TLDR if you don’t wanna watch the whole thing: Benaminute (the Youtuber here) creates a fresh YouTube account and watches all recommended shorts without skipping. They repeat this 5 times, where they change their location to a random city in the US.
Below is the number of shorts after which alt-right content was recommended. Left wing/liberal content was never recommended first.
- Houston: 88 shorts
- Chicago: 98 shorts
- Atlanta: 109 shorts
- NYC: 247 shorts
- San Fransisco: never (Benaminute stopped after 250 shorts)
There however, was a certain pattern to this. First, non-political shorts were recommended. After that, AI Jesus shorts started to be recommended (with either AI Jesus talking to you, or an AI narrator narrating verses from the Bible). After this, non-political shorts by alt-right personalities (Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, etc.) started to be recommended. Finally, explicitly alt-right shorts started to be recommended.
What I personally found both disturbing and kinda hilarious was in the case of Chicago. The non-political content in the beginning was a lot of Gen Alpha brainrot. Benaminute said that this seemed to be the norm for Chicago, as they had observed this in another similar experiment (which dealt with long-form content instead of shorts). After some shorts, there came a short where AI Gru (the main character from Despicable Me) was telling you to vote for Trump. He was going on about how voting for “Kamilia” would lose you “10000 rizz”, and how voting for Trump would get you “1 million rizz”.
In the end, Benaminute along with Miniminuteman propose a hypothesis trying to explain this phenomenon. They propose that alt-right content might be inciting more emotion, thus ranking high up in the algorithm. They say the algorithm isn’t necessarily left wing or right wing, but that alt-right wingers have understood the methodology of how to capture and grow their audience better.
Do these companies put their fingers on the scale? Almost certainly
But it’s exactly what he said that’s what brought us here. They have not particularly given a shit about politics (aside from no taxes and let me do whatever I want all the time). However, the algorithms will consistently reward engagement. Engagement doesn’t care about “good” or “bad”, it just cares about eyes on it, clicks, comments. And who wins that? Controversial bullshit. Joe Rogan getting elon to smoke weed. Someone talking about trans people playing sports. Etc
This is a natural extension of human behavior. Human behavior occurs because of a function. I do x because of a function, function being achieving reinforcement. Attention, access to something, escaping, or automatic.
Attention maintained behaviors are tricky because people are shitty at removing attention and attention is a powerful reinforcer. You tell everyone involved “this person feeds off of your attention, ignore them”. Everyone agrees. The problematic person pulls their bullshit and then someone goes “stop it”. They call it negative reinforcement (this is not negative reinforcement. it’s probably positive reinforcement. It’s maybe positive punishment, arguably, because it’s questionable how aversive it is).
You get people to finally shut up and they still make eye contact, or non verbal gestures, or whatever. Attention is attention is attention. The problematic person continues to be reinforced and the behavior stays. You finally get everyone to truly ignore it and then someone new enters the mix who doesn’t get what’s going on.
This is the complexity behind all of this. This is the complexity behind “don’t feed the trolls”. You can teach every single person on Lemmy or reddit or whoever to simply block a malicious user but tomorrow a dozen or more new and naive people will register who will fuck it all up
The complexity behind the algorithms is similar. The algorithms aren’t people but they work in a similar way. If bad behavior is given attention the content is weighted and given more importance. The more we, as a society, can’t resist commenting, clicking, and sharing trump, rogan, peterson, transphobic, misogynist, racist, homophobic, etc content the more the algorithms will weight this as “meaningful”
This of course doesn’t mean these companies are without fault. This is where content moderation comes into play. This is where the many studies that found social media lead to higher irritability, more passive aggressive behavior and lower empathetization could potentially have led us to regulate these monsters to do something to protect their users against the negative effects of their products
If we survive and move forward in 100 years social media will likely be seen in the way we look at tobacco now. An absolutely dangerous thing that was absurd to allowed to exist in a completely unregulated state with 0 transparency as to its inner workings
I’ll get downvoted for this, with no explanation, because it’s happened here and on reddit.
I’m a liberal gun nut. Most of my limited YouTube is watching gun related news and such. You would think I’d be overrun with right-wing bullshit, but I am not. I have no idea why this is. Can anyone explain? Maybe because I stick to the non-politcal, mainstream guntubers?
The only thing I’ve seen start to push me to the right was watching survival videos. Not some, “dems gonna kill us all” bullshit, simply normal, factual stuff about how to survive without society. That got weird fast.
