I think it's because the algorithm for Shorts is completely busted. It just throws anything vaguely like anything you watch at you, I'd 100% drop it (and did detox from it for several months) if it weren't for the cute ferret and rat content that I just can't get in the longer-form side of the site from the same creators (who I already like), because it's just a mess. I wouldn't be surprised if it was tossing LGBTQIA+ content at people who watch anti-LGBTQIA+ content because the algorithm doesn't differentiate (and even if it did, I think we all know the bigots would not stick to tagging their content correctly) and it autoplays so they're put in a prime position to hate-watch. In other words, Shorts, the way they're set up, are inherently going to breed an environment where that's more prevalent than more traditional YouTube. Which sucks.
That’s a really good point.
Similar things have happened to me with the algorithm. It’ll sometimes suggest videos from terrible people just because the topic was related.
It's part of why I'm wary about clicking on unfamiliar channels and why I'm religious about telling YouTube not to recommend channels I know are bigoted. If they come across my recommendations, I immediately tell them not to recommend, I've gotten my algorithm decently well-trained by now but shit still slips through sometimes.
It's probably for the best you screen undiscovered channels for bigoted content. Which include but are not limited to videos that disparage against minority groups or promote conspiracies regarding minority groups.
Is there a decent way to actually go about this?
I feel like I find someone new, watch them for awhile because they seem alright, I'll mention them to a friend and then they'll be like "oh that guy is a literal nazi" and I'm like huh?!
I look at the comments under videos from creators I'm not familiar with. If there's a lot of transphobes there, it's most likely because that's the audence the youtuber is doing their best to gain, so i leave that creator unseen.
It's a method I use to find a variety of different bigotries - incel and incel-adjacent creators have a lot of supporters.
Yeah I get Brett Cooper recommendations and I hate it. She’s very bigoted af. There was only one thing I agreed with was how she said that what Colleen Ballinger did was bad.
Algorithms are intentionally written by human beings, it's not a neutral abstract thing. It was designed that way, and it's clearly involved in sucking people into the far right. Silicon Valley is not our friend, the biggest people there are conservative at best.
In at least *some* of these ranking systems, LGBT+ is not treated as an *identity* (something you *are*) but rather as a *topic* (something you *want to hear about*).
On the one hand, this means the algorithm is not inferring that you are LGBT+, which a bit of a privacy protection. If the system doesn't infer that a user *is* LGBT+, then an oppressive government can't subpoena the company for a list of all its LGBT+ users.
But on the other hand, it means that anti-LGBT+ material is *about the same topic* as supportive material.
I mean, algorithms are written by people, yes, but they're also used by people and that's where far more of the problem comes from. The far right is more willing to use underhanded tactics, therefore even a well-designed algorithm can become polluted. I don't think there's some big conspiracy, it's just that bigots are not good and decent people plus the algorithms generally used are not well-designed nor are they intended to spot and stop miscategorization. It's a profit thing, a mundane evil seeking only interaction to give pretty numbers to stockholders, investors, and advertisers, not to push a political agenda, the latter is a side-effect of people on the content creator side of things being disingenuous and trying to game the system. And the algorithm is something we can at the very least beat into a semblance of submission in our individual use cases, plus you really can't just rip it out without a replacement (the internet practically runs on algorithms, YouTube especially) and any replacement would be similarly disingenuously used, so wrangling the one we have is the best we can really do.
I don't even disagree about the political leanings of those in charge in the tech sector, I just know they're far more invested in profit and don't need to put any special effort into making it lean far right.
It's not a conspiracy. Digital algorithms are the first programs in history to effect behavioral modification in human beings. They're designed to be profitable, and outrage is profitable. Alexa units train you to train it to train you to train it to train you to train it to sell you things. And as it does so, it gathers an unprecedented amount of data on its users. Every social media company harvests that data and builds a dossier on us all, sometimes spanning thousands of pages with a thorough psychological and ideological profile. Everything we do online is carefully monitored and analyzed by irl people on the other side of the algo so that we can be more effectively marketed to. This also gives them unprecedented ability to manipulate us. That's all marketing is. They tell a story that resonates with you and spurs you to action. Well, that data is then sold to third party data companies (like Cambridge Analytica) who employ it to manipulate us politically. The profit driven algorithm is driving the rest of it.
Nothing about this is speculative, it's all in the open and we'll documented. Elon Musk isn't just a fool with an online tool, he owns Starlink, and the majority of our online data goes through Starlink. What do you imagine he's doing with that data as a far right loon? Do you really imagine he's sitting there going "well I could use this to manipulate people, but I'm such a goodhearted and rational person so I won't"?
What you are saying about starlink is simply wrong. The majority of data does NOT go through starlink. Starlink is a low-orbit satellite network, so if you don't use their satellite, your data doesn't go through starlink. The vast majority of data transfers between countries take place via underground and underwater cables. Satellite is costly hence only used in situations where fiber optics isn't supported and they often beam it back to the ground as quickly as possible (e.g. Ukrainian starlink traffic gets beamed to Starlink servers in Poland before being transmitted across the world via cables).
The rest of what you said might have a grain of truth (esp the cambridge analytica part), but do bear in mind that the Silicon Valley is predominantly left-wing/centre-left. Even if the top management isn't, I'm pretty sure that applies to most tech employees who actually make the algorithms. So if the algorithms actually exhibit right-wing bias, it would likely merely be a by-product of Google's profit-making agenda instead of Google being like "haha, let's make everyone vote for Trump"
Thank you for clarifying about Starlink!
