this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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YouTube Video Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users, Researchers Suggest (lettersandscience.ucdavis.edu)
submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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YouTube Video Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users, Researchers Suggest::New research shows that a person’s ideological leaning might affect what videos YouTube’s algorithms recommend to them. For right-leaning users, video recommendations are more likely to come from channels that share political extremism, conspiracy theories and otherwise problematic content.

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[–] Amphobet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As tempted as I am to reply "Well, duh," I suppose it's good that we're getting research to back up what we already knew.

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yep. Every time I open YouTube, before signing in, the much of the front page is just far-right conspiracies, blatant misinformation, and other sketchy content.

[–] rckclmbr@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Mines all cycling, music videos, movie trailers, and lofi music. What are we doing differently?

Edit: oh, "before signing in"

Edit 2: I loaded it in an incognito window and it just says "youtube watch history is off" with no recommendations. I really think it's you man

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Edit 2: I loaded it in an incognito window and it just says "youtube watch history is off" with no recommendations. I really think it's you man

Might be something to do with Chrome or that. I'm on Firefox and get a filled out home page when first loading youtube (no history or cookies, mid levels of fingerprint blocking). After logging in, I get the notification for disabled watch history, but not before.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Even before signing in YouTube well still try to recommend what the overall household watches by matching it up to the IP address. It's also why when signing in you sometimes get recommended what someone else in your family watches even if you don't. Same thing happens when you're not signed in too.