I’ve noticed most firearms channels steer well clear of politics, unless it’s directly related to the topic at hand, I think partly to appeal to an international audience.
I do think the algorithm puts firearms and politics into very separate categories, someone watching Forgotten Weapons probably isn’t going to be interested in political content.
Their algorithms are probably good enough to know you’re interested in guns but not right wing stuff. Simple as that.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen alt-right nonsense without actively looking for it. Occasionally I’ll get recommended some Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro nonsense, but that’s about it.
I consider myself libertarian and a lot of my watch time is on Mental Outlaw (cyber security and dark web stuff), Reason (love Remy and Andrew Heaton videos), and John Stossel, but other than that, I largely avoid political channels. I watch a fair amount of gun content as well.
If I get recommended political stuff, it’s usually pretty mainstream news entertainment, like CNN or Fox News. Even the crypto nonsense is pretty rare, even though I’m pretty crypto-positive (not interested in speculation though, only use as a currency and technical details).
If you’re seeing alt-right crap, it’s probably because you’ve watched a lot of other alt-right crap.
Or the people around you do. I’m shocked occasionally after going home from work lol.
Perhaps. I’m in a very red part of a very red state, so following that logic, my feed would be filled with that crap.
I mostly get tech videos because I mostly watch tech videos, and if they mention politics, they tend to be on the left end of the spectrum, because tech people lean left.
I don’t work with tech people. Tech people are smart. They know how to prevent cross contamination of social media. Lol tech people also know how to curate opinions to suit the situation. My experience has been tech people are privately very conservative. Kinda how everyone was shocked when they found out what a piece of shit musk was. But what do I know I hope I’m wrong but I also made a lot of money betting trump would win this election.
Tech people are smart
I don’t think that’s true, or at least I don’t think tech people are smarter on average. There are a lot of “blue collar” people in tech, by which I mean they learned a skill and apply it according to orders.
I don’t know what you consider “smart,” but I recommend talking about serious issues with a tech person and someone working a skilled blue collar job (e.g. mining engineer, metal fabrication, etc), and I bet you’ll have a similar experience. Some of my favorite people to talk to as a kid worked in construction or something, because they had a very practical form of intelligence that really resonated with me, instead of the airy BS I got from financial or tech people.
People say tech people are smart, but as someone who works in tech, I don’t buy it. I think tech people are just like anyone else, they just have an aptitude for coding.
Sure pal, whatever you say. I have a feeling them blue collar boys have a different opinion but know your soft. Which is why you feel like the financial and tech people bully you cuz.
Where did you get bullying from?
I’m just saying people in “smart” fields think they’re smarter than they are, and other people don’t realize how smart they are. At the end of the day, I think most people who take time to excel in some craft are probably about the same level of intelligence, whether that’s writing code, fixing machines, or trading securities.
I do well in my field (I’m a sr. software engineer and lead a team), and I’m passionate about finance (can speak confidently with most finance types), but I’m no smarter than my mechanic. We just picked different fields where we juggle different balls in our 9-5.
I have had the opposite experience. I watch a few left-leaning commentary channels. Sam Seder, my boy Jesse Dollomore. If I watch a single video about guns (with no apparent ideological divide), within a single refresh I’m getting Shapiro and Jordan Peterson videos. I’m in a red Western state. My subscriptions are mostly mental health, tech, and woodworking. I have to delete history if I stray even a little bit.
I’ve watched some Sam Seder and related as well, mostly if I follow a link from Lemmy or something, but they don’t get recommended unless I watch a bunch. I’m more likely to see Bill Maher or something else more mainstream from the left than a smaller podcaster like Maher. I’d say I see Bill Maher about as much as Jordan Petersen, and I almost never watch either.
I’m in a red state too. My voting district is also one of the more conservative in the state (70+% GOP according to voting stats), though I work in one of the more liberal areas.
My watch history would peg me as NOT a Republican. Youtube’s short feed will serve me
- excerpt from youtuber’s longer video
- tiktok repost from like, the truck astrology guy or “rate yer hack, here we go” guy, etc
- Artificial voice reading something scraped from Reddit with Sewer Jump or Minecraft playing in the background
- Chris Boden
- Clip from The West Wing
- Clip from Top Gear or Jeremy Clarkson’s Farm
- “And that’s why the Bible tells us that Jesus wants you to hate filthy fucking liberals.”
“Do not recommend channel.” “The downvote button doesn’t even seem to be a button anymore but I clicked it anyway.” “Report video for misinformation and/or supporting terrorism.” But the algorithm keeps churning it up.
