Just anecdotal but I only ever watch duck videos or funny animal videos with occasional other funnies or crazy science things, and that's still all I ever get. Other days I get plenty of cool music like tesla coils making music or other piano music.

Am I youtubing wrong?

So you're saying we need to start pumping out low quality left wing brainrot?

I realized a while back that social media is trying to radicalize everyone and it might not even be entirely the oligarchs that control its fault.

The algorithm was written with one thing in mind: maximizing engagement time. The longer you stay on the page, the more ads you watch, the more money they make.

This is pervasive and even if educated adults tune it out, there is always children, who get Mr. Beast and thousands of others trying to trick them into like, subscribe and follow.

This is something governments should be looking at how to control. Propaganda created for the sole purpose of making money is still propaganda. I think at this point that sites feeding content that use an algorithm to personalize feeds for each user are all compromised.

Alt right videos are made to elicit outrage, hate, and shock which our lizard brains react to more due to potential danger than positive videos spreading unity and love. It’s all about getting as many eyeballs on the video to make money and thi is the way that’s most effective.

I don't think it makes me feel better to know that our descent into fascism is because gru promised 1MM rizz for it

From my anecdotal experiences, it's "manly" videos that seem to lead directly to right wing nonsense.

Watch something about how a trebuchet is the superior siege machine, and the next video recommended is like "how DEI DESTROYED Dragon Age Veilguard!"

Yeah it sure does. There is no way that garbage should be showing up for me, but yet...

There's a firefox extension to hide short and another to default to your subscription. Along with ublock, those are the only things that makes youtube usable.

I don't know if anyone of you still looks at memes on 9gag, it once felt like a relatively neutral place but the site slowly pushed right wing content in the last years and is now infested with alt-right and even blatantly racist "memes" and comment-sections. Fels to me like astroturfing on the site to push viewers and posters in some political direction. As an example: in the span during US-election all of a sudden the war on palestine became a recurring theme depicting the Biden admin and jews as "bad actors" and calling for Trump; after election it became a flood of content about how muslims are bad people and we shouldn't intervene in palestine...

Same happened to me (live in WA) but not only do I get pro-tyranny ads and Broprah (Rogan) shorts, I also get antivax propaganda.

I always use the “show less of this” option or outright remove it from my feed. Seems better now.

I bet thise right wing shorts are proposed and shoehorned in everywhere because someone pays for the visibility. Simple as that.

Yup they have been showing up for me today. Fuck YouTube

I have encountered this too. Around 2 months ago I visited YouTube to watch some video, rejected all cookies and there were "woke" videos everywhere in recommendations. I used it without an account.

Yeah, I've gotten more right wing video recommendations on YouTube, even though I have turned off my history. And even if I turned on my history, I typically watch left wing videos.

I like Youtube (with adblocker) but shorts are pretty trashy. It's mostly shorts of women as naked as they can get on Youtube without breaking the rules who have purposefully given themselves super camel toes and set the thumbnail for the short to show their camel toe to get people's attention. And it's just a front to get you to their OnlyFans.

Instagram does the same thing with "dark jokes" and really weird ufo and conspiracy videos it really sucks

Real talk: I've been using YouTube without an account and with some ad blocking stuff installed. Based on what I'm seeing, I'm pretty sure the algorithm's datapoint for me is "He was born with a penis and is ok with that."

When I lose my better judgement and start scrolling shorts like an idiot, It is fight videos (IRL, movie scenes, UFC and boxing), auditing, Charlie Kirk and right-wing influencers, and the occasional clip from Shoresy on the basis "He might be Canadian too, idk".

It is noticibly weird, and I have brought it up to my kid who uses an account, is not what Youtube believes me to be, and whose shorts feed is very different.

We do both get that guy who opens Pokemon cards with a catchy jingle, though.

Ditch YT