1y ago

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?

186 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  Disliking is engagement. Instead tap the three dots and select "not interested"
  
  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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- My shorts is the worst. Regular seems fine. Especially the pods dunking on women. "So who should pay on the first date?".....

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.
- 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.
  
  I watch Linus all the time and almost never get these recommendations. Might be a certain combination of interests?
  
  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.
  
  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.
- To be fair, you did watch a 3 hour JP video...
  
  That's my point, the algorithm doesn't understand context.

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

Because 'conservative' content gets a lot of engagement (ie ad money). The more they recommend it the bigger the audience, the bigger ad payout. They're literally monetizing hate.

Maybe you have the same problem I have: my wife is still a republican. When that kind of stuff shows up, I know she has been watching it on the family PC. She's not that tech savvy, so I usually go in later and block or limit some of it. It's a pain to fight the algorithms.
- As a woman, I can never understand how other women can be Republican.
  My mom was a Dem growing up, but then she fell down the religious rabbit hole after I left home and it was all downhill from there.
  My little sister though? I have zero idea how she ended up Republican. It's fucking bizarre. 🤷‍♀️
  
  “The Leopards won’t eat my face”
  
  In our case, we both grew up in a conservative state with conservative parents. But over time, I drifted away from it (and it drifted in crazy land). However she still hangs on. She's come around on a few things. She often falls into the false equivalence mindset that both sides are just as bad. And whenever she starts to bring up any anti-vax or Joe Rogan BS, I try to stomp on that real quick. But I know she will always vote for anyone with an R by their name when it comes down to it.
  
  My thoughts. It never starts as full blown conservatism but reaches that point by a branching topic. My brother was always financially conservative, boot straps and all that, but over the last 12-18 months as the media he consumes moves further right he has become more socially conservative, because these people were inline with his thinking before so they must be right now of course.
  I caught him going on about trans people corrupting his kids a couple of weeks ago. My brother might be a dick but he wouldn't have been saying that 5-10 years ago.
  
  Some like to hate on others, so maybe that's why.
- Could probably use another account with a different profile and just switch whenever you use the pc
  
  This is why I inist that each person have their own account on a shared pc.

Conservative proganda is a highly coordinated and well-funded network. They pay for preference.
- It's not that so much as Howard Stern theory. The people that like that stuff, click on it and move on.
  The people that hate that stuff hate it enough to interact with it... That means more time on the site, more ads, more revenue.
  It's just the hate algorithms... They're lucrative.

I get them all the time. Pro-gun crap, Jordon Peterson, Joe Rogan, and other trash. I constantly hit “don’t recommend this channel” or “show me less of this” but they still come. I honestly think Youtube is getting paid off.
- Anger drives engagement because your m more likely to comment when you're angry. If you're fine you probably just move on. So the algorithm prioritises stuff that makes people angry.

Machining and blacksmithing are highly correlated with right wing BS in the US. Check my uname and ask me how I know. 😁
- This one may not be so obvious, but I've seen someone lose their marbles over the crazy idea that they get recommended stuff for children when all they watch on YouTube is Minecraft videos and sometimes Roblox. And people in the comments agreed...
  The YouTube subreddit wasn't full of bright people.

For me if I ever look up warhammer 40k it immediately starts sending me losers like quartering or other channels like him.
Like, bo youtube, I don't want to hear about how feminism and "wokes" are ruining warhammer. I also don't want to be sent Sargon of Carl videos. Uhg. Lmao

My interest are gaming, standup comedy, memes, react videos, metalurgy, machining, blacksmithing,
Because a lot of the type of guys who like seeing those stupid conservative videos also like many of the same things as you. Gaming^(TM) is well known to have a problem with the alt-right, react videos have a very similar structure to conservative “libs destroyed with fact and logic” types of videos, and finally a lot of conservatives like to think of themselves as an old fashioned man’s-man so they enjoy things like metalwork and other typical “manly” careers.
- Pretty sure this is it - I see them as well but my interests are science education, gaming, and 3D printing.