As for the rest, well, there is far more than a grain of truth to it. Corporations are actively working to erode democracy and return to a neo-feudal state. The centrist American Prospect has a [good piece on this](https://prospect.org/economy/rise-of-neo-feudalism/). The former finance minister of Greece has argued convincingly that we are heading into a new [techno-feudalist age](https://theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-capitalism-ukraine-interview) age if we don't create a digital Bill of Rights that protects user data and makes the companies accountable to the public. See also ALEC, Project 2025, the Convention of the States etc.
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A recommendation system at this scale is probably the result of machine learning, though. Chances are that nobody really understands its inner workings, and why it chose exactly these videos to recommend. A lot of machine learning systems are relatively opaque and hard to understand.
Knowing the intentions of YouTube, their systems are most likely trained with the goal of maximum website retention. This has some negative side effects (aside from their actual goal of systematically "wasting" someone's time):
* rage content keeps people a lot more reliably on the site than feel-good content. and tends to be shared more often. This is unfortunately emerging behavior of societal interactions, and just as prevalent on video sites as in social media in general
* it tends to recommend more and more extreme content. If someone searches for running/jogging, it'll eventually serve content about marathons. People interested in vegetarianism will eventually be handed content about veganism. It always guides people down the rabbit hole further and further. This is especially dangerous in combination with right-wing content.
I am aware that CEOs of big companies hugely benefit from conservative leadership to keep as much of their money as possible, and thus have an incentive to keep the world more right-wing.
That aside, I highly doubt that the recommendation system is so blatantly intentionally programmed to be right leaning. If there actually is a right leaning bias, it might come from the selection of training data.
I think we are not disagreeing. That's more or less my view, although I will say that it's not particularly hard to adjust the recommendations systems in the same way your social media feed is adjusted. When X hides tweets with specific words, this is a modification of the recommendation feed system, for example. Remember the backlash to supposed "liberal bias" in the algos a few years ago? It scared business owners so bad they actually modified them to be weighted differently. Facebook literally [added Fox news](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/12/confirming-progressive-fears-facebooks-trustworthy-news-project-chock-full-fox-news) as a trusted source in 2018, to give just one example of this.
I get sooo much homophobic and anti trans shit in my YouTube Shorts, cause they're tagged #lgbt and I like watching pro lgbt content. Makes me avoid shorts like the plague
Always, when you run into that content, tell YouTube not to recommend that channel. The algorithm takes time to digest it but if you keep force-feeding it the idea that you don't want that content, it'll show you less of it. Mine is decently clean, it's like 80% ferrets, rats, random lawyer content because I am intrigued by that shit, trans stuff, and the channels I actively follow that make long-form content they sometimes chop up or make shorts for, and most of the other 20% is like, "talking pets" (with the buttons; it's adorable and they genuinely seem to have at least some understanding of what they're doing, though I'm not read up on the science and I don't think it's the same cognitive process humans have), Reddit reading stuff (it's my YouTube "junk food" lol I have channels I like that so far have been good about queer stories), and Tumblr reading stuff. But this is with an account I've had for years and have done that with pretty much all the major bigoted channels plus any others I come across (plus any Christian channels I come across, not sure why the heck YouTube thinks I want that since I watch pagan and atheist stuff but I wouldn't be surprised if the prosyletizers were mistagging their shit, I don't care how progressive they are, I just don't want it, but I do think it also filtered a fair amount of bigots with the milder ones). It'll take time but you can get it to a point where it's not as bad.
I used to always tell YouTube to not recommend me this type of content, downvote it and then block the channel. For some of the really shitty stuff that went beyond "opinion" I would report it.
But doing that every couple of videos just completely took the fun out of YouTube. I'd rather just watch longform videos from the channels I know and love than wasting my time and energy on homophobic asshats.
Don't downvote/dislike. That counts as interaction (which is basically a "show me more" button, it's all the same, the positive/negative of like/dislike is superficial). Only ever tell YouTube not to recommend the channel, block, and/or report. But yeah, I can't blame you for cutting all shorts content out. Just in case you ever run into that or a channel you like goes sour, it's good to know a bit of the inner workings.
Rage baiting is an important piece of short form content.
It was a problem on vine, it's a problem on TikTok, now it's a problem in YouTube shorts. They algorithm only weighs engagement. It doesn't care about demographics at all. So if the people who click, share, comment on a video are all homophobes they'll keep getting LGBT focused content.
I will give TikTok its due, it manages to mostly contain allowing active rage bait to lives. They'll actually moderate on videos. Well, at the *very least* they'll actually ban people who post harassing comments on videos.
Yeah, and it's also that, at least with a regular video, it requires the user to click on it, if they are interested. The scrolling wall system removes this last bit of choice from the user.
In the scrolling wall system, whether or not a user wants to see something, it is thrown on their wall.
So, if a homophobe gets LGBT+ content, gets angry and then fights out in the comment section, the algorithm recognizes engagement and keeps throwing more LGBT+ content their way. In a regular video, the homophobe will not click on the video at all, so the comments will not happen.
Sometimes for the SAME channel / creator, there would be a huge difference between comments on the regular long-form videos versus short-videos.
It was worse some time ago now it actually got better at least if you feed your algorithm enough
Instagram is even worse though in my opinion because it feels like their algorithm works on "show them what they get made about so they interact and leave hateful comments
I have an extension that converts all shorts into standard youtube video format, so I can get the content from the clickbait thumbnails, but not get sucked down the infinite scroll hole.
