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YouTube Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users

ucdavis.edu

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Re: YouTube Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users

#2
Apparently this is a thing on Audible as well, as I learned recently from Penny Arcade

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/01/algo-rhythms

> Gurb turned me on to a kick-ass book called "The Mysterious Case Of Rudolph Diesel," and I think you should read it if you're interested at all in the world, but you should buy it with cash in a town you don't live in and read it in a dimly lit cavern. Because if you don't, if The System finds out you read a book about a fascinating historical character and his mysterious disappearance, you'll be clocked immediately by their tendrils as… whoever this is.

Re: YouTube Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users

#5
This is not at all surprising. Make a brand new account and watch a few welding or machining videos. You'll be getting PragerU, Daily Wire and Tucker clips in no time. It goes downhill quickly from there. The targeting is pretty explicit.

Re: YouTube Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users

#6
This is true for most algorithms in user created content sites. Also, this isn't exclusive to right-leaning, it's the same for left-leaning, and other types of content all the same. It's just how algorithms work.

The real question should be, should we prevent this type of content from getting recommended, and where are the lines?

Has a side note, I'd love to see a Twitter style Community Notes be implemented on YT. It's the one good feature Twitter has implemented in a long while. And yes, YT has Notes, but they're done by YT themselves (the COVID ones for example).

Re: YouTube Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users

#8
The journey to the dark side starts with some interesting Joe Rogan video, that takes you to Jordan Peterson, then Matt Walsh and ends with Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern and Alex Jones. That is the bottom of the YouTube iceberg. Below that point videos get mass reported and taken down.
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