Every fucking thing i search for and watch on youtube leads to garbage in the sidebar.
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Yeah that’s my issue, the recommended feed rarely throws right wing garbage at me, but if I search for l, say, something trans related? Out comes the PraegerU/Ben Shapiro/Epoch Times.
And yet for some reason it's been giving me (a cis man) lots of (thankfully good) trans content, while my trans roommate keeps getting the right wing nonsense you do. idfgi why the algo can't give her the good (or even just the okay) shit, since it's clearly capable of serving it up to me.
Maybe I just need to do a day's watching on her account to see if it helps fix her recommends.
Tangential, but back on 
the recommendation algorithm would always be “hey, you enjoy posting on the Enough Libertarian Spam subreddit, we think you’d like these libertarian and anarcho-capitalist subreddits!” The algorithms are good at telling that someone is interested in a subject but not so good at distinguishing positive vs negative interest and content about the subject.
Plus, there’s the $$$ involved. Shapiro comes up near the top for trans-related searches because he pays to have it rank higher.
lol, i got recommended an hour long video by a nerd who got mad at so-called 'tankie' memes about the soviet space program
"part of the reason I'm making this video is because of tankies. what are tankies you may ask? well ..."
webster's dictionary defines a tankie as...
water conservation enthusists 💦
I actually started watching that video because I was curious and immediately closed it when he said that.
Yeah I was already doubtful about his "non-bias" when he called their achievements "parlor tricks." Appreciate that he saved us an hour by letting us know up front.
Yeah, honestly the "don't recommend this" button barely does anything anymore, I've resorted to straight up blocking channels. The algo seems to fixate on stupid shit and not let go of it. As a personal anecdote, at some point it kept recommending me stuff related to a specific anime, I never watched videos about that anime, I won't watch anime, so on, after blocking those channels on sight it settled down.
Which anime was it?
bocchi the rock
Do the channels you block show up in your search results?
I've blocked the fake trailer sites and an anorexic youtuber but if I search an unrelated topic they still show up in the results.
same for me, seems like "block this channel, do not show it to me ever again" gets interpreted as the new "show me less of this", a friend told me (and take it with a grain of salt) that for them channels get automatically unblocked after a couple months, i didn't notice that, yet
The blocktube extension will actually block the channel. Even if I search Jordan Peterson's name his channel doesn't come up.
My block list is longer than my subscription list, and if I watch three or so videos outside of my usual viewing (like, if a friend sends a few popular meme vids that I watch while logged in) it'll start steering strongly towards xenophobia and homophobia specifically.
It's really shit. I basically check my home page to see who has updated, then pull up those videos on NewPipe.
I wonder if there's been any substantial shift towards mirror sites with the ad block blocker enforcement, which has reinforced the algorithm towards the lowest common denominator. I don't know how the internet works but if I were speculating to just keep the ball up in the air, that's what I'd put forward.
I have a rss app with all of my subscriptions (youtube still lets you use rss) and libredirect installed on firefox to use invidious instances. I guess you can also use newpipe to open the videos
Nifty. I may implement a similar setup, thanks!
YT is being astroturfed to hell. A lot of leftists have had their income yanked. Billionaires and Wall Street fascists are funding reich wing media and paying YT cubic ass tons of money to boost their shit. No doubt there are comment farms with scripts / AI. That's what we noticed with Reddit when I was a mod. It is overwhelming. You have a shit ton of fascist loving bot farms in India, Israel, Ukraine, US.
I hope someone can do an analysis on it. They aren't very inventive. They just think repeating the same shit very angerly will Orwell things for them.
Then companies bitch no one loves them and how young generation ruins their grift because they see through it.
You're overly optimistic at how well people can dodge & see through propaganda. It works.
I've been getting the same thing recently. I think maybe the Daily Wire ended up with a windfall of cash or something. They made an awful transphobic movie and have been pushing it everywhere, and maybe that's filtering down to little right-wing minions or something
I literally never get leftist content, yet I always get right wing nonsense. They must pay YouTube A LOT of money for this kind of promotion.
I just wish I could tell YouTube exactly what I want to watch. It makes no sense. We both want the same things out of YouTube, for me to be as engaged as possible, for as long as possible, as often as possible. Then why keep showing me irrelevant shit, the worst trash from tiktok, videos I already watched, when they know exactly what kind of videos I spend hours watching??? If they would actually get their shit together, I wouldn't even mind paying for their service, but it's utter crap!
I always had to walk through a minefield of right wing crap on YouTube, but I recently started watching some videos on gender transition and YouTube almost immediately started showing me anti trans crap and videos about "detransitioners" and whatnot. My god, it's so fucking infuriating.