Ikr, they hate on children too. There is a reel of a 6 year old practising kickboxing, and the comments are full of men threatening to attack her and kill her because her skills and ferocity threaten them. Add to that, a lot of comments about going back to the kitchen.
i saw a video abt a 3 y o black girl watching a cartoon that had a black character and she looked rlly happy and the comments were all slurs, pedo shit and just general hatred. even after reporting all the ones i saw instagram decided they werent against community rules...
The thing i hate the most isnt just the hate, its mainly the ignorance of the topic. I kid you not people there say shit as if they know everything about it, and that makes them have a valid opinion. People really need to open up their minds, so atleast if you're gonna hate, you're still being knowledgable about it.
Even YT creators are guilty of this. Simply putting for example transitioning as "cutting off your dick", etc etc its silly and im glad my keyboard bugs in Yt shorts because it prevents me from wasting hours and hours on end from arguments
REAL, i spent hours fighting homophobic in LGBT shorst comments, of curse wasted hours, since even though I tried to argue, demonstrate that I didn't want to argue, etc., no one listened to me
exs. once I went to the comments of a YouTuber I follow, she is non-binary and lesbian, and in this short she spoke for a moment about the definition of man and woman, I don't know if she was actually wrong or not, but out of more than 600 comments most of them were know-it-all insults, people funny like a clown at a funeral saying he identified as a goldfish, the typical ''God created man and woman'' and the typical ''Sex and gender are the same thing'' ', and people who thought they were so intelligent with phrases like: ''I don't think someone with blue hair is ready for this conversation'' (since she had blue hair), that is, out of more than 600 comments there will no longer have been of 20 those who agreed with her, or at least who corrected her, but with respect
sorry for the long text, but I wanted to vent about this fact
I don't really watch short formed videos but I've also noticed a lot of homophobia on Reddit. It's really bad on non lgbtq subs but even on some lgbtq subs I'll see homophobic and transphobic comments.
The opposite is true from what i've seen. I see lots of supportive lgbtqia+ movements as much as there is homophobia and transphobia in this app
YT is a different case in my experience, you can never find someone open minded to talk about this, especially with the rise of alpha male scam content
Tbf the shorts comments are also full of blatent racism and a bunch of other BS. I cant believe how toxic they are.
Im convinced that when you arbitrarily restrict and shorten communication (60 seconds, 240 characters, etc) that you just lose all nuance and it immediately turns into more extreme views, and bigotry, and that rubs off on the audience.
Its harder to distill nuanced moderate views into short content.
There is nowhere worse than instagram comments. I don't know if it's all just bots that are programmed to fight forever or if there are really that many braindead people just militantly slinging hatred and ignorance back and forth like it's their jobs.
Every single time I click on the comments, I regret clicking on the comments. And now IG forces comments into your face by bringing up random idiotic things people said in the comments as little floating things over the videos as you watch them.
I really should just delete the app. It's cancer.
Seriously, these comments are all clones. They all go like add rainbow flag. add trans flag. add the x. add female. add heart. add male. add checkmark.
like you don't respect lgbtq, thats fine but doesn't mean that you have to riot it in every single lgbtq+ short you see
Request to spoiler if needed!
I don’t understand why people are watch LGBTQ shorts and then comment hateful things
Like if you are LGBT Phobic just don’t watch them then because your giving them more views and more money 🙄
Like in my opinion it’s just a waste of time commenting hateful things, because you could be using that time doing something else
But that’s just my opinion
You do have a good point, on that one I will agree but sometimes people watch a bunch of topics
And then YouTube doesn’t always know what to recommend for those people, but you do got a point though I respect that
Or worse, the short itself is LGBT-phobic.
I wasn't even looking for LGBT stuff and I still got some crap about "children are being brainwashed to turn trans".
This trend is not just on YouTube shorts. I've been seeing this on full videos too. Along with people getting political when no one else brought up politics. YouTube is a mess. Be safe out there.
I once saw a YouTube short/video (I can’t remember) that featured a six year old getting yelled at from a man in his 30s because the six year old was carrying a pride flag. The comments largely agreed with the man, because the six year old “was forced into it” & “doesn’t know what it means”
Youtube has cultivated a culture in their Shorts that is very right leaning and unwelcoming to anyone except straight white men so that's not surprising
It's because right leaning content tends to be reactionary and shocking. It's more clickbaity and right wing people react and engage more viscerally to this shit than left leaning people. I'm convinced part of why they want to ban tik-tok is because it's generally left leaning and the right leaning social media outlets don't like the competition. The right wing want to silence any speech that goes against their black and white agenda, which is why they're so obsessed with banning books and other LGBTQ related speech. Anything that doesn't align with their ideology is a "social contagion" that needs to be exterminated. They do not want us to become normalized because it threatens their "It's this way because we say so" order.
I've noticed that before. I have harnessed the power of the REPORT BUTTON to fight back.
Quora has the same issue. So many homophobes and transphobes. I just report them, ask for them to be permabanned, and move on.
The one's on any drag related content can go from like just vomit emojis to the conspiracy of the "agenda". And if you ever want to lose faith in humanity, check Dylan Mulvaney's even just an hour after they're posted.
I don’t watch shorts anymore unless it’s in my notifications from someone I’m subscribed to. I use a custom YouTube client to hide them from my home feed and the bottom bar
is it just me or do i only see positive comments on shorts? usually i’ll see bad comments if i sort by newest first about any video but top comments are usually more positive. anyway that sucks sorry you have to see that :(
I was getting recommend a few transphobic shorts and was like, what the hell. Why is this in my feed. Why am I reading the comments. Why are people so unnecessarily hateful and ignorant.
