If you’ve followed the YT news you’d know this isn’t true. They literally advertise sex to kids in the ads. I watch a bunch of travel people, animal and history programs, and woodworking/handyman stuff. Never once clicked on a short cause they don’t cast. Every day they put up some Korean cheerleader or other bullshit I don’t give 2 shits about. YT algorithm is manipulative as fuck and sucks now. I get most of my vid referrals from outside sites.
The shorts algorithm is really weird I find. The ones it advertises are usually essentially thinly veiled smut (whereas most videos I watch are tech/science/aviation stuff). But (and I think this is important), if I start watching shorts, most of them are normal type shorts in line with what I’d want to watch. So it feels like it puts some stuff up it thinks will grab your attention but doesn’t push it once you’re watching. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it. But, just comes across as weird to me.
I don’t get right wing stuff in shorts, but I do sometimes get it in the main videos suggested. How I think it happens is, I watch some videos about computer games, or perhaps a video on a games/science topic which is made by a channel that either also has right wing content OR their viewers also watch such stuff. So it figures, well if they viewed video A, and viewers that watched video A also watched video B, let’s push video B to that user too. The algorithm doesn’t really understand left or right wing, just pattern matching from views and other metrics.
I find if you start telling youtube that you don’t want to see them, they will go away, at least for a while.
If you click on something the algorithm goes hard on that content from then on. I clicked on a skateboarding short (which I usually have no interest in) and now half my feed is skateboarding, constantly.
Yeah, you sometimes need to curate your videos with the “dont recommend channel” or “dont like the video” or whatever its name is. It tends to happen when I go down a rabbithole - last time I got recommended stupid supra memes from some Turkish guy and watched a couple in a day. Next day, my entire feed is “IS THAT A SUPRA?!!” memes. A couple of clicks later and it’s back to what it was
So what you’re saying is you trust YouTube to do it right? With shorts? I got bombarded with bullshit in shorts, the 50 times they got it in front of my eyes somehow, I never watched any of that in my normal yt rounds. That algorithm is made to brainwash, not to serve you what you want.
I don’t need to “trust” anything other than my eyes. I watch shorts often and never get anything close to “brainwashing” content and it is always tailored to what I watch. I don’t know what your goal is with this comment - are you trying to convince me that that isn’t the case?
My goal is to inform you that your N=1 is unrepresentative, I came in to say: “shorts algorithm suggestions were completely out of wack to my YouTube account(too!)” so now we have at least n=3, and if we can trust each other to say the truth, your ‘its a you problem’ is false. That’s important, because you accused someone of having certain interests, based on their experiences with that algorithm. I think that’s pulling the gun and putting too much ‘trust’ in a commercial YT algorithm, that worked for some (you I guess) but not for all.
I’ve had the same experience as Maalus. I don’t get served right-wing content on videos nor do I get dancing teenage girls.
However, I’ve told YouTube that I’m following about 20 different channels which gives the algorithm a decent idea of what I like and I’ve told YouTube a few years ago not to show me Ben Shapiro videos when it tried once.
I have to ask, if you get right wing videos, do you click on the “Do not show videos like this” button?
With shorts specifically, on my old now non existant account, which had a scary good profile of me, I got washed with right wing bullshit and transphobia when it shoehorned shorts in my life. It knew very very well who I was and that I would not enjoy any of that. I notified YT through don’t show me this again buttons, and when it wouldn’t stop I informed them they had 7 days to get this out of my recommendations or I would close my activity at their website. They did not react, they did not make shorts an option, they did not get the right wing garbage out of the 3 shorts they managed to throw in my face somehow every day when using YouTube. This account was over 10yo. Seeing how good their normal recommendations were, I can only conclude it was broken or bought for shorts, and thus you should be extremely reticent/reluctant blaming it on the users when they get wierd stuff.
The shorts thing is on you buddy. Never had any of that and it’s 100% of shorts by people I watch, or of people that are similar to who I watch.
