She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
I find it interesting how some people have so vastly different experience with YouTube than me. I watch a ton of videos there, literally hours every single day and basically all my recommendations are about stuff I’m interested in. I even watch occasional political videos, gun videos and police bodycam videos but it’s still not trying to force any radical stuff down my throat. Not even when I click that button which asks if I want to see content outside my typical feed.
My youtube is usually ok but the other day I googled an art exhibition on loan from the Tate Gallery, and now youtube is trying to show me Andrew Tate.
The algorithm’s goal is to get you addicted to Youtube. It has already succeeded. For the rest of us who watch one video a day, if at all, it employs more heavy-handed strategies.
The experience is different because it’s not one algorithm for everyone.
Demographics are targeted differently. If you actually get a real feed, it’s only because no one has yet paid YouTube for guiding you towards their product.
It would be an interesting experiment to set up two identical devices and then create different Google profiles for each just to watch the algorithm take them in different directions.