[Nextgrid]

Recommendations are mostly tailored to your history, except with a couple hardcoded slots populated with some general-purpose "engaging" trash from your locale/geographical location, pretty much always political content.

And if you click on one, by mistake or curiosity, now you've sent a signal that you like it and will get much more of it in the next batch of recommendations.

[rkomorn]

Never fails to amaze me how shortsighted the algorithms can be.

"Oh you didn't skip this video on a topic you usually don't watch? How about we make that topic 50% of your next however many videos?!"

[Nextgrid]

They're not short-sighted; there's science behind it. The science of getting people to waste as much time as possible generating "engagement". All of this is A/B tested to hell and people's careers live and die by it.

[rkomorn]

Yes, maybe shortsighted is not the right word, but regardless, they misunderstand signal constantly.

I go out of my way to block accounts that post stuff I don't want in my feed and pretty much all of them see that as an invitation to give me more of the same content. Likely because I "interact" longer with the content since it takes clicks to block the account.

[FlameRobot]

> Recommendations are mostly tailored to your history, except with a couple hardcoded slots populated with some general-purpose "engaging" trash from your locale/geographical location, pretty much always political content.

I don't see that at all. I use YouTube most evenings (I watch YouTube instead of TV).

I do have like traditional news media sometimes on the third or fourth row and you can dismiss that quickly.

> And if you click on one, by mistake or curiosity, now you've sent a signal that you like it and will get much more of it in the next batch of recommendations.

You fix that by simply pressing "Not Interested" a few times. It can be annoying. It isn't the end of the world.

[jeffbee]

This is not true. I have never seen that at all. I rarely use the YouTube main feed, but looking at it right now, it's 100% bicycle repair and cooking.

The idea that YouTube pushes a political point of view is itself a falsehood pushed by people holding a particular point of view.

[xboxnolifes]

I don't know about pushing a certain political point of view, but my 3rd or 4th row of recommendations frequently becomes a labelled "news" section if something big happens either federally or in my state. Separate from normal recommendations.

[Nextgrid]

I am talking about recommendations in the right sidebar of a video.

[floundy]

This is an important caveat. I get recommended what the parent commenter you replied to stated, mostly videos on home repair, tech, and technological skepticism because those are what I watch. I also get Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and other alt-right pipeline dorks in my recommendations solely because of my gender and age. I never engage with political content on YouTube and I’ve cleared my watch history multiple times, these still show up.

I actually ended up disabling watch history all together and I’ve installed an extension (Unhook) that hides the sidebar recommendations, Shorts, and other useless features.

[FlameRobot]

> I also get Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and other alt-right pipeline dorks in my recommendations solely because of my gender and age. I never engage with political content on YouTube and I’ve cleared my watch history multiple times, these still show up.

That doesn't happen. Firstly you literally click on the video and say "don't recommend channel" and you will never see a JRE episode again.

Also, just by how you phrased that whole paragraph. I don't believe you are telling the truth.

None of those characters are "alt-right". "alt-right" essentially means White Nationalist.

You cannot tell me that Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are White Nationalists because of their support for Israel and one of them is Jewish. White nationalists really don't like Israel and Jewish people. They however were labelled as "alt right" to smear them, by other political commentators and publications who are typically on the left and American.

You would only use that framing if you were listening to those commentators and/or publications that used similar phrasing.

Also Jordan Peterson actually talked about addiction on a Joe Rogan podcast and it was one of the things that put me on the road to dealing with my drinking issues. I stopped listening to Joe Rogan about episode 1000 after they stopped being live and were prerecorded.

I have plenty of criticisms of them now. But I Jordan Peterson did help me at least indirectly. I don't watch either of them anymore and haven't watched them for quite a number of years at this point.

[m0llusk]

There are some subtleties here. One of my friends and I are both interested in camping and outdoor gear. This keeps causing YouTube to recommend videos on prepping and guns. Go ahead and block channels and select less of this and it sort of works for a while But then it comes back with more. There are lots of prepping and guns channels. Maybe a pepper who talks about gardens gets highlighted or a gun thing that has a manufacturing complication or business hook comes up. There are many such channels, lots of content, and the connections are very strong, at least with YouTube recommendations.

[FlameRobot]

That happens on car repair vids as well. I like this channel for example:

https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork

He fixes up a lot of different type of vehicles and actually explains in detail what he is doing. A lot of car stuff is just people like do a dyno test of like suped up car, I don't find it very interesting. I end up just blocking those channels.

I really think that people are nitpicking a system that works reasonably well for the most part.

[Sammi]

Rogan, peterson, and shapiro might not like the alt right, but the alt right sure likes them. At which point do they become willing accomplicies?