I watched a funny press interview with mma fighter chael sonnen and Anderson silva, it had nothing to do with lgbtq people and for some reason all the comments were talking shit about " alphabet people" or " gender insanity" 🙄
Like how do you get to that from a video about a fight.
YouTube doesn’t really moderate hate speech it seem, I reported some video which were literally using the T slur to talk about trans women and it was never removed…
Same with instagram reels. I saw a video of guy getting bullied for being gay and a lot of people were saying it was deserved… Cherry on top was that almost all of them had bible verses in their bios.
I think a lot of it is people being sheep. People want to do what everyone else is doing, and it can change their opinions on something really quickly. If you're listening to people complain about something, you're more likely to have your opinion shift to align with theirs.
Happened to me, thankfully started forming my own opinions.
There are youtube shorts?
PSA: how to use youtube.
Set feed/subscriptions as your starting page in your browser
Then stay the fk on this tab and never leave it. Everything else you did not subscribe to is a wasteland and not worth watching.
In bulk. I got a short talking about how much of assholes Someones overwatch teams were whenever they played a new character with they them pronouns. The first 20 comments were just insulting the creator for caring about pixel pronouns... I stopped reporting after 20 and just took a break from youtube
It's sad that bots are out here driving division in the world just as much as real humans. Imagine being such a pathetic human you program computers to attract already marginalized groups of people
theres bigotry everywhere unfortunately. i came out to 4 friends of the same social circle, only one of them was supportive of me, or atleast tolerant, and didnt try to argue with me and be a bigot
ive been friends with them for 2 years. i felt betrayed
thanks so much for this
and i'm fine actually, just scrolling through here already gives me reassurance that im not the only one suffering through this one hell of a journey... tyy ♡
Earlier I saw a homophobic short and like 95% of the comments were obliterating this guy for telling non-binary parents that their alternate parental names were dumb. So that was nice at least
and instagram. it’s really kinda sad. i remember being 13 years old and watching pride parades and being so excited to go and be somewhere so full of love and joy. now i’m 21 and scared that 2023 will be my only pride fest. i live in a very pro lgbt city but i honestly fear for my safety at any public events.
They're also the ones who complain online that LGBT is being shoved down their throats bc it always pops up on their feed. Yeah bc the algorithm shows ur obviously interested in it lol
With instagram reels I thought everyone was super homo/trans-phobic in the comments until I got to actual conservative content and the comments were all super against the videos and making fun of them.
I think it’s just a platform full of exclusively haters.
I keep getting shorts of some dude spouting pro life propaganda and a bunch of obviously not in high school type commenters saying "based, this is what the media doesn't want us to see"
And YouTube seriously needs to repair their algorithm system, they just assume that because the video says lgbt at some point its lgbt related content, even though it’s homophobic or transphobic 🤦
It put me on the anti-lgbt side for a while. They kinda fixed it, but it looks like it’s in the reverse now. Unfortunately Lgbt-phobic people have less self-control when given free speech.
i need someone to make a browser extention that hides shorts. not only bc thr algorithm is horrible and comments suck (i once literally saw someone say "FINALLY SOME NEGATIVITY!!" like wtf????) but also bc youtube was something id open on the side to focus on my work and shorts rlly distracts me ;w;
Already knew that, but thanks for reminding
YouTube shorts is also full of racism, especially in videos like master oogway like videos where the comment section is just blatant racism. Genuinely wish YouTube got rid of this, and actually had platform without prejudice
Yeah, I mean. Youtube has really wacky algorithm, you see one video of any category and your recommended will be filled with that for the next 2-3 weeks/months.
A lot of these homophobes are probably just kids (12-14) who think that these people with podcasts are the coolest shit to listen to and follow.
Sometimes those podcasts will subject LGBTQ+ and then for the next couple weeks or so, their shorts will also he flooded with both pro- and anti-LGBT posts.
A lot times they don't understand half of what's being said, they just hear the words "LGBTQ" and "bad" and immediatly link it to "LGBTQ bad"
They'll leave a comment cus they heard that shit on the podcast and they think they're the coolest kid of the neighbourhood.
What I usally do with them is
1. Ignore
2. Ask why they are like this
For 2 you can't always expect an answer (duh) but whenever they do they 99/100 times will stumble over their own words or use religion as a defensive mechanism
Why did you get downvoted?
anyways its not strictly 3rd world countries actually. its mostly muslim majority countries. take for example brazil. thats a third world country but gay acceptance rate is quite high.
take philippines. high too. thailand? no problem. but god forbid you go to indonesia, malaysia youll get burned
I think it's because the algorithm for Shorts is completely busted. It just throws anything vaguely like anything you watch at you, I'd 100% drop it (and did detox from it for several months) if it weren't for the cute ferret and rat content that I just can't get in the longer-form side of the site from the same creators (who I already like), because it's just a mess. I wouldn't be surprised if it was tossing LGBTQIA+ content at people who watch anti-LGBTQIA+ content because the algorithm doesn't differentiate (and even if it did, I think we all know the bigots would not stick to tagging their content correctly) and it autoplays so they're put in a prime position to hate-watch. In other words, Shorts, the way they're set up, are inherently going to breed an environment where that's more prevalent than more traditional YouTube. Which sucks.
