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.

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.

@flying_gel@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
3410M

I’m not sure it’s just right leaning users. I’m pretty far to the left and I keep ketting anti-trans, anti-covid right wing talking points quite frequently. I keep pressing thumbs down but they keep coming.

@Stovetop@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
1610M

What YouTube sees:

“These videos keep eliciting reactions from users, which means that they prefer to engage with this content. This bodes well for our advertisers.”

Yeah I’ve gotten similar results too. Fwiw, I don’t think downvoting is a good way to change your results. It seems to key into any interaction at all and also watch time. As soon as I see certain people I started just swiping immediately

Create a post

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


  • 1 user online
  • 196 users / day
  • 589 users / week
  • 1.38K users / month
  • 4.49K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 7.41K Posts
  • 84.7K Comments
  • Modlog