• @RunawayFixer
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    71 month ago

    I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

    Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

    So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      31 month ago

      That’s wild. It took me watching leftist creators to actually defeat the fashy recommendations, but that’s because I watch gun and 40k videos, so, you know.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      229 days ago

      Nuke your watch history. It’ll generally go right back to your subs and start recommending “normal” stuff later.

      • @RunawayFixer
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        129 days ago

        Thanks for the tip, I’ll give it a try the next time that the algorithm goes nuts.