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Why is youtube recommending conservative "talking points" to me? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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?

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[–] 92 points 3 years ago* (7 children)

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.

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  • [–] 73 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    This, the algorithm doesn't care whether you like enjoy it or not, it cares whether you engage with it or not. Even dislikes are engagement.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 29 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 33 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    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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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    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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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    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.

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