I guess I’ve been pretty lucky, because I’ve had a minimum of awful right-wing recommendations on my YouTube page. Part of that is probably my usage patterns-- I’ll happily binge on a topic for days, so my YT is somewhat trained in my tastes (currently it’s crochet/crafting, cute animals, selected videogames, hair cutting and styling, and artists, plus subscribed stuff.)
I subscribe to several left-leaning channels, which (I think) also helps cut down on the regressive propaganda (although ads are another matter. ) A few years back, when I was catching up on Philosophy Tube’s past works, I was directed to a couple of critique videos. They drifted into talking points more than actual discussion of ideas, so those channels got blocked pretty quickly.
Surprising, because my anecdata would seem to indicate the opposite. My watching habits threw up a couple of right-wing videos, but a swift dislike and “don’t show this again” removed them from my feed completely. The algorithm only took a couple of strongly applied hints before it understood what I didn’t want to see.
Huh. I guess I’m doing it wrong. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen hate material or even right-wing stuff in my recommendations.
I don’t use YT much, I’m often not signed in (and when I am I don’t follow any channels), I mostly arrive through a link on BB, and I almost never click on sidebar recommendations.
«blatant virtue signal» The only thing I ever search on YT is ‘Colbert’ and ‘Last Week Tonight.’ «/signal»
How’s your adblocking? I’m only watching YouTube on a computer, never on phone, because that way I can use uBlock Origin, and get no ads. (Puff pieces that are part of the video are a different thing, of course, but those I don’t really mind.)
I do most of my YouTube browsing on my phone. While I have different content blockers, both DNS based and rules based there’s not a lot that seems to work against ads. iOS is also a wasteland for good alternative YouTube clients.
As it turns out, the best way to beat YouTube horrid algorithm (and protect yourself from accidentally getting radicalized by some Antisemitic Flat-Earth Groomer bullshit) is to simply not interact with the platform , except to watch the video you went there to watch
This is very interesting to me because my feed is entirely things I want to see: either more content from channels I already follow, or very similar content that is actually interesting ot at worst relevant but not interesting.
The reason is that I am extremely paranoid about what ends up being associated with my account: every video that I haven’t sought out to watch and that I don’t want to end up on the recommendation database I watch on incognito mode. That includes every single video from Boing Boing. I don’t watch it embedded, I open it up in a separate incognito tab. I also never use the like, dislike, or “don’t show me this” buttons the article talks about.
Wow, that is horrible and also one of those scandals that will probably go nowhere because the general public don’t understand how horrible both the practice is and the people he associates himself with.
The mobile solution for ad-blocking is still uBlock origin- you just need to view things through the browser rather than the app. Firefox for mobile still allows add ons (except on iOS)
As for ads that are part of the video, there’s a solution for that as well:
IDK why, but besides Spotify’s Discover Weekly, all recommendation algorithms on the web seem to be specifically designed to annoy me.
YouTube isn’t even the worst.
The worst for me is Amazon. Whatever they suggest when I look for one specific item seems to be from a dollar store.
YouTube, however, seems to be easily ignorable - I search for something, and after finding and watching, the recommendations are related. (But I don’t use them, at all.)
Using IP addresses generally breaks SSL certificates, so that’s rarely done. However some apps are starting to use DNS over HTTP which bypasses conventional DNS-based blocker approaches. I believe NextDNS (which I linked to earlier) can work around this, but pihole blocking cannot. (I’m not affiliated with NextDNS or anything, I just am a fan of the service.)
My YT recommendations are generally okay, except I get about 50% clickbait garbage. I wish there was an option to not recommend any video with more than 5M views. Anything that has more than that is pretty reliably something terrible and stupid with an eye-catching thumbnail that is a lie. It’s all the “amazing trick” and “I couldn’t believe” genre. That and compilations of bridge disasters or whatever that are stolen content edited badly with bad music and incorrect “facts” in subtitles, or other such trash. Content Farm dreck gaming the algorithm, basically. I use Don’t Recommend Channel a lot, and it does seem to work for me, but I hate how much I have to use it.
You can also use an alternate 3rd party app for Youtube called Youtube Vanced. It’ll play without ads, it even gives you some features that you’d normally have to pay for, like playing music in the background/minimized on your phone. I don’t use it a ton, mainly for music playing but its handy to have
) A few years back, when I was catching up on Philosophy Tube’s past works, I was directed to a couple of critique videos. They drifted into talking points more than actual discussion of ideas, so those channels got blocked pretty quickly.