Also, I don't know if that's possible for video recommendations, but for ads, you can click on de three dots and see why they were recommended to me, and it's always shit like "your age and AGAB and what other people where you live are interested at"... I know Google is paid to just show ads based on those kinds of flags to the people that have them in their account, but my brother in christ, I couldn't give less of a crap to what other people of my age and AGAB are interested in where I live.
They aren't honest in those. The "advertiser" specifically chooses certain tags - even specific channels to target. They won't be shown as Google can hide behind their proprietary BS. It's all smoke and mirrors to pacify people and they can say they showed you the most benign, generic reasons and call "transparency".
Oh, I know that Facebook also flag their users with their political alignment and let advertisers target that. I would not be surprised if Google does that too.
This is exactly how I got recommended my first alt-right pipeline video. At school we got a conference about trans people, so I looked it up on google and youtube.
Then I found out that there were other genders and I was really happy because agender was what always how I felt about my gender
Next video that is recommended to me is some asshole that kept repeating stuff like: "there is only 2 genders and you can't change it cause that's how it's always been".
I still believed that one could change their gender, but I was really upset about being "lied to" about the other genders.
Edit: I forgot to specify this was like 6 years ago, so youtube didn't change at all from back then.
I aggressively mark videos as "not interested". algorithm won't update for a day or so but it will eventually respect it. terminate anything that even vaguely smells like right-wing bullshit on sight and it will stop showing it to you. though it will occasionally slip one in just to check if you still feel that way lol. I can tell there's a new wave of cryptofash crap because I suddenly get a video out of nowhere.
I don't know how to explain to the algorithm that I don't want anything with that sigma male theme song with the slow bass music before it goes into that chanting once the female in the video has been owned.
It usually starts with a Vaush video. I swear, if you click on Vaush, the algorithm rightly thinks you're a right wing POS and feeds you more.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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(3 replies)
I haven't noticed it, but then again I basically only watch youtube on privacy focused frontends like invidious and newpipe.
For some reason though Newpipe always front-loads hegemonic/anti-communist media like radio free liberty in the search results
Huh... My feed is actually pretty good. I get really aggressive with the "don't recommend channel" option. 🤷♀️ It tried to purge Hasan from my feed for a while though, couldn't find shit even though there's multiple channels putting out several videos a day. It's back to normal though. Search function is still shit as always.
yeah it periodically suppresses leftist creators, especially if you've recently watched a few videos in a row from more lib channels. I just search and watch a few videos from specific leftist channels and it comes back.
A lot of times they don't even allow me to do that. Or it's "sponsored" much like the plethora of "Stick your dick in Hydrogen Peroxie or Isopropyl Alcohol to get hard instantly" that I've reported as false and dangerous medical info. It's a whole whack a mole / shell game with these assholes. They'll just file another form. Switch their name. Find a foreign company ad mill to hide behind. So exhausting.
It's happening to me too, and I haven't even been hate watching any right wing videos lately.
Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about Wetmouth Watson. What's he up to these days?
Sounds like time to purge some of your watch history.
Whatever gets views will get promoted. Right wingers watch them cuz they agree, liberals watch them because they need to post their reaction videos.
That seems to be the default for Youtube shorts if you log out of your account. The longer-form videos being pushed are mostly vapidly annoying shit like Mr. Beast or Sssniperwolf.
Prager U and Daily Wire + ads have been everywhere lately with them proudly showing off that stupid movie nobody's going to watch.
I almost never watch YouTube, I primarily use Newpipe or Invidious (when possible, almost always rate-limited it seems) and YT basically only recommends me Hasan Piker videos
The first one is true though, I tried an all-vegan diet once, next thing I know cops are knocking on my door, accusing me of crazy things like "cannibalism." It's just too much effort to keep up that lifestyle.
I've been using Freetube for a while now and i cannot recommend it enough. It doesn't push you any content aside from the creators you've subscribed to, It looks clean and has great theme customization, its ad-free and of course its FOSS.
Like invidious, Freetube won't use your data to recommend you an infinite stream of curated content for you to consume. I've found myself watching a video and just being satisfied there, with one video. I couldn't handle that before. Youtube's clever algorithm would never let me watch just one video if I had the time for 2 or 3 or 20. And having a subscriber only feed gave me total control over how much reactionary content I see. Its a complete 180 from the standard youtube experience.
I've had to be pretty aggressive in clicking the "don't recommend" button lately, I've been watching a lot of cooking videos in the last month or so and it seems that that's enough to start my recommendations down the generic food video -> BIG MANLY ALL-MEAT DIET -> woke politics destroyed the West pipeline. I just want to watch chinese vegetable cooking videos and magic the gathering streamers, please stop filling my feed with shorts of Joe Rogan talking about why steak is the only way to prevent the gay agenda from winning.
Good idea to check the channels before you click most recommends if you're not sure about the video being spoonfed to you by the algorithm. I have rss set up on pc to just grab from channels I watch instead
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