politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
It's really refreshing to see a suggestion for how to help solve the right-wing rabbit hole problem other than just blaming "education" and saying it needs to be fixed (not that I think fixing education isn't the answer, I just don't think that it is the only answer). Something I've been asking myself since the 2016 election is, what the hell are we going to do about what is happening to our society that is turning people towards hate, bigotry, selfishness and cruelty? Sure, we can try to educate people, but there will always be folks that turn away from public education. Additionally, here's only a fraction of us who attend some form of higher education that might expose us to information that might bring some out of a selfish world view. Meanwhile, all that right wing content has flooded the internet, just waiting to enthrall folks who don't have direction.
Fighting back by introducing an equal (or even greater?) amount of content that opposes hateful ideology is not a bad idea at all as a method to try and catch these folks before they fall into these dark rabbit holes.
This isn’t an actual fix, though. The reason left wingers don’t have the presence the right does on Facebook, YouTube, etc isn’t because of a lack of voices or audiences - it’s because of deliberate manipulation of what is put in front of people. There isn’t really a solution besides finally coming to terms with the fact that the right offers nothing useful and completely and utterly salting their ideology from the earth. And dismantling tech giants, ofc
I recently have gotten into wasting tons of hours on YouTube shorts, and I was very surprised that after a grand total of maybe 12 hours of using the platform, Andrew Tate content was just shoehorned into the algorithm of shorts being presented to me. Up to this point in time I was watching cosmetics, baking cookies, comedy, cooking, just funny hot takes, but then completely out of the blue one day that guy's ugly ass monkey face was on my phone, and even though it was so quick that I couldn't even think of his name, my lizard braid already recognized that he is very dangerous to women, so I opened the menu to select the feature on YouTube that prevents those channels from being promoted to me ever again.
There is 0% chance that the content that I had previously been watching links up in the algorithm to Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, or Andrew Tate. This leads me to believe that YouTube intentionally carves out space for these content creators and makes promises about getting their content in front of everybody's eyeballs, regardless of level of interest in that type of content.
Once an algorithm is understood it can be manipulated. Russia and the right-wing figured out how to tie Trump videos to other popular videos to recommend it to other unsuspecting users. I get recommended right-wing videos while watching unrelated videos. It's algorithm manipulation. It's an endless battle for Google.
When right wingers talk about social media suppressing them I’m always wondering what the actual fuck they’re talking about because it’s the most promoted ideology out there.
On reddit they’d cry “censorship” when people downvoted their posts or disagreed with them… meanwhile, the conservative subs would instantly permaban anyone who questioned what they said on there.
Yeah. I lost a lot of respect for Joe Rogan when he started parroting that nonsense. Now he’s full blown moron and it’s a damn shame.
I watch a lot of YouTube content and almost none of it is political either way. Mostly it's how-to videos, science videos, or music videos. I've noticed two things lately concerning alt-right recommendations - First is, I get alt-right videos recommended when I visit a creator who in addition to their "normal" content has one or more videos that espouse right wing commentary. I recently fell into a rabbit hole of watching reaction videos of people reacting to a band I like and watched a reaction from a channel called LFR Family. Unknown to me since I was just watching one video about a music reaction this channel is run by very pro-trump people and they have several political videos. After I finished the video and went back to the YT home page every other video was a right wing propaganda piece. The second way I've started to get the right wing recommendations is by watching several stand up comedy videos in a row.
What's kind of weird to me is that the very little political content I watch is ostensibly left wing.
I will echo what another user in this thread said and assume that it's because of standup comedy I've seen. However, I usually swipe through the clearly right wing comedians or people whose jokes are like bitching about wokism.
Same for me. I assume the propagandists have found a correlation between standup and people they can influence. I don't watch right wing stand up either in fact I purposely click don't recommend on anything right leaning when I do see it.
On a semi related note, I have just noticed in the last 4 days that there are a bunch of rap and black reaction channels giving a favorable reaction to that country song that was just taken off CMT. I actually took the time and watched some of them in an incognito tab and the reactions are suspiciously similar. The hundreds of comments on these videos are all the same and from users with names like suziwpgt3 or other bot type names. I can't put into words the dismay I feel about the danger of people feeling validated by these obviously faked or paid for reviews.
Wow, that's on another level.
So since starting this thread, I had to change my login account to a professional account on my phone, and then after I was done I switched back to my personal account. All of my " do not recommend settings " have completely reset. I'm seeing videos on shorts that were shown to me two months ago. I'm getting recommendations for Ben Shapiro, his fucking sister, people doing interviews with Jeffree Star and his problematic ass. I can't believe that the algorithm totally resets just because you switch accounts! I have to start all over again trying to take the trash out.
I think something changed in the last few days overall with YT. I have been getting recommendations for videos I watched 4 or 5 years ago and they show as unwatched.
The YouTube algo is fucking insane. You click a video or two that you didn't know was a rightwing nutjob because it had an interesting title and you basically have to delete your account and start over. That shit never ends, it's just bizarre.
Like I've watched hundreds of leftwing videos, but YouTube just does not stop throwing conservative trash my way. I have to search for political videos I agree with. Ones I don't are just in my face, always. I really don't understand what they're trying to do. It never suggests new videos from channels I'm subscribed to most of the time. But Nazi woman hating shit? I always need to see more angry Nazi shit.
Just delete your watch history. That's a lot easier, also make sure to downvote those videos so they don't come back.
You can take it except further by clearing out your YouTube search history as well.
Yup, real solutions usually aren't sexy and don't make good sound bites. Lot's of people are unhappy with life and the idea of being able to fix it themselves with direct action is a very appealing concept. Telling someone their problems are causes by a complex mixture of cultural factors and government policy doesn't give people the instant gratification of hearing that it's the "others" fault.
A guy in a lambo yelling about how women and jews are the real issue is always going to get more attention than a well constructed and reasonable argument on economic policy.
I originally heard this idea about why so many big start ups end with massive fraud but I think it applies here too. The start ups that create reasonable goals and timelines don't get funding because someone else is willing to lie and promise more. By the time it's clear they can't deliver on the promised results, the honest company is out of business. Same in politics, one side is honest, the other side is willing to say whatever they think will win you over no matter if it's true. Obviously one will be more appealing because it's designed to be, but that doesn't mean it has any merit.
You know, I have to admit, you have an excellent point there. Damn.
I primarily watch Destiny 2, sim racing stuff, Nori Yaro and Juicebox Unboxed (drifting channels) and youtube recommends me so many channels which are Angry-Bald-White-Dude-With-A-Beard-Wearing-Oakleys-In-A-Pickup-That-Has-Never-Been-Used-For-Work-But-My-God-He-Is-Assmad-At-The-Latest-Thing-To-Be-Mad-At-And-He-Is-Very-Angry-And-Wants-To-Share-It-With-You-To-Save-Western-Democracy. What on earth does this have to do with any of my other video interests? Youtube is pushing people towards this shite, and it doesn't matter how many times you tell them to not show this video, not interested in this content creator, not interested in this topic, they will keep on being recommended. I don't think it's appropriate to follow up a video about drifting Toyota's around Ebisu Circuit with one about how based Marge Traitor Green is.