I wish Youtube had a "Culture War" button. It would be wonderful to have an easy way to steer clear of culture war bullshit. Not just for YouTube, the whole internet.
Maybe not watching as much youtube would help with your problem of seeing every issue through the lens of a culture war requiring you to dehumanise others with lame insults?
I wish there were a way to "block" youtube channels. I feel similarly about this specific content source, but there are a bunch of others who are far worse on other topics.
Why does YouTube think I want to watch "Student Shuts Down Social Justice Warrior College Professor"?
I'm conservative(ish) in a fiscal sense, but don't read conservative news (because it sucks), don't search for conservative topics (nor really any political topics), and am not interested in any alt-right or political conflict type videos. Yet a smattering of this kind of thing often winds up in sidebar suggestions.
I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. Probably paranoid though and it's more like conflict gets eyeballs to serve ads to. Which is a statement on human nature more than Google. Who knows, but it is annoying.
YouTube should actively try to prevent people from being drawn into racist rabbit holes. If your rabbit hole ends with "and that's why we should exterminate Jews", probably not a good idea to encourage viewers down that path.
Just some food for thought. If youtube was around in the past and doing this stuff they could have deleted videos in support of the following: (these all started as fringe beliefs(1))
> The dislike button on YouTube videos is one of the few remaining signals that what you are seeing is propaganda.
It is a dangerously noisy signal and this change is long overdue. Every COVID-related video on the front page of YouTube is spammed to high heaven with dislikes and "PLANDEMIC"s and "let's go Brandon!"s from right-wing antivaxxers. It's gotten to the point where YouTube is the premier distributor of antivax propaganda—only YouTube puts it one click away from the top of the fold even when not logged in—and it's a major threat to public health.
So if your video in any way can be considered provocative, there’s guaranteed a checkbox to shut it down.
Talking positively about drugs? Based on facts? Who cares, it’s against the status quo. Put it down!
Confronting feminists with facts? Offensive, intolerant! Push the button, shut it down.
Etc.
I find this deeply problematic, but I guess the root of the problem here is YouTube’s de-facto video-monopoly.
If there were more and bigger video-services besides YouTube that wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Then publishers could migrate to a platform with less censorship.
Meh. Pretty lame. Feels like someone is generally not happy with a large share of videos on YouTube. There is also not solution proposed. Censorship is one that comes to mind, and which of course won’t work well. I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies.
Agree. It'd be great if YouTube were actually undertaking to counteract their algos effects. Maybe something as simple as suggesting factually vetted documentaries into the queues.
Yes, it would be nice to be able to watch a WWII history documentary on YouTube and not have the recommendations instantly fill with Hitler/Nazi videos.
YouTube didn't start removing conspiracy and culture war videos until advertisers started boycotting them back in 2017/2018 for having such content.
YouTube has only recently started making a profit. If they didn't censor videos they'd be unable to pay for the servers, storage and bandwidth that everyone seem to feel entitled for.
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