[FlameRobot]

The alt-right does not like them. You don't know what you are talking about.

[Sammi]

For not liking them they sure cannot stop talking about how much they like what they say.

[FlameRobot]

They do not. The alt-right hate Jews or people who support Israel. Ben Shapiro is a Jew, Jordan Peterson supports Israel and used to work for Daily Wire that had a Jewish host. No white nationalist would ever support that.

You are either lying, or have no idea what you are on about.

[skinnymuch]

You’re too focused on labels. Humans don’t work that neatly. Political labels can work if you and the other person are educated on politics (95%+ of HN isn’t) but otherwise focusing on labels mislead the convo and vibe.

A lot of white nationalists love Israel. Saying they don’t is like saying a lot of fascists don’t love fascism (aka Israel). A lot don’t and a lot do.

Similarly there are plenty of people who are progressive except for Palestine/Israel (it’s a known saying). And plenty of conservative or right wing people who are not progressive except about Palestine.

> You would only use that framing if you were listening to those commentators and/or publications that used similar phrasing.

Projection

[FlameRobot]

> You’re too focused on labels. Humans don’t work that neatly.

No I am using the terms correctly. You (from later on in your reply) aren't.

> Political labels can work if you and the other person are educated on politics (95%+ of HN isn’t) but otherwise focusing on labels mislead the convo and vibe.

These are specific political positions that are held by prominent members. Calling Ben Shapiro a white nationalist is simply idiotic. If you aren't informed about it, maybe you should not make strong claims about it.

> A lot of white nationalists love Israel. Saying they don’t is like saying a lot of fascists don’t love fascism (aka Israel). A lot don’t and a lot do.

No they don't. No white nationalist would support the Jews or Israel. I am sorry you are simply showing your ignorance.

As an aside, Fascism is a wildly misunderstood and misused term. I actually loathe ever talking about it today because like the term "Nazi" it has been totally misused by idiots. You do not understand the term fascist.

> Similarly there are plenty of people who are progressive except for Palestine/Israel (it’s a known saying). And plenty of conservative or right wing people who are not progressive except about Palestine.

Obviously there are splinter groups in any organisation that believe different things. Those people btw are referred to differently.

> Projection

No at all. I am just calling it as I see it. I also lost any good will I would have had with you in the conversation as a result of this jab.

[skinnymuch]

You make it sound like anti-semites will always dislike Israel as if the average evangelical isn’t an anti-semite. This is why normies who don’t understand politics and over emphasis idpol and labels are always surprised when anti-semites can and do love Israel.

[ryandrake]

This exact thing goes on in my YouTube sidebar. Let's say I watch a video game streamer. The sidebar will end up consisting of:

- Same streamer, different video

- Different streamer

- Far right pundit blasts immigration

- Video game streamer

- Video game streamer

- Video game review

- Same streamer, similar content

- Ben Shapiro OWNS Liberals with FACTS

- Video game streamer

- Video game streamer

It's obvious that some slots are simply reserved for whatever YouTube thinks will enrage/engage. Nothing I do seems to stop this. I can click "Don't Show Me This" until I'm exhausted, and next time around, while they might not recommend that exact channel, they just fill these slots with different ragebait. There's no way to say "Don't recommend this shit or anything like it."

[jeffbee]

I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion from this observation. The realization you should have reached instead is that game streamers are highly aligned with the radical right. Those videos are in there because other viewers sought them out after watching the streams.

[tanjtanjtanj]

Or that the youtube algorithm is leading you toward videos that will maximize their metrics (engagement). Video Games is just the example here but I get the same things from other anodyne hobby videos.

[ryandrake]

The "gamer to alt-right pipeline"[1] is weirdly real, but what I don't understand is why all these social media companies are trying to funnel gamers as a particular group into extreme right political content, and why is the alt-right targeting gamers in particular? I guess it's possible that gamers tend intentionally seek out this content, so the algorithm matches this energy, but it would surprise me. Why would gamers want this crap?

1: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/05/660642531/right-wing-hate-gro...

[tanjtanjtanj]

Disaffected male youth almost universally play (or watch people play) video games as their primary form of entertainment.

The point of my comment though, was that it’s not just video game content leading here, it seems to be any male leaning hobby, including weightlifting, sports, tabletop gaming, etc.

[anonymars]

You might find this interesting

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-curious-case-o...

[floundy]

I think it's just the overlap between gamers and a desirable younger male voting demographic that helped Trump win in 2024. These guys aren't watching cable news so it seems logical to try and reach them on the internet.

[anonymars]

When I did this experiment in the browser (different topic, same result) the bait videos were tagged with a little "new"