At the end of 2016, I was bored and decided to watch a flat earth video. I spent a few evenings going down that conspiracy rabbit-hole as it was completely fascinating. (I couldn't tell if these folks were expertly trolling, or if they were serious). Once I was back to reality (2017) I was done wanting to see anything conspiracy related. It took a year for that stuff to disappear from my right-hand column. I just kept telling myself, "you deserve this... you asked for it".
I watched some of one video whose content would be described by half of the US as political opinion and protected speech. It was mainly misogyny and incitement to racial hatred.
YT’s algorithm seemed to think that I needed to keep being exposed to this, so filled my recommendations with more.
Like the parent, it has taken over a year of me choosing ‘not interested’ for YT to stop trying to persuade me that I should hate most of mankind and actively seek to hurt people who are different from me.
I’m not sure how far from ‘Do no evil’ it is possible to get but this seems like it’s the opposite to me.
My luck with this has been pretty mixed. I tell YouTube that I'm really not interested in things like Jordan Peterson or ASMR by telling them to not recommend that video or that channel whenever they come up. If I'm lucky enough, those suggestions will die down a bit, sometimes for a few weeks it seems. But eventually, they will start popping back up.
I have said not interested in living on boats, making boats, repairing boats, or anything boat related and yet they still pump these videos at me. I wish there was a way to say “never show me a video about boats, in any context”
Youtube changed their recommendation algorithm sometime in 2017 and stopped recommending the more egregious conspiracy videos. Their recs are now rather bland and mainstream.
