“We just joined Truth Social, mostly because we thought it would be very funny,” it explained. “Follow us there for truths and retruths or whatever they call them.”
“We just joined Truth Social, mostly because we thought it would be very funny,” it explained. “Follow us there for truths and retruths or whatever they call them.”
Yup, I watched part of a Tim Cast (never heard of him before the yt recommendation, nor consumed any similar content previously) video, a lot of it was unhinged and I clicked out quickly with the ramping hatred intensity and rage baiting.
It took like a year for yt to stop recommending me similar far alt-right bullshit because I watched maybe five or ten minutes of a Tim Cast video
You don’t have to click on a far-right video. You can also get them when you click on a progressive video, or a medical video, or a gaming video.
When Amazon first introduced their “People who liked X also liked Y” feature, it was hilariously easy to manipulate. You could just spam links back and forth and within a few minutes, “People who liked The King James Bible also like A Hand in the Bush: The Lost Art of Vaginal Fisting”.
It didn’t take too long for them to put a stop to it but decades later, are we actually sure content suggestion algorithms are any better at withstanding manipulation?
The far-right aren’t exactly good people so I doubt they’re saying “Sure, I openly celebrate mass shooters that target minorities but I draw the line at using sleazy techniques manipulate content suggestions”.
My yt algorithm has turned into endless lefty stuff with the occasional funny video, and my ads are nothing but Jordan peterson and TPUSA.
Usually the ones I see are clearly fishing for vulnerable people; a practise they put a huge amount of time, money and effort into.
They’re active in conspiracy groups because it’s a good place to find unmedicated schizophrenics.
They’re active in gaming groups because it’s a good place to find lonely, disaffected young men.
They’re active in anti-vax groups because they’re a good place to find uneducated, paranoid people.
They’re active in fundamentalist circles because it’s a good place to find bigots.
I’ve found that going anywhere near any of those topics will cause the algorithm to start baiting its hook.
I made the mistake of watching a nice little old guy showing how to collect and refine clay. In his video, I got an ad from Epoch times about their new anti-trans smear piece, and two videos from some dude saying that a Democrat planned global food shortage was going to subdue the resistant population so here is why you need solar panels and colloidal silver. The website in the ad went to a single page that tried to sell me “free” trump gold bars that would skyrocket in value. No other links on the page worked. Needless to say, I reported all the ads, but YouTube is still running this harmful and scam-bait content.
I have a similar problem from watching firearm content on YouTube. YouTube just assumes I love right wing media because I’m interested in guns.