[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

So I watched this. Then I watched the next one from the same channel.... auto play into a 3rd. With a 45 minute ad... a man telling men what toxic things women “really want”. Dropped a couple buzz words like “simp”... wtf YouTube?

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Bro, never EVER ride the algorithm.

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

Yup I got a glimpse of what Corsi was talking about a few weeks ago. Yikes.

Yeah, this #### can be dangerous.

(Total side track topic, you’re right. Sorry).

Originally Posted by MarchHare

As PepsiFree noted, this is a huge problem with YouTube's algorithm. It doesn't choose what to show you based on what it thinks you'd enjoy. It chooses the next video based on "engagement", and videos expressing extremist political views (especially extremist right-wing views) tend to drive much higher engagement metrics than other types of videos.

A few years ago, I went looking for a review for a video game I was thinking about buying. After loading the video I was looking for, I took a glance at the recommended videos section on the right. The first two recommendations were other videos about the same game, which makes sense. The third was a video about a different game within the same genre. The fourth video was "Watch Ben Shapiro DESTROY a College Feminist with FACTS and LOGIC". After that it went completely off the cliff into right-wing crazytown.

If you're older than ~25 or so, you probably use YouTube by either clicking a direct link someone sent to you (or posted on this forum) or by manually browsing directly to the YouTube homepage and typing a query into the search bar. That's not how young people use YouTube. They have a selection of channels and content creators they follow and then let the autoplay next video feature determine what they see next. Since the algorithm invariably leads to someone expressing extremist views within the first few recommendations, I see this becoming a vector by which easily impressionable kids and teenagers are radicalized.

Relocating this conversation.