Not to be that guy, but you can say "don't recommend this channel again" to YouTube. I haven't seen Quartering, Asmogold, etc for years now. Unless you search for them.
- I had the issue that I got Andrew Tate shit recommended. I said don't recommend that, and block the uploader. Youtube still suggested me that video. Exactly that video.
- I've only been recommended weird stuff like this maybe twice a year, but maybe that's because I've used YouTube since it was new, and it learned my tastes before all this dodgy stuff showed up at all. Maybe I got ahead of it?
  Now I mostly just get recommendations for niche electronic projects, dumb skits, and callmekevin. Just how I like it 😎

Right-wing media is well-funded.

Your interests have a strong correlation with people on the right aside from maybe react videos.
But even if your interested were not so strongly correlated with the right, you would probably still get right wing ads or videos suggested. They garner the highest engagement because it is often outrage porn. Google gets their money that way. My subscriptions are to let wing political channels, science, and solar channels but I still get a decent amount of PragerU and Matt Walsh ads. Reporting then does not stop them from popping up either.
- Yeah big tech loves to throw dumb stuff your way to piss you off and keep you engaged, even if you've never shown an interest before.

Algorithms. It's why I use newpipe on mobile and freetube on desktop. Both allow me to import and export my subscription list, and block ads and have sponsorblock support.
But, most importantly it doesn't make use of the Google algorithm to try and recommend me videos that might be of the radical nature on misinterpretation of past viewing history.

It's because you are a guy in your 30s. You (and me) are in a shitty demographic so the algorithm peddles us shit. It doesn't matter how many times I list shitheel vids by the ppl you me mentioned as "do not recommend channel", I will always have Rogan or Peterson popping up in my feed to ruin my day. It drives me crazy
- It can't just be that though, I'm a guy in my 30s and I never get any of these channels recommended to me, just videos by channels I've subscribed to or similar to what I've been watching, even after watching political videos I don't get those shysters recommended to me.

three dots -> don't recommend channel
use it on anything even a little sus
- My account -> delete
  
  The no account suggestions are even worse

You've probably watched the other side quite often, so YouTube is recommending this for ya to enrage you and keep you engaged. Just good old rage bating
- The devils algorithm.

One thing I noticed about browsing the youtube homepage on PC is if your mouse hovers over a video, it starts playing, and that puts it in your watch history. So you might be accidentally adding a trash video it recommended to your watch history while looking at the other offerings. You can disable the "mouse hover auto play" by clicking your profile pic in the top right > settings > playback and performance > inline playback.

You need to train your algorithm.
When you hover over those videos there will be three dots in the lower right hand corner use either not interested or don't recommend this channel to clear the right wing trash from your feed.
On videos you do like you need to do some engagement, watch complete videos, thumbs up (or down it doesn't matter) and comment.
Do that for a few days and your feed should clear up.
- And make sure to turn off The setting that auto plays the videos in browser if you mouse over them (don't remember the setting's name). Hovering your mouse over it counts as you watching/playing the video if the setting is on.

I've been vegetarian since 2009 and in the past 2-3 years I keep getting all kinds of bow hunting videos.
It's particularly amusing when my plan was to watch an old episode of "The Golden Girls."
They REALLY misread my demographic.

Clear your history! I limit a lot of what Google collects. If I see videos trending in that direction, I clear youtube and start fresh.
- I think it might be the opposite. If extreme content is kind of "default" when the algorithm doesn't know what to give you, them starving it off history might push it into that default more often. I have a very used YouTube account with a metric ton of history and honestly I very rarely see that kind of content. (From Europe though so it might be different)
  
  What I'll do is clear history, then watch something to seed it as a baseline. Eg, one video on low fi music, and another one on how an 18th century naval ship was built. Or perhaps they've just captured all my data secretly and know that extremist videos perform poorly with me?
- You can have Google clear things automatically so it'll only keep things for a certain amount of months.
  Without any history Google often shows pretty extreme videos, so in my experience the lack of any history is not good.

A while back the conservative party of Canada was caught inserting MGTOW / Ben Shapiro tags on all their Youtube uploads. In other words they were poisoning peoples social graph in order to cause exactly what you're talking about.
This is why I use a Google account that is only for Youtube entertainment. I keep it on a separate chromium profile. I turn on all the privacy toggles in the Google account. Only Youtube history is turned on. I curate the watch history.
You cannot tell what content might have breadcrumbs that eventually open the floodgates of far right echo chambers. They do this intentionally. So it requires active measures on your part to counter them. You've got to manage your account with intention. I do not use that account at all for random browsing. I usually do that in incognito on a different browser.

