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Why is youtube recommending conservative "talking points" to me? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.