Guy you replied to is trying to pretend his individual experience is representative of the whole.
I’m not sure there is a “representative of the whole” here; I think the Youtube algorithm is modal.
I think it’s an evolution of the old spam bots, like if you had an email address that in any way indicated you were male you’d get “v1agra” and “c1alis” ads nonstop, I’m sure you’d get makeup and breast enlargement spam or some shit in a woman’s inbox, whatever they can make you feel insecure enough to buy.
truck astrology guy
Huh, never seen that, but of course that exists. I watched part of one and it was as cringy as I thought it would be.
From that list, only one is anything close to “alt right” (last one). I’m guessing a lot of people that like truck astrology or top gear also watch alt right crap, so whatever is causing you to be recommended those videos is probably leading to the last.
I don’t think YouTube’s algorithm looks at content, it probably more looks at what other people watched that watched similar videos as you.
So… in the US then ?
It’s 100% not just the US where the algorithm favours this stuff.
Agreed 100%. Whenever I’m in India, I get Hindu nationalist content A LOT. I briefly attempted the dislike/don’t recommend thing, but nope! I was getting absolutely spammed with stuff like this regardless. I just disabled shorts after that.
You get what you usually click?
I didn’t watch the video, but it’s YT short, you just swipe like tiktok. The few ways to curate the algorithm is to either swipe away quickly, click on the “not interested” button, downvote, or delete watched shorts from history. If you doesn’t interact with any of this and watch the full length of the video, the algorithm gonna assume you like this kind of content. They also will introduce you content you never watched before to gauge your interest, a lot of times it’s not even related to what you currently watched, and if you didn’t do any curation, they gonna feed you the exact type for some times. I don’t know how they manage the curation but that’s the gist of it from my experience. My feed have 0 politics, mostly cats. I control the feed strictly so i got what i demand.
I keep getting recommendations for content like “this woke person got DESTROYED by logic” on YouTube. Even though I click “not interested”, and even “don’t recommend channel”, I keep getting the same channel, AND video recommendation(s). It’s pretty obvious bullshit.
You’d think a recommendation algorithm should take your preferences into account - that’s the whole justification for tracking your usage in the first place: recommending relevant content for you…
YOU’D THINK THAT YES. [caps intended]
deleted by creator
Even in the best-intentioned recommender system, trained on the content you watch to estimate what you’re interested in and recommend similar things, that would be the drift of things. You can’t really mathematically judge the emotions the viewers might feel unless they express them in a measurable way, so observing their behaviour and recommending similar by whatever heuristic. And if they keep clicking on rageposts, that’s what the system has to go on.
But at least giving the explicit indication “I don’t want to see this” should be heavily weighted in that calculation. Just straight up ignoring that is an extra layer of awful.
I feel like it at least used to pretend that it was doing this (YouTube) at least.
I can’t say for recently as I use a third party client these days and do not log in.
Wrong, the whole purpose of tracking your usage is to identify what kind of consumer you are so they can sell your views to advertisers. Recommendations are based on what category of consumer you’ve been identified as. Maintaining your viewership is secondary to the process of selling your views.
I said justification, not purpose. They claim they want to track usage to tailor your experience to you.
They don’t actually believe that, of course, but respecting your explicit expression of interest ought to be the minimum perfunctory concession to that pretense. By this we can see just how thin a pretense it is.
it is. But who said that you get to decide what’s relevant for you? Welcome and learn to trust your algorithmic overlords
Thanks, I hate it
The algorithms are always trying to poke you in the id.
Anything but the subscriptions page is absolute garbage on that site. Ideally get an app to track your subs without having to have an account. NewPipe, FreeTube etc.
Are those available on PC/Linux? On my TV? 😭 I have them on my phone but I feel like there’s too much hassle to do on my main viewing devices.
I use FreeTube on Linux. I think it’s Chromium based, so some people don’t like it, and it’s usually one of the bigger resource hogs when I have it open, but its worth it for the ad-free, subscriptions-only experience imo…
Though lately it hasn’t been behaving well with the vpn…
I mean, on PC I’m not really having much issue. I don’t fall for “recommendations”, and I run ublock origin in Firefox so I have zero ads. All good there. The TV is the worst though…
Well you asked if it worked on PC so… lol
I know, sorry. I realized it wasn’t an issue on PC after the fact.
But the TV… It’s brutal, the amount of long, unskippable ads. It’s worse than on regular/linear television.
