this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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I used to subscribe to YouTube premium as of just a few days ago. Even without the ads. There was something very seriously wrong with the suggestion algorithm.
I was getting cartel violence videos, and dead animal videos. Never watched one before in my life. Yet. YouTube seems to think that I should want to watch this crock of shit. This started coming up about 6 months ago. Until now I've been reporting each video as they come up. But that doesn't seem to help at all.
At this point I think YouTube is a danger to society - if it's recommending cartel violence videos to me unsolicited, what are they suggesting to my nieces?
I have completely nuked it from my life. Almost all of the YouTubers I like are on Nebula or Floatplane so it doesn't feel like I'm missing much.
As dumb as this is probably going to sound, you're most likely getting those recommendations because you reported them. YouTube sees that as an interaction and that's what they're chasing after. Same for giving videos a thumbs down.
I used to have this exact issue with what was essentially porn on Instagram reels (Meta is evil yeah I know but it's better than shorts and tiktok). I'd report those e-thots videos but it kept showing them because it considered it engagement. Eventually I got the algorithm to show me what I'm actually there for, memes, funny cat videos and the occasional car videos.
Just scrolling past them quickly eventually got it to stop.
It's a real shame that we can't just tell those sites what we want to see, or not see for that matter. Instead were victims of AI/THE ALMIGHTY ALGORITHM. I think that's part of the plan though, keep us on their site searching for content we actually want instead of finding it and being done. I'm dying for a YouTube replacement to come about. I'll enjoy that until the inevitable enshittification comes about.
Clear your history on YouTube. Personally, I've had mine paused for a decade and just subscribe to stuff I like and that is fine.
Definitely never seen anything like that.
I normally would, but my wife has the same problem and she's done that 3 times in the last 6 months. In fact, her problem became MUCH worse because the "clean slate" was far more impressionable. She'd search up beauty routines, only to find that Youtube thinks she now wants to see "popping" videos, even though she's now searching for dinner recipes.
So yeah, I saw her experience and decided "no thanks".
To be fair, MOST of YouTube I watched can be found on Nebula and Floatplane, both of which will likely not have this issue since it's not a user-content platform. Not to mention, the creators likely make more from those platforms anyways.
YouTube is basically unavoidable though, so now I just view everything through a piped instance if I absolutely need something that can only be found there.