4 ms·
It’s definitely not small. I’m not particularly political and anecdotally my recommendation bubble has atleast 30% of politically “triggering” videos. These vid
by gremloni 5y ago
It’s definitely not small. I’m not particularly political and anecdotally my recommendation bubble has atleast 30% of politically “triggering” videos. These videos don’t have to be explicitly political but just involve a person that can be considered a “trigger”. I mostly watch videos on wood and metal working.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoWhat YouTube recommends to you is just that, their recommendations. It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. It might be 0.001% of content but make up 30% of the recommendations YouTube gives you.
- naasking 5y ago> It doesn't reflect the actual amount of content that exists, it reflects what YouTube wants you to watch to drive engagement. Exactly. And what drives engagement more than enraging political content? Of course they're going to shove politics in your face even if you've never watched a single one before.
- NavinF 5y agoI too mostly watch woodworking/metalworking. If I ignore the “current events” row of videos that I haven’t clicked on in years (because they are incredibly boring and oversimplify complex topics), less than 1% of my recommendations are political. I wonder how YouTube decides which videos to allow in that special row. Most of them don’t have nearly as many views/hour as my usual recommendations.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoInterestingly we have similar hobbies. I have to actively hit the don't recommend this to me button on all the political stuff. It generally works for a while and then I accidentally watch something close to controversial and I get another flood.
- hnzix 5y agoThe algo loves some ragebait. I ruthlessly remove bad recs and yet I watch one self-help video and suddenly the algo shows me far-right suggestions.
- jquery 5y agoIt’s pretty incredible how hard the recommendation algorithm is trying to make me become right wing. It must assume I am because of my interests and watch history. Not interested, YT.
- yesenadam 5y agoThe fraction of political videos on Youtube is "definitely not small"?! I'd be surprised if it's more than 0.01%, i.e. if more than 1 in 10,000 videos are political.