And if you don’t want to deal with those breaking (becaue google is actively shooting them in the face) they DO provide RSS feeds for your creators.
Just add the channel url to your feed reader (ex. https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips )and forget the youtube webui exists.
Good. Now the leftists can get a taste of what conservatives have experienced for years.
There is no war but the class war.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer if platforms don’t take a political stance at all. That’s the reason why I use platforms like Lemmy.
I am simply just pointing out that conservative ideologies have been oppressed online and in the media for the greater part of a decade. Funny to see how the left are losing their minds now that they get a little taste of it themselves.
Idealogues getting mad that their ideology is becoming less popular is both predictable and uninteresting. It’s mostly astroturfing. Left vs right is a divide and conquer tactic to get the workers to not rise up against the oligarchs by convincing them to blame other workers for their problems.
Must’ve been hard for you in the 90’s with Xena Warrior Princess being a DEI gay female superhero.
deleted by creator
If I see any alt-right content, I immediately block the account and report it. I don’t see any now. I go to yourube for entertainment only. I don’t want that trash propaganda.
Same. I watched one Rogan video in like, 2019, and it was like opening a flood gate. Almost immediately almost every other recommendation was some right-wing personality’s opinion about “cancel culture” or “political correctness.” It eventually called down once I started blocking those channels and anything that looks like it might lead to that kind of content. I can only imagine what would pop up now.
I don’t think it makes me feel better to know that our descent into fascism is because gru promised 1MM rizz for it
Didn’t watch, why is milo pictured?
The presenter chats with Milo.
Thank you
Don’t be lazy
I’m reading this while my daughter warms up for a chorus. Don’t be a dick.
You could always save it and watch it later if you actually give a shit.
I dont.
So don’t comment at all.
Ok
Instagram is probably notably worse, I have a very establish account that should be very anti that sort of thing and it keeps serving up idiotic guru garbage.
Tiktok is by far the best in this aspect, at least before recent weeks.
deleted by creator
For now.
A couple of years ago, I started two other Instagram accounts besides my personal one. I needed to organize and have more control of what content I want to see at times I choose. One was mostly for combat sports, other sports, and fitness. The second one was just food.
The first one, right off the bat showed me girls with OnlyFan accounts in the discovery page. Then after a few days, they begin showing me right wing content, and alpha male garbage.
The second one, the food account, showed alternative holistic solutions. Stuff like showing me 10 different accounts of people suggesting I consume raw milk. They started sending me a mix of people who just eat meat and vegans.
It’s really wild what these companies show you to complete your profile.
I saw a tiktok video talking about how Instagram starts the redpill/incel stuff early for the young people then they become failures in life at which point they push the guru stuff for “guidance”.
EU and even China has at least made a attempt of holding these companies accountable for the algorithm but US and Canadian government just sat there and did nothing.
I don’t know if anyone of you still looks at memes on 9gag, it once felt like a relatively neutral place but the site slowly pushed right wing content in the last years and is now infested with alt-right and even blatantly racist “memes” and comment-sections. Fels to me like astroturfing on the site to push viewers and posters in some political direction. As an example: in the span during US-election all of a sudden the war on palestine became a recurring theme depicting the Biden admin and jews as “bad actors” and calling for Trump; after election it became a flood of content about how muslims are bad people and we shouldn’t intervene in palestine…
From what I heard, the site was astroturfing long before it took a right turn. But my only sources are online rumors…
Instagram does the same thing with “dark jokes” and really weird ufo and conspiracy videos it really sucks
Not really surprising that short video clips would be used to target people with lower critical-thinking skills and attention spans
Does this mean youtube preferentially selects alt-right shorts, or alt-right people make more shorts? Or some other thing entirely? Jump to your own conclusion.
YouTube selects what gives YouTube the most views for the longest time. If that’s right wing shorts, they don’t care.
Same happened to me (live in WA) but not only do I get pro-tyranny ads and Broprah (Rogan) shorts, I also get antivax propaganda.
I always use the “show less of this” option or outright remove it from my feed. Seems better now.
While Optah has her own problems at least she never chummed with the fascists
True, but the comparison lies more in the fact that- according to her fanbase, she can seemingly do no wrong. They gobble up anything she says like a nest of hungry baby birds.
I see Rogan’s army of dudebros as being no different, only less intelligent.
If they are using a vpn to switch their location, could it be that people in the south are using the same ip to access phub and rightwing crap?
