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.
Just anecdotal but I only ever watch duck videos or funny animal videos with occasional other funnies or crazy science things, and that’s still all I ever get. Other days I get plenty of cool music like tesla coils making music or other piano music.
Am I youtubing wrong?
Nah good for you. Maybe it’s because of your geographical location/you just being lucky? I have experienced what the video above says quite a lot though.
I’m not American, so I didn’t exactly see a lot of Trump (although there was some amount of it). I largely saw a lot of Hindu nationalist content (cuz of my geographical location). The more I disliked the videos, the more they got recommended to me. It was absolutely pathetic.
So you’re saying we need to start pumping out low quality left wing brainrot?
Insanely, that seems to be the play. Not logic or reason, but brainrot and low blows. Which is a bit at odds with the actual desire.
fight fire with fire i guess….
maybe people get on board quicker if they feel the emotions first, and then learn the logic….
one good example is Noam Chompsky: every thing is says is gold, but he says it so slow and dispassionately even people who agree with him find it hard to watch.
It only must be extremely simplified and evoke emotional reactions. That’s just basic propaganda rules. The brainrot quality of the content is a consequence of the sheer quantity of the content. You can’t make that volume of content and without making fully automated ai slop.
What the experiment overlooks is that there are PR companies being paid to flood YouTube with rightwing content and are actively trying to game its algorithm. There simply isn’t a left-wing with the capital to manufacture that much content. No soros-bucks for ai minions in keffiyehs talking about medicare.
There’s a firefox extension to hide short and another to default to your subscription. Along with ublock, those are the only things that makes youtube usable.
That doesn’t fix the out-of-the-box experience of the platform for millions, if not billions of people. Yes it’s a good step to take individually, but insufficient to deal with the broader issue raised of latent alt-right propagandizing
I know but I don’t own youtube lol.
That and a Revanced patched version of it - or better yet Piped.
Yeah it sure does. There is no way that garbage should be showing up for me, but yet…
I found youtube shorts very annoying, because I have an attention span and can focus on something for more than 30 seconds. But if you right-click the three dots on a few Shorts sections and click Not Interested, youtube gets the hint and stops offering them to you. Win-win!
It doesn’t seem to work for me, I also keep reporting ads and blocking ads, and they keep serving them up to me. So I have decided to disable YouTube on my phone.
I can no longer report ads on my phone.
I kept reporting ads that were obvious scams(buy my book to get rich, this thing will make your PP hard and your girl squirt like a fountain, etc)
Now I don’t get the three dots on ads.
So I guess YouTube likes the scam ads?
Do YouTubers like having AI narrated dick pill ads in front of their videos?
I have to say they must, if they keep showing those ads.
Interesting, I just scrolled through 10 or 15 pages of my youtube feed and there wasn’t a Short to be found. Maybe it takes some time to happen, I forget. Or you might have to click Not Interested more if you’ve already watched a lot of Shorts - I had only watched like 3. and they were accidental.
Also on YouTube mobile i have an adblock on my computer
I do that but every 30 days the short videos come back and then I have to click on the dots again. It’s not difficult but it’s kind of a dirty trick by YouTube. I look forward to something like peertube reaching critical mass. If YouTube continues to abuse their users, gets too spammy, gets too expensive with the paid tier, I think people will jump ship. Peertube isn’t ready for prime time yet.
Yeah I found it annoying enough I just blocked the entire element.
The problem is when channels you subscribe to pump out shorts. I use the Subscriptions page a lot and it has more and more become flooded with junk shorts that I don’t care about and don’t want to watch on my TV.
Valid point but I would rather miss shorts from channels I subscribe to than see blurbs for all the endless others.
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.
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
Yup they have been showing up for me today. Fuck YouTube
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.
I have encountered this too. Around 2 months ago I visited YouTube to watch some video, rejected all cookies and there were “woke” videos everywhere in recommendations. I used it without an account.
