Wtf is happening to my YouTube recommendations

Quick and easy
- Im just kinda confused. The last overtly religious video I watched was when I was having an existential crisis 7 years ago, why on earth does yt see me watching a video about the history of waffles and think: "you know what this guy wants to see? Someone going on about how our Lord and saviour Elon musk is going to bring about the rapture."
  
  All it takes is one random click on some vague "theory channel", or the the same subject like in this case "musk"
  
  Because this stupid shit is spreading like wildfire. My mom won't stop sending me videos like this.
  
  Maybe you don't want to watch it. But the algorithm is meant to maximize viewing time. And someone (several someone's) with a similar profile and tastes to yours went on a viewing rampage in the past. So they are shooting their shot that you'd behave like your peers.
  This kind of videos are also engagement bait. So they are the algorithm darlings. Optimizing for engagement will always result in the most extremist and unhinged content being promoted. The mildly curious about spirituality to religious nutjob pipeline is very real.
  
  Hmmm you sure you're not watching other techbro stuff? Religion isn't the only factor in play with Elon Musk the Saviour. That said, have a satanic algorithm cleanser here and a magical one here, pushing you towards "atheist mystic scholar" which is pretty much the diametrical opposite of TV evangelist fare. If you want hardcore scholar stuff within an Abrahamic context that also exists. With that under your belt and seen the algorithm should realise that rapture heroin will have no effect on you, presumably it's pushing it because it gets a lot of engagement when it leads people down that path.
  The best antidote to techbro stuff should be things like tesla takedowns as well as actual science journalism.
- I fucking love this button. Every now and then YouTube spams me stupid channels and this gets rid of them.
  Until you know.YouTube decides to recommend another stupid channel.
  Thank you Google.
- This button never works for me anymore. It just keeps recommending the channel.
  
  That button never worked:
  Go into your YT history (https://www.youtube.com/feed/history) and delete the offending video. Your recommendations should be back to normal within 24 hours (ish). There’s even a search bar for it.
- Also turn off history
  
  Turning off history will get you more of these videos
- More than that, “not interested.” So it doesn’t recommend the channel or anything like that.
- that shows engagement to YouTube

Report them, and say don't recommend. It's our civic duty to spam reports so they get taken down automatically. That will increase the amount it suggests to you but to stop that make playlist that can run overnight, fill it with good shit you've already watched so you don't miss anything new and just let that run. It will hopefully clean that shit out a bit.

God how I love using newpipe or invidious to watch yt instead. Whenever I feel like finding stuff, the recommendations are always related to the video currently being watched, which can lead to interesting rabbit holes.

Bruh there's more

One even pseudo-related vid and they'll spam you. Esp if you're in a region where Jesus sells pretty well. I got a ton of that shit when I was in Kansas city for work.
Plus YT is a business, and for the right price they'll show whatever people pay them to show. Welcome to the cyberpunk dystopia
- Okay but why is that image a desktop screenshot with a single "new text document"?
- Oh yeah, when I first got Tik Tok, I got a steady diet of MAGA bullshit because of where I live.
  I've become fundamentally opposed to any algorithm that uses location based data for this reason. Unfortunately, there's no escaping it, but I use Mojeek as my search engine with location off, and I use a VPN as much as I can.
  Sadly, most people just slide right into fascist echo chambers without even knowing it's happening.

Fuck youtube. You watch one wrong video and half of your recomendations are fucked. And why in 2024 there's no proper tag system yet? I guest keeping things opaque makes them more money.
- They used to have a definitive tag system and got rid of it, just like annotations and video responses. sad. Of all things, tags were probably the best too. The new algorithmic garbage has sucked for years.
- Go into your YT history (https://www.youtube.com/feed/history) and delete the offending video. Your recommendations should be back to normal within 24 hours (ish). There's even a search bar for it.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/feed/history
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- I was watching Gun Jesus and almost fucked my recommendations forever when it tried to toss up Garand Thumb as a recommendation.
  "Fortunately" he blew his dogwhistles way too hard in the video and I caught on that this wasn't just dudes shooting at ballistic gel in interesting ways.
  
  I love gun Jesus but man I have to be ever so vigilant to not autoplay the the recommendations. Almost every other youtube gun enthusiast is a raging asshole.

Google wants to radicalize you into conspiracy bullshit because those rubes are easy to sell stuff and get to watch endless videos.
- Google just recommends me videos about dishwashers.
  Not that I'm complaining.
  
  We got turned into Technology Connections recently. It's really good. Highly recommend.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  dishwashers.
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

these are AI generated videos meant to garner views and ad sense dollarinos. They do nothing except waste your time, and probably lie to you.
- Yes all those "list" videos are narrated by AI robots and I've learned to avoid the temptation and never click those.
  
  they're all pretty much ewaste on delivery. Thankfully there are a lot of good smaller channels, who actually produce content out there though.

- Me too man

I use an ad blocker and it pretty much just blocks the entire logarithm

This is why I don't use anything with recommendation algorithm anymore.
These recommendation algorithm are so aggressive in recommending anything related to your click (accidentally touched a ritz ad, now I will throw up if I see any more cracker ads), and also baits like these.
Now I use newpipe/mastodon/lemmy, I can click on whatever I want, and not worrying about stupid recommendations.

Ignoring the original post: I'm so happy to see another Tasting History fan in the wild!
Max Miller seems so wholesome and gives me hope for this crazy world.
- Oh hell yeah he's great! I'm ashamed to admit he's how I learned that schnitzel is not actually a type of sausage as I previously had assumed for whatever reason lol
- Literally one of my favorite YouTubers!

You knew what you were getting into with waffles.
- First waffles, then "is Elon musk the second coming of Jesus christ". Beware the slippery slope!

600K views. whata fuck
- 600k people who just had to know what kinda nonsense it was.
  
  I wish I could be this optimistic
- bots. it's probably all bots.

Uh oh. Looks like musk tried to put everything on a bagel.

I'm having the same problem, YouTube just keeps recommending videos completely outside the scope of my interests and I can't figure out why.
I've been using it a whole lot less now, so I'm not sure what Google's end goal is.
- Serving videos that generate the most income.

Here's a prophecy about to be fulfilled this year: Noodle07 finding a job

I haven't been getting that level of craziness yet, but I just always ignore practically everything that isn't someone I've subbed to and isn't about a cartoon/anime I like, isn't from someone I have already seen before and like but ain't subbed to, and isn't a game/topic I'm interested in.
I've seen some of the people I see on the front page of the Odysee app that I've never interacted with in any other way than scrolling past them appear on the front page of my patched yt app. It's insane, but it won't be a big issue for me, in terms of strictly just using the app, until they replace every suggestion with those nutjobs.

Just yesterday I thought about how Musk can't become president because he's not born in America.
- I thank god everyday

🌅 🌆
↖️ ↗️
Get grayjay Delete your history

Blocking problem YouTubers has been great for my mental health

Is the right one that stage from Mortal Kombat 2

I remember about a decade ago I made an r/AskReddit post that was called something like "who would be the real life Batman?"
Loads of people said it would be Elon Musk and were getting moist over the guy. I wonder how many of those people still actually like him, and how many have fallen further down his rabbit hole.
- At best, Musk is Tony Stark during his alcoholic arc: emotionally unstable, incapable of good decisions and still rich enough to cause trouble to everyone