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.
- 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.

Those types of videos have the most engagement. YouTube is trying to show you whatever it thinks will keep you there longer.
Turns out conservative radicalization keeps people longer there. I’ve never googled or watched any Andrew Tate videos but my recommended has at least 3 videos front and center.

Conseratives and fascists are the same group, so I'll refer to them as fascists.
You are talking about one of the core criticisms of corporate secret algorithms to determine what to influence you with. Fascism is forced to creep into everyones world view when you use standard social media, and the average person wouldn't have the slightest idea. Certain key things will be more related to fascist content, like philosophy, psychology, guns, comedy. If you think about what fascists enjoy, or what they need to slander then it makes what I said make more sense.
Jordan Peterson does a lot of vids around psych/philosophy to redirect curious people to false answers that are close to true but more agreeable for fascists. An example of a psychological cooption is "mass psychosis" being coopted into "mass formation psychosis" by fascists. Mass psychosis explains too many true things, where mass formation psychosis redirects people towards a more palletable direction for them.
This is why I want to be nowhere near corporate media if possible. If you delete your cookies(or private browse for the same effect) then youtube will promote the most adjacent things to what you watch like old youtube used to do, although it'll still promote fascism when directly adjacent. With cookies though they have an excuse to have questionable content linger statistically too often.
- You actually believe that every single conservative is a fascist? Jesus Christ political literacy is dead
  
  Maybe you need to go have a read about fascism, then tell me, are the points presented becoming more or less similar to current conservative views?
  
  Not necessarily in all countries, but in the USA I'd say all Republicans are fascist, or at least complicit in the spread of fascism. The conservative wing of the Dems, nah.
  
  He's from lemmy.ml it makes sense

Because the algorithms favor alt right garbage heaps and the companies will never bother to fix them. Hence why we need some regulations.
- Let's be honest. The companies only really care about "engagement" and the Right is more than happy to provide that.
- I'm not sure exactly what you mean about regulations, but I think regulating what political views can and can't be seen on the internet is a very slippery slope. I completely agree that their viewpoint is garbage, however, countries like China and Russia made laws with the same justification, and now they completely control the media in their countries and control the political views of their citizens because of it. That said, as much as I distrust my government, I don't believe they are as bad as Russia or China. However, a day may come where they are just as bad. And if that day comes, I don't want them to be able to control what political views we are allowed to put on the internet.

I very rarely use YouTube, but I've noticed that when I start listening to older top 40 or contemporary bluegrass, those videos drop in
- Youtube really said "you're old, you must be racist" lmao

I bought a new phone a few months back, and just for shits and giggles I tried looking at YouTube Shorts without any account logged in. I clicked on a food Shorts, and within 5 Shorts, I got a "manosphere" video, and within 10 Shorts I got Ben Shapiro.
Unfortunately, fear and rage drive engagement, and these Conservative grifters are more than happy to give it to them and more. That on top of corporations being Capitalists and thus right-wing by default.

"Hi, I'm a guy in early thirties--"
Well there's your answer.

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

you are a closet conservative. the algoritham has spoken.

A few years ago I downloaded a browser extension to stop showing me recommended videos, both on the homepage and on the side of videos. I can only watch what I'm subscribed to and what I search for - you'd think its a big sacrifice because you can't discover as many videos, but in reality I've gained so much more of my time back and control over what I actually want to watch.

metalurgy, machining, blacksmithing
That could be it. I don't know YouTube's algorithm, but typically they work by finding what other users watch the videos you watch and recommending you other videos those people also watched. I wouldn't be surprised if the guys watching blacksmithing videos also tend to watch Joe Rogan and the like.
- I’d argue that gaming and memes are much bigger contributors.

How YouTube became a perpetual Nazi machine

The algorithm is clever enough to know that people that watch a few of those videos are likely to watch a whole lot more. So it’s good business to recommend them as often as possible. If they CAN convince you to dive into that, the stats are that you will start to watch a ton more YouTube content.

