I made sure to remove cookies and not sign in so I think these are the base suggestions made by youtube.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The YouTube algorithm is biased towards content that encourages further engagement, anger causes that, and right wing propaganda is designed to make people angry

  • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is the reason why all corporate media has become the dumpster fire it is (not just social media). They use negative emotion like fear and anger to promote engagement. So all you get as a viewer is stuff that gets you fired up. The quality of journalism is so low now they’re fabricating stuff to engage the viewer. Then there’s no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

    • DrNeurohax@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      To be fair, the 80s were known for having commercials earlier in the day for the channel’s newscasts that stoked fear. “5 items in your kitchen could kill everyone you’ve ever loved. Tune in to STFU News at 6 for more information.”

    • Asafum@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Then there’s no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.”

      Literally Fox News Entertainment when brought to court over Tucker Carlsons bullshit…

      “We’re not news we’re Entertainment™©®, no reasonable person would believe what Mr.Carlson is saying is true.” So they don’t need to have any integrity whatsoever…

  • Mereo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Because these machine learning algorithms only put out what they learn so that they can target the right videos to people. In this case, I think people were searching Youtube for these kinds of videos, so Youtube’s algorithm suggested them.

    • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      Nah they want you to be shocked and start watching. Called engagement, makes money by upsetting peoples emotional state so they become nervous, unhappy, angry etc.

      • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s not antithetical to what the other person said. It is both true that the algorithm does what it think people like and also that bad things get high engagement. The issue is that bad things aren’t accounted for and filtered out appropriately

  • BettyWhiteInHD@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m getting the same suggestions not logged in and no cookies with a VPN’d into Eastern US, so it’s likely that those are just popular topics for people to search for in the US in English. A lot of Americans find protesters annoying and like seeing them getting hurt.

    I don’t think this is a sign of YT taking some kind of intentional stance against protesters, just suggesting what’s popular among YT viewers.

    • Danterious@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Well that sucks if that is the case. People shouldn’t be focusing their anger at protesters it should be at the companies and CEOs.

      • HousePanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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        1 year ago

        Exactly! We have an issue with anger mismanagement. It’s coming out on our fellow class members instead of the people responsible for the predicament. This is carefully done by design through crafted agitation propaganda.

      • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        There is a lot of money spent on making the media portray people as dangerous or crazy when they are protesting. And the media shapes the idiots opinions.

        France is a role model in protesting for the entire world. Of course the American media often ridicules France. I wonder why.

    • HousePanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know that a lot of Americans feel that way. It may seem that way because assholes are generally the most vocal of a group. I certainly don’t want protestors to be owned. Protesting is free speech and should be treated as such. Freedom can be inconvenient to some people.

    • zlatiah@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Tried it myself with hardened Firefox, can confirm that’s the case. It’s even worse, my first search is “getting run over”…

      Probably says more about the type of ppl frequenting YouTube than YT doing some shady stuff. Which honestly sounds more dystopian to me

      P.S. Just realized youtube.com blocks Tor Browser, not cool Ytb.

  • dottedgreenline@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I was looking for Captain Marvel movie content way back when it came out and accidentally clicked on one of those pitiful right-wing, woman-hating nerdbro videos and my suggestions suddenly became quite heavily peppered with similar horrible content. It feels the same thing doesn’t happen with non-conservative content quite so much. I wonder if there’s just so much right-wing and liberal content that the algorithm’s percentage calculations don’t know how to compensate for this sort of political nuance, or is it something more insidious?

    • kali@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m trans, watch OneTopicAtATime and similar pro-trans and pro-gay channels and still get recommended Matt Walsh somehow.

  • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    It’s probably what people have searched for before. I mean why would anyone watch peaceful protest videos on youtube?

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Did you change your IP address as well?

    At any rate, google shows things to people that other people are looking at, as that’s how it’s algorithm decides what is popular or not. So, the conclusion that can be drawn from this, is that most people that search for videos of protestors, are looking to see them get owned. If you consider internet demographics, this should not be that unusual, really.

    • octoperson@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      most people that search for videos of protestors, are looking to see them get owned.