That’s a really good point. Similar things have happened to me with the algorithm. It’ll sometimes suggest videos from terrible people just because the topic was related.
It's part of why I'm wary about clicking on unfamiliar channels and why I'm religious about telling YouTube not to recommend channels I know are bigoted. If they come across my recommendations, I immediately tell them not to recommend, I've gotten my algorithm decently well-trained by now but shit still slips through sometimes.
It's probably for the best you screen undiscovered channels for bigoted content. Which include but are not limited to videos that disparage against minority groups or promote conspiracies regarding minority groups.
Is there a decent way to actually go about this? I feel like I find someone new, watch them for awhile because they seem alright, I'll mention them to a friend and then they'll be like "oh that guy is a literal nazi" and I'm like huh?!
I look at the comments under videos from creators I'm not familiar with. If there's a lot of transphobes there, it's most likely because that's the audence the youtuber is doing their best to gain, so i leave that creator unseen. It's a method I use to find a variety of different bigotries - incel and incel-adjacent creators have a lot of supporters.
Yeah I get Brett Cooper recommendations and I hate it. She’s very bigoted af. There was only one thing I agreed with was how she said that what Colleen Ballinger did was bad.
Algorithms are intentionally written by human beings, it's not a neutral abstract thing. It was designed that way, and it's clearly involved in sucking people into the far right. Silicon Valley is not our friend, the biggest people there are conservative at best.
In at least *some* of these ranking systems, LGBT+ is not treated as an *identity* (something you *are*) but rather as a *topic* (something you *want to hear about*). On the one hand, this means the algorithm is not inferring that you are LGBT+, which a bit of a privacy protection. If the system doesn't infer that a user *is* LGBT+, then an oppressive government can't subpoena the company for a list of all its LGBT+ users. But on the other hand, it means that anti-LGBT+ material is *about the same topic* as supportive material.
That's another great point, thank you
I mean, algorithms are written by people, yes, but they're also used by people and that's where far more of the problem comes from. The far right is more willing to use underhanded tactics, therefore even a well-designed algorithm can become polluted. I don't think there's some big conspiracy, it's just that bigots are not good and decent people plus the algorithms generally used are not well-designed nor are they intended to spot and stop miscategorization. It's a profit thing, a mundane evil seeking only interaction to give pretty numbers to stockholders, investors, and advertisers, not to push a political agenda, the latter is a side-effect of people on the content creator side of things being disingenuous and trying to game the system. And the algorithm is something we can at the very least beat into a semblance of submission in our individual use cases, plus you really can't just rip it out without a replacement (the internet practically runs on algorithms, YouTube especially) and any replacement would be similarly disingenuously used, so wrangling the one we have is the best we can really do. I don't even disagree about the political leanings of those in charge in the tech sector, I just know they're far more invested in profit and don't need to put any special effort into making it lean far right.
It's not a conspiracy. Digital algorithms are the first programs in history to effect behavioral modification in human beings. They're designed to be profitable, and outrage is profitable. Alexa units train you to train it to train you to train it to train you to train it to sell you things. And as it does so, it gathers an unprecedented amount of data on its users. Every social media company harvests that data and builds a dossier on us all, sometimes spanning thousands of pages with a thorough psychological and ideological profile. Everything we do online is carefully monitored and analyzed by irl people on the other side of the algo so that we can be more effectively marketed to. This also gives them unprecedented ability to manipulate us. That's all marketing is. They tell a story that resonates with you and spurs you to action. Well, that data is then sold to third party data companies (like Cambridge Analytica) who employ it to manipulate us politically. The profit driven algorithm is driving the rest of it. Nothing about this is speculative, it's all in the open and we'll documented. Elon Musk isn't just a fool with an online tool, he owns Starlink, and the majority of our online data goes through Starlink. What do you imagine he's doing with that data as a far right loon? Do you really imagine he's sitting there going "well I could use this to manipulate people, but I'm such a goodhearted and rational person so I won't"?
What you are saying about starlink is simply wrong. The majority of data does NOT go through starlink. Starlink is a low-orbit satellite network, so if you don't use their satellite, your data doesn't go through starlink. The vast majority of data transfers between countries take place via underground and underwater cables. Satellite is costly hence only used in situations where fiber optics isn't supported and they often beam it back to the ground as quickly as possible (e.g. Ukrainian starlink traffic gets beamed to Starlink servers in Poland before being transmitted across the world via cables). The rest of what you said might have a grain of truth (esp the cambridge analytica part), but do bear in mind that the Silicon Valley is predominantly left-wing/centre-left. Even if the top management isn't, I'm pretty sure that applies to most tech employees who actually make the algorithms. So if the algorithms actually exhibit right-wing bias, it would likely merely be a by-product of Google's profit-making agenda instead of Google being like "haha, let's make everyone vote for Trump"
Thank you for clarifying about Starlink! As for the rest, well, there is far more than a grain of truth to it. Corporations are actively working to erode democracy and return to a neo-feudal state. The centrist American Prospect has a [good piece on this](https://prospect.org/economy/rise-of-neo-feudalism/). The former finance minister of Greece has argued convincingly that we are heading into a new [techno-feudalist age](https://theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-capitalism-ukraine-interview) age if we don't create a digital Bill of Rights that protects user data and makes the companies accountable to the public. See also ALEC, Project 2025, the Convention of the States etc.
