this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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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] 75 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I watch Linus all the time and almost never get these recommendations. Might be a certain combination of interests?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, you did watch a 3 hour JP video...

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

That's my point, the algorithm doesn't understand context.