I have to get 2 extensions to make youtube better in order to block shorts, disable autoplay, make UI better, and bring youtube dislike button back. This is excluding ublock origin by the way, so I guess 3 or so
I like Youtube (with adblocker) but shorts are pretty trashy. It’s mostly shorts of women as naked as they can get on Youtube without breaking the rules who have purposefully given themselves super camel toes and set the thumbnail for the short to show their camel toe to get people’s attention. And it’s just a front to get you to their OnlyFans.
Strange, I don’t get anything risque, just tech videos and some improv comedy. I still don’t like shorts though. I’m highly tempted to use revanced to take out the shorts section.
I mostly get stuff about parrots and cake decorating.
I never see anything like that, my recommendations are all tech, game, or stories from Reddit/etc being read. For that last one I just skip the ai generated voices and try to find people actually doing the reading. Make good background noise.
I wouldn’t be against a bit of soft core porn like you describe, but I go to other sites for that
Ditch YT
I’ve ditched their algorithm, but I’m not going back to a text only internet. It’s so much more helpful to listen while I drive or follow along with someone’s screen.
I’d like to see the creators get out of youtube and make more money but I can’t say I like patreon much either.
Would be cool to tie fedeverse into non-profit monetization.
I think the explanation might be even simpler - right wing content is the lowest common denominator, and mindlessly watching every recommended short drives you downward in quality.
I was gonna say this. There’s very little liberal or left leaning media being made and what there is is mostly made for a female or LGBTQ audience. Not saying that men cannot watch those but there’s not a lot of “testosterone” infused content with a liberal leaning, one of the reasons Trump won was this, so by sheer volume you’re bound to see more right leaning content. Especially if you are a cisgender male.
Been considering creating content myself to at least stem the tide a little.
I think some of it is liberal media is more artsy and creative, which is more difficult to just pump out. Creation if a lot more difficult than destruction.
Not necessarily. For example a lot of “manosphere” guys have taken a hold of philosophy,health and fitness topics, a liberal influencer can give a liberal view on these subjects. For example in philosophy, explain how Nietzsche was not just saying that you can do whatever the fuck you want, or how stoicism is actually a philosophy of tolerance not of superiority etc. there’s really a lot of space that can be covered.
Plus fact based videos require research, sourcing and editing.
Emotional fiction only takes as long to create as a daydream.
Creation if a lot more difficult than destruction.
Yup. A lesson that I fear we will be learning over and over and over in the coming years.
Really? As someone who dislikeds both mainstream extremes (I consider myself libertarian), I see a lot more left-leaning content than right-leaning content. I wouldn’t be surprised if >75% of the content I watch comes from a left-leaning creator, nor because I seek it out, but because young people into tech tend to lean left, and I’m into tech.
I refuse to watch those shit shorts; I think your theory has legs. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn them off.
I use YouTube revanced to disable them.
Greatest app ever.
Thanks!
FreeTube on PC and Revanced on phone
yeah i created a new youtube account in a container once and just watched all the popular/drama suggestions. that account turned into a shitstorm immediately
these days i curate my youtube accounts making liberal use of Not interested/Do not recommend channel/Editing my history and even test watching in a container before watching it on my curated account
this is just how “the algorithm” works. shovel more of what you watch in your face.
the fact that they initially will give you right-wing, conspiracy fueled, populist, trash right off the bat is the concern
Man that seems like a lot of work just to preserve a shitty logarithm that clearly isn’t working for you… Just get a third party app and watch without logging in
oddly enough it seems to be working, if i don’t login at all youtube just offers up the usual dross
Oh no, I only watch videos from channels I subscribe to. Just not through YouTube. It’s very easy.
Isn’t the simpler explanation is youtube has and always will promote the alt-right? Also, no longer the alt right, it’s just the right.
No, the explanation that involves conspiracy is not the simpler explanation.
Was it a conspiracy in 2016? Was it a conspiracy that elon bought x to control the narrative? Was it a conspiracy that TikTok has avoided shutdown by glazing trump? Was it a conspiracy when zuck just changed the way they did moderation on Facebook and then showed up at trumps inauguration?
Youtube cucks are the worst.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
YOU’D THINK THAT YES. [caps intended]
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.