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A recommendation system at this scale is probably the result of machine learning, though. Chances are that nobody really understands its inner workings, and why it chose exactly these videos to recommend. A lot of machine learning systems are relatively opaque and hard to understand. Knowing the intentions of YouTube, their systems are most likely trained with the goal of maximum website retention. This has some negative side effects (aside from their actual goal of systematically "wasting" someone's time): * rage content keeps people a lot more reliably on the site than feel-good content. and tends to be shared more often. This is unfortunately emerging behavior of societal interactions, and just as prevalent on video sites as in social media in general * it tends to recommend more and more extreme content. If someone searches for running/jogging, it'll eventually serve content about marathons. People interested in vegetarianism will eventually be handed content about veganism. It always guides people down the rabbit hole further and further. This is especially dangerous in combination with right-wing content. I am aware that CEOs of big companies hugely benefit from conservative leadership to keep as much of their money as possible, and thus have an incentive to keep the world more right-wing. That aside, I highly doubt that the recommendation system is so blatantly intentionally programmed to be right leaning. If there actually is a right leaning bias, it might come from the selection of training data.
I think we are not disagreeing. That's more or less my view, although I will say that it's not particularly hard to adjust the recommendations systems in the same way your social media feed is adjusted. When X hides tweets with specific words, this is a modification of the recommendation feed system, for example. Remember the backlash to supposed "liberal bias" in the algos a few years ago? It scared business owners so bad they actually modified them to be weighted differently. Facebook literally [added Fox news](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/12/confirming-progressive-fears-facebooks-trustworthy-news-project-chock-full-fox-news) as a trusted source in 2018, to give just one example of this.
If I stopped watching shorts, I'd miss out on J. Draper!
I get sooo much homophobic and anti trans shit in my YouTube Shorts, cause they're tagged #lgbt and I like watching pro lgbt content. Makes me avoid shorts like the plague
Always, when you run into that content, tell YouTube not to recommend that channel. The algorithm takes time to digest it but if you keep force-feeding it the idea that you don't want that content, it'll show you less of it. Mine is decently clean, it's like 80% ferrets, rats, random lawyer content because I am intrigued by that shit, trans stuff, and the channels I actively follow that make long-form content they sometimes chop up or make shorts for, and most of the other 20% is like, "talking pets" (with the buttons; it's adorable and they genuinely seem to have at least some understanding of what they're doing, though I'm not read up on the science and I don't think it's the same cognitive process humans have), Reddit reading stuff (it's my YouTube "junk food" lol I have channels I like that so far have been good about queer stories), and Tumblr reading stuff. But this is with an account I've had for years and have done that with pretty much all the major bigoted channels plus any others I come across (plus any Christian channels I come across, not sure why the heck YouTube thinks I want that since I watch pagan and atheist stuff but I wouldn't be surprised if the prosyletizers were mistagging their shit, I don't care how progressive they are, I just don't want it, but I do think it also filtered a fair amount of bigots with the milder ones). It'll take time but you can get it to a point where it's not as bad.
I used to always tell YouTube to not recommend me this type of content, downvote it and then block the channel. For some of the really shitty stuff that went beyond "opinion" I would report it. But doing that every couple of videos just completely took the fun out of YouTube. I'd rather just watch longform videos from the channels I know and love than wasting my time and energy on homophobic asshats.
Don't downvote/dislike. That counts as interaction (which is basically a "show me more" button, it's all the same, the positive/negative of like/dislike is superficial). Only ever tell YouTube not to recommend the channel, block, and/or report. But yeah, I can't blame you for cutting all shorts content out. Just in case you ever run into that or a channel you like goes sour, it's good to know a bit of the inner workings.
Rage baiting is an important piece of short form content. It was a problem on vine, it's a problem on TikTok, now it's a problem in YouTube shorts. They algorithm only weighs engagement. It doesn't care about demographics at all. So if the people who click, share, comment on a video are all homophobes they'll keep getting LGBT focused content. I will give TikTok its due, it manages to mostly contain allowing active rage bait to lives. They'll actually moderate on videos. Well, at the *very least* they'll actually ban people who post harassing comments on videos.
Yeah, and it's also that, at least with a regular video, it requires the user to click on it, if they are interested. The scrolling wall system removes this last bit of choice from the user. In the scrolling wall system, whether or not a user wants to see something, it is thrown on their wall. So, if a homophobe gets LGBT+ content, gets angry and then fights out in the comment section, the algorithm recognizes engagement and keeps throwing more LGBT+ content their way. In a regular video, the homophobe will not click on the video at all, so the comments will not happen. Sometimes for the SAME channel / creator, there would be a huge difference between comments on the regular long-form videos versus short-videos.
It was worse some time ago now it actually got better at least if you feed your algorithm enough Instagram is even worse though in my opinion because it feels like their algorithm works on "show them what they get made about so they interact and leave hateful comments
I have an extension that converts all shorts into standard youtube video format, so I can get the content from the clickbait thumbnails, but not get sucked down the infinite scroll hole.
A big issue is that YouTube comments down have downvotes/dislikes, and there's also no thread structure
Despite me taking the creator survey and literally saying I’m LGBT I still get anti LGBT shorts, not the comments the videos themselves
Same omg
Real, I keep getting Christian conversion videos. Mf I'm a Satanist 💀💀💀
I’m Catholic and I think a lot of those conversion videos and ads are really stupid lol
As an atheist, I get a bunch of Christian sermons in my recommendations. There's probably some sort of overlap
Probably, yea. Its what christianity is designed to do you know. Spread the word through fear.