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."

You can see what Google (thinks it) knows about you.
Go to your Google Account (https://myaccount.google.com)
Manage your Google Account
Select Privacy and personalisation.
Under this Data & privacy page you'll find History Settings, Ad Settings, and more.
For example, go to Ad Settings and click on Ad Personalization.
Now you'll see How your ads are personalized.
I think you can even remove stuff if you want.

The algorithm wants engagement first and foremost (positive vs negative is irrelevant), after that it wants to push view points that preserve the status quo since change is scary to shareholders. So of course capitalist/fascist propaganda is preferred especially if the host is wrong about basic facts (being wrong drives engagement.)

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
Yeah it really wants me to watch Tim pool. Its like cmon guys I'm too old for that guys tastes. Tiktok will atleast take the hint

I think such content gets most engagement. Dunking on leftist ideas brings right wingers celebrating and parroting the piece while pissed left wingers trying to explain why the argument doesn't make sense.

I'll see major swings in the algorithm from time to time (a week of bass guitar video recommendations for some reason), but I can usually trace back a video or two that I watched that it just decided to try and cram the topic down my throat. I would just say make sure you keep avoiding the conservative vids to try and get the recommendations to stop. I wonder if maybe one of your kids is watching videos on your account and skewing it?
- It can also be linked based where it recommends videos that conservatives have enjoyed that seem unrelated. Like maybe watching home improvement videos and historical war videos then the algorithm feeding new content that seems unrelated but actually is according to it, since it's trying to expose you to new interests to expand the time you spend there.
  Best I found is just not using YouTube with an account and having cookies cleared on exit, or using newpipe (Android) and freetube (desktop) which let's you have an accountless subscription feed with Adblock and sponsorblock support.
- (a week of bass guitar video recommendations for some reason)
  Sometimes I wish youtube's algorithm were sentient so I could shake it and ask why the fuck--
  For me it was a week of growing your own backyard basil. Not herb gardens, not vegetables, not self-sufficiency in general. Literally just basil. I don't even own a single plant.

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.

You can view what Google "knows" about you on your account settings. I made my account when I was very young, I lied about my age and my gender, then it made assumptions based on my interests of my professional situation. I guess many people in my gender and age group, sharing my actual interests (tech, movies, culture, food) are also interested in the kind of content you described (Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Yiannopolous, etc). I keep clicking "not interested", but the algorithm keep suggesting these videos to me. I don't mind that Google doesn't know my politics. I'm a feminist, but there's really not a lot of interesting discourse about feminism on Youtube, so I just read and attend real life lectures instead.

machining
No idea about your algorithm problems but have you seen the Cutting Edge Engineering Australia channel? It's so good.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/zvKG5dgUHNw
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  Piped
  Cool, I didn't know about this. Good bot.

Because controversy makes money and conservatism is filled with controversial opinions and purposely obtuse takes intended to spark conversation and promote divisiveness. That’s the grift.

"The calls are coming from inside the house"~~__****

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.

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Idk about that tbh , I have an account , and my algo is pretty trained , and there are times I have even told youtube to not suggest me peterson and shapiro stuff ! I moslty watch leftist content ! But i still get ben shapiro reacting to barbie and what not ( I am not even an american)

Follow up question: why won’t YouTube Shorts trust me when I say I don’t want to be recommended channels.
So…many…dancing…trends. And they keep sending more.
- YouTube algorithm only cares about engagement not likes or dislikes. It has a neutral impression of likes and dislikes and only cares if people are actively leaving impressions. Whether it's from liking with joy or disliking with anger engagement is a sign to show more. I've heard contrary to logic it's better to just skip immediately and not press anything signifying reception to the content shown, since it'll perceive it as recommendation to show more.
  
  Yeah I can understand that for likes/dislikes or comments of “this is dumb”, but after hundreds of “do not recommend this channel”, the algorithm should be able to tell a lack of interest in a particular content.

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

Just ignore the recommendations, it's mostly bulkshit anyway.
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/ Unhook "ignore"s them for me! It is available for other browsers too.

186 comments