Usually after a week, when you come back it will be better for a while.

marmo7ade,

Lemmy might not be that advanced yet, but as soon as they get big enough to need ads to pay for bandwidth and storage, soon after they will add algorithms that will show you stuff that pisses you off.

Who is the “they” that is going to implement what you claim? And how are they going to do that, specifically? Lemmy isn’t reddit or youtube, technically. There is no central authority. Lemmy.world can’t change how this technology works just because they might want to start injecting recommendations or ads. That’s the point of this system.

erogenouswarzone,
@erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

Who is hosting this? Lemmy.ml, all the federated sites? With the reddit exodus there is probably a lot more activity. Who’s paying for that? That’s who they would be in this situation I think.

EssentialCoffee,

I think it has more to do with the stuff you watch than wanting to piss you off.

All YouTube recommends to me are videos of kpop, dog grooming, Kitten Lady, and some Friesian horse stable that went across my feed once. Oh, and some historical sewing stuff.

If they started recommended stuff that pissed me off, I wouldn’t bother going back except for direct videos linked from elsewhere.

Edit: Rereading what OP said they watch, their interests are primary interests of the right wing in the US. If they don’t train the algorithm they don’t want it, the algorithm doesn’t know that those interests don’t intersect.

ChaoticEntropy,
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

I almost never allow it

The times you do allow it are all the algorithm cares about, sadly. Any kind of engagement is great for companies.

“Hate Rogan? Cool, watch some Rogan as hateporn, hate watching is still watching.”

AlexWIWA,

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

kava,

I get right wing stuff only on YouTube shorts typically. And I think it’s because I’ll watch them. I find it interesting in a detached sense.

Good to know what you’re up against. Same reason I try and watch as many Trump speeches as I reasonably can.

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.

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.

whodoctor11,

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.

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

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