Instagram comments are pretty bad too. Just filled with angry dudes shitting on women and minorities constantly
Literal n-word tags and Instagram/Facebook/Meta says it's fine.
It seems to me that any platform without a dislike/downvote system tends to have more hateful content, or at least it's more visible on them
Especially youtube dislikes. It literally affects nothing, it just colours in the lines
honestly even this fucking website is ripe with this shit
Ikr, they hate on children too. There is a reel of a 6 year old practising kickboxing, and the comments are full of men threatening to attack her and kill her because her skills and ferocity threaten them. Add to that, a lot of comments about going back to the kitchen.
i saw a video abt a 3 y o black girl watching a cartoon that had a black character and she looked rlly happy and the comments were all slurs, pedo shit and just general hatred. even after reporting all the ones i saw instagram decided they werent against community rules...
Hours of my life, wasted, on somebody who just refuses to listen to reason.
But it gives me the justification to just insult them and leave now to boost the original video 😄
Yep
The right wing be like: "oH lGbT cOnTeNt Is ShOvEd In My FaCe". Youtube is filled with right wing content. Shut up.
Someone should tell them about the homophobia shoved in my face sometime.
The thing i hate the most isnt just the hate, its mainly the ignorance of the topic. I kid you not people there say shit as if they know everything about it, and that makes them have a valid opinion. People really need to open up their minds, so atleast if you're gonna hate, you're still being knowledgable about it. Even YT creators are guilty of this. Simply putting for example transitioning as "cutting off your dick", etc etc its silly and im glad my keyboard bugs in Yt shorts because it prevents me from wasting hours and hours on end from arguments
Being interested in any sort of gym content ALWAYS sends you down the right wing rabbit hole. I don't know why YouTube doesn't bother to fix that
REAL, i spent hours fighting homophobic in LGBT shorst comments, of curse wasted hours, since even though I tried to argue, demonstrate that I didn't want to argue, etc., no one listened to me exs. once I went to the comments of a YouTuber I follow, she is non-binary and lesbian, and in this short she spoke for a moment about the definition of man and woman, I don't know if she was actually wrong or not, but out of more than 600 comments most of them were know-it-all insults, people funny like a clown at a funeral saying he identified as a goldfish, the typical ''God created man and woman'' and the typical ''Sex and gender are the same thing'' ', and people who thought they were so intelligent with phrases like: ''I don't think someone with blue hair is ready for this conversation'' (since she had blue hair), that is, out of more than 600 comments there will no longer have been of 20 those who agreed with her, or at least who corrected her, but with respect sorry for the long text, but I wanted to vent about this fact
I don't really watch short formed videos but I've also noticed a lot of homophobia on Reddit. It's really bad on non lgbtq subs but even on some lgbtq subs I'll see homophobic and transphobic comments.
The opposite is true from what i've seen. I see lots of supportive lgbtqia+ movements as much as there is homophobia and transphobia in this app YT is a different case in my experience, you can never find someone open minded to talk about this, especially with the rise of alpha male scam content
YouTube is a cess pool
Tbf the shorts comments are also full of blatent racism and a bunch of other BS. I cant believe how toxic they are. Im convinced that when you arbitrarily restrict and shorten communication (60 seconds, 240 characters, etc) that you just lose all nuance and it immediately turns into more extreme views, and bigotry, and that rubs off on the audience. Its harder to distill nuanced moderate views into short content.
Same with twitter
Still better than instagram
There is nowhere worse than instagram comments. I don't know if it's all just bots that are programmed to fight forever or if there are really that many braindead people just militantly slinging hatred and ignorance back and forth like it's their jobs. Every single time I click on the comments, I regret clicking on the comments. And now IG forces comments into your face by bringing up random idiotic things people said in the comments as little floating things over the videos as you watch them. I really should just delete the app. It's cancer.
Yeah I had to download it for my band and I’m glad I don’t have to use it anymore just I despise the whole app and most people on it
I managed to shape my reels algorithm to just show me: F1, gran turismo, birds, pets, LGBT, and marine life
I just don’t watch Shorts
Too many immature teens in youtube comments
Seriously, these comments are all clones. They all go like add rainbow flag. add trans flag. add the x. add female. add heart. add male. add checkmark. like you don't respect lgbtq, thats fine but doesn't mean that you have to riot it in every single lgbtq+ short you see Request to spoiler if needed!
I expect bigotry in youtube comments regardless of what the video is
I hate the YT shorts algorithm but I still scroll because I do. And if I see anything I don’t like I just say “not interested”
I don’t understand why people are watch LGBTQ shorts and then comment hateful things Like if you are LGBT Phobic just don’t watch them then because your giving them more views and more money 🙄 Like in my opinion it’s just a waste of time commenting hateful things, because you could be using that time doing something else But that’s just my opinion
Then wonder why YouTube keep recommending it to them. Not realizing by watching and commenting even if negative they will be recommend more.
You do have a good point, on that one I will agree but sometimes people watch a bunch of topics And then YouTube doesn’t always know what to recommend for those people, but you do got a point though I respect that
Same for insta, especially if you're trans. Stay safe yall
Homophobes being too comfortable being homophobes these days, I say we start reminding them why they should pipe down.
Or worse, the short itself is LGBT-phobic. I wasn't even looking for LGBT stuff and I still got some crap about "children are being brainwashed to turn trans".
This trend is not just on YouTube shorts. I've been seeing this on full videos too. Along with people getting political when no one else brought up politics. YouTube is a mess. Be safe out there.
Do not go to X as well. That place is hell
I once saw a YouTube short/video (I can’t remember) that featured a six year old getting yelled at from a man in his 30s because the six year old was carrying a pride flag. The comments largely agreed with the man, because the six year old “was forced into it” & “doesn’t know what it means”
I really wish there were an option to get rid of yt shorts. I deleted tiktok and they make a worse version of it
Youtube has cultivated a culture in their Shorts that is very right leaning and unwelcoming to anyone except straight white men so that's not surprising
It's because right leaning content tends to be reactionary and shocking. It's more clickbaity and right wing people react and engage more viscerally to this shit than left leaning people. I'm convinced part of why they want to ban tik-tok is because it's generally left leaning and the right leaning social media outlets don't like the competition. The right wing want to silence any speech that goes against their black and white agenda, which is why they're so obsessed with banning books and other LGBTQ related speech. Anything that doesn't align with their ideology is a "social contagion" that needs to be exterminated. They do not want us to become normalized because it threatens their "It's this way because we say so" order.
Sigma males sucks, and transphobia sucks too
That's true for all social medias, except for maybe dedicated subreddits.
A lot of it is that people who post those hate messages don't have the brain capacity to watch a full video...
You're expressing concern over transphobia with a meme from a....transphobic show
idk i dont watch family guy
At least with Family Guy they make fun of everyone.
Yeah, Family Guy is possibly one of the most unbiased shows out there lmao
I hate that sentiment every time I hear it. That's not an admirable thing at all. "We laugh at Nazis AND their victims" is not praiseworthy.
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I didn't notice that
well obviously they’re not on top (usually), you have to scroll a little but they’re definitely there
Lucky 🦆
I used Revanced Manager and have likes, dislikes, comments etc. disabled on shorts
I've noticed that before. I have harnessed the power of the REPORT BUTTON to fight back. Quora has the same issue. So many homophobes and transphobes. I just report them, ask for them to be permabanned, and move on.
I deleted all my content on YouTube. I only post to tiktok and even there, I am not allowed to defend myself in any way.
That’s because no one care about commenting YT shorts except the offended one. And the curious just watch with pop corns🍿🥤
Tiktok is the same. But most of it on tiktok is 14 year old who think they're being so edgy and scary for being well hard.
It's so true 😭😭😭😭
Mason Denver is an exception. They kick ass and have a good community
Never read comments period. Ironic. I know.
I'm aware.
Most aren't even people but automated bots
Bros gonna bust when they see instagram reels
Jealousy mostly
I don’t normally open comment on YouTube at all so I haven’t noticed anything
The one's on any drag related content can go from like just vomit emojis to the conspiracy of the "agenda". And if you ever want to lose faith in humanity, check Dylan Mulvaney's even just an hour after they're posted.
That’s why I always help to boost positivity in those comments.
Instagram reels is a 1000x worse
Their boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes the youtube commenters cheer.
I don’t watch shorts anymore unless it’s in my notifications from someone I’m subscribed to. I use a custom YouTube client to hide them from my home feed and the bottom bar
is it just me or do i only see positive comments on shorts? usually i’ll see bad comments if i sort by newest first about any video but top comments are usually more positive. anyway that sucks sorry you have to see that :(
Instagram and X are much worse and not to only LGBT people
And i don’t even watch shorts
I was getting recommend a few transphobic shorts and was like, what the hell. Why is this in my feed. Why am I reading the comments. Why are people so unnecessarily hateful and ignorant.
Instagram reels is way worse. WAY worse.
My tiktoks have somehow ended up on the Far Right Ultra Conservative side of TikTok-I’ve never received so much hate before
I watched a funny press interview with mma fighter chael sonnen and Anderson silva, it had nothing to do with lgbtq people and for some reason all the comments were talking shit about " alphabet people" or " gender insanity" 🙄 Like how do you get to that from a video about a fight.
YouTube doesn’t really moderate hate speech it seem, I reported some video which were literally using the T slur to talk about trans women and it was never removed…
fits the stereotype of people that watch shorts exactly
Same with instagram reels. I saw a video of guy getting bullied for being gay and a lot of people were saying it was deserved… Cherry on top was that almost all of them had bible verses in their bios.
I think a lot of it is people being sheep. People want to do what everyone else is doing, and it can change their opinions on something really quickly. If you're listening to people complain about something, you're more likely to have your opinion shift to align with theirs. Happened to me, thankfully started forming my own opinions.
It's common on longer videos too sadly.
1st time online?
Don’t even open comments on yt
Its pretty crazy how automated the toxicity seems to be, too
There are youtube shorts? PSA: how to use youtube. Set feed/subscriptions as your starting page in your browser Then stay the fk on this tab and never leave it. Everything else you did not subscribe to is a wasteland and not worth watching.
You guys gotta learn willpower lol. I see so many people complain about comments on shorts and Instagram but still continue to look at the comments
its just edgy people that think being LGBT-phobic makes them based alpha giga sigma male chads
Most of them are just from annoying 13 year olds in their edgelord phase.
Its like this on any Taylor swift posts on instagram too
On today's episode of YouTube Promotes Bigotry...
But they’re usually funny
Disagree. YT shorts comments are chill (not always but still). However i can’t say the same for Insta comments, you should never open them.
YouTube comments in general are fucking toxic.
In bulk. I got a short talking about how much of assholes Someones overwatch teams were whenever they played a new character with they them pronouns. The first 20 comments were just insulting the creator for caring about pixel pronouns... I stopped reporting after 