      Not necessarily so. YouTube are after engagement. As the mantra goes; comment, like, share, and subscribe. Sometimes that means showing people what they want to see, sometimes it means getting them hooked on a short term dopamine loop, and sometimes it means making them fight

      • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They’re after views, that’s always the end goal. More views=more revenue. It’s the youtubers that are after engagement, because engagement is a good measure of something that will get a lot of views and thus gets pushed by the algorithm.

        Google wants money. Views get them money. Engagement helps predict an offering that will get more views, and thus they should feed it to more people. They’re right also, it is an accurate predictor. If we don’t want them to do what makes them the most money, that is our responsibility to fix, not theirs.

    • Danterious@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t change my IP address. I don’t know how to do that for free (because I don’t have money to pay for a vpn and I don’t trust what free vpns do with my data).

      • funnystuff97@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you ever find yourself in a pinch and are absolutely needing a VPN for any reason and are willing to spare a couple bucks, I highly recommend mullvad. They were highly approved of on /r/piracy, and they have all the features top-of-the-line VPNs do: doesn’t keep logs, multiple devices per account, servers in dozens of other countries, yadda yadda.

        But the reason I liked them most was that they didn’t operate on a subscription service. You simply bought however much time you wanted, in increments of months at $5/month, and you used it. Your credit card or paypal was not on file, you simply buy time and ran through it. If you wanted more time, you bought more time. They even accepted cash in the mail, which sounds absurd to me. Whenever I need a VPN urgently, I just chuck them $5 and I’ve got 30 days time added to my account, and then I do whatever I need to do. Very convenient.

        But you’re right to never trust free VPNs. They gotta make money somehow, and you know what they say, if they’re not selling a product to you, they’re selling you as a product.

        • Shit@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          These people offer a free VPN but it’s kind of a side project with the donations they get for other projects they run. I can’t think of any other free VPN I would give any trust to.

          https://riseup.net/

  • wtry@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    These are meant to rile you up so you hate-watch them so you stay on the site longer, but they have an unintended side-effect of subtly luring people against protesters and into the realm of ‘SJW FEMINIST GETS OWNED!!!’.

  • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    It’s definitely heavily weighted towards right wing content. Even though it should be less popular. It’s like how right wing states always complain about “liberal spending” but then their entire states are subsidized by blue states because their policies are trash. Right wing ideology can’t stand on its own without ‘training wheels’ ie: funding from massively wealthy donors who want to manipulate people’s reality.

  • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    To be fair, protestors blocking a highway, or the busiest avenue, are annoying the most people so they protest n their place. They should block City Hall, or Congress, or the houses of congressmen. Make the life of those assholes difficult, not the lives of thousands of bystanders.

    • LemmyLefty@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They already do: there are pretty much always protestors at the Capitol. Congresspersons often live in gated communities that can kick people out or not allow entry. How many of those protests are you aware of, compared to those protests that disrupted your daily life?

    • Kichae@kbin.social
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      A protest that doesn’t affect anyone is an ineffective protest. Protests are not billboards for a cause, they’re an attempt to force people in charge to enact change. One of the ways of doing this is to make their problem is your problem by getting in your way.

      • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Protests that affect bystanders are an attempt to embarrass people in charge by making it evident they’re not doing what the protesters want from them.

        I agreed with the Reddit protests, even if they affected people that just wanted to browse their communities, cause they were affecting the people in charge. The bystanders, while affected, were not the target.

        Ad a counter example, fuck the protestors (supposed teachers but they’re just thugs that probably never attended a classroom) that close the railroads/highways in Mexico because they want the government to give more money to their corrupt union (CNTE).

        Protestors are not always in the right, and affecting innocent bystanders is an abusive, selfish way to put indirect pressure. I’d feel more sympathetic to people who try to twist a politician’s arm instead of my own.

    • Danterious@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah no I totally agree. I think it is a mismanagement of action both by the protesters and the bystanders. For protesters talking to bystanders they should make it more fun for bystanders to get involved.

      • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Yes, there’s a huge difference between “Honk if you support X” outside the White House, and “get angry about X because you’re wasting hours in this bottleneck we caused”.

        • Shit@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Yeah the trucker shit had both it was so annoying… Not even locals. literally brought in on trucks to cause congestion, block traffic and honk.

  • darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s because people are becoming increasingly violent as political tensions come to a head, and climate collapse drives it onward.