If you’ve followed the YT news you’d know this isn’t true. They literally advertise sex to kids in the ads. I watch a bunch of travel people, animal and history programs, and woodworking/handyman stuff. Never once clicked on a short cause they don’t cast. Every day they put up some Korean cheerleader or other bullshit I don’t give 2 shits about. YT algorithm is manipulative as fuck and sucks now. I get most of my vid referrals from outside sites.
The shorts algorithm is really weird I find. The ones it advertises are usually essentially thinly veiled smut (whereas most videos I watch are tech/science/aviation stuff). But (and I think this is important), if I start watching shorts, most of them are normal type shorts in line with what I’d want to watch. So it feels like it puts some stuff up it thinks will grab your attention but doesn’t push it once you’re watching. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it. But, just comes across as weird to me.
I don’t get right wing stuff in shorts, but I do sometimes get it in the main videos suggested. How I think it happens is, I watch some videos about computer games, or perhaps a video on a games/science topic which is made by a channel that either also has right wing content OR their viewers also watch such stuff. So it figures, well if they viewed video A, and viewers that watched video A also watched video B, let’s push video B to that user too. The algorithm doesn’t really understand left or right wing, just pattern matching from views and other metrics.
I find if you start telling youtube that you don’t want to see them, they will go away, at least for a while.
If you click on something the algorithm goes hard on that content from then on. I clicked on a skateboarding short (which I usually have no interest in) and now half my feed is skateboarding, constantly.
One misclick, one hate watch, is all it takes.
Also, mouseover long enough and it counts as a watch. There’s very little space between videos that doesn’t count as a mouseover too.
Yeah, you sometimes need to curate your videos with the “dont recommend channel” or “dont like the video” or whatever its name is. It tends to happen when I go down a rabbithole - last time I got recommended stupid supra memes from some Turkish guy and watched a couple in a day. Next day, my entire feed is “IS THAT A SUPRA?!!” memes. A couple of clicks later and it’s back to what it was
So what you’re saying is you trust YouTube to do it right? With shorts? I got bombarded with bullshit in shorts, the 50 times they got it in front of my eyes somehow, I never watched any of that in my normal yt rounds. That algorithm is made to brainwash, not to serve you what you want.
I don’t need to “trust” anything other than my eyes. I watch shorts often and never get anything close to “brainwashing” content and it is always tailored to what I watch. I don’t know what your goal is with this comment - are you trying to convince me that that isn’t the case?
My goal is to inform you that your N=1 is unrepresentative, I came in to say: “shorts algorithm suggestions were completely out of wack to my YouTube account(too!)” so now we have at least n=3, and if we can trust each other to say the truth, your ‘its a you problem’ is false. That’s important, because you accused someone of having certain interests, based on their experiences with that algorithm. I think that’s pulling the gun and putting too much ‘trust’ in a commercial YT algorithm, that worked for some (you I guess) but not for all.
I’ve had the same experience as Maalus. I don’t get served right-wing content on videos nor do I get dancing teenage girls.
However, I’ve told YouTube that I’m following about 20 different channels which gives the algorithm a decent idea of what I like and I’ve told YouTube a few years ago not to show me Ben Shapiro videos when it tried once.
I have to ask, if you get right wing videos, do you click on the “Do not show videos like this” button?
With shorts specifically, on my old now non existant account, which had a scary good profile of me, I got washed with right wing bullshit and transphobia when it shoehorned shorts in my life. It knew very very well who I was and that I would not enjoy any of that. I notified YT through don’t show me this again buttons, and when it wouldn’t stop I informed them they had 7 days to get this out of my recommendations or I would close my activity at their website. They did not react, they did not make shorts an option, they did not get the right wing garbage out of the 3 shorts they managed to throw in my face somehow every day when using YouTube. This account was over 10yo. Seeing how good their normal recommendations were, I can only conclude it was broken or bought for shorts, and thus you should be extremely reticent/reluctant blaming it on the users when they get wierd stuff.
What were your other interests?
I’ve got a lot of transportation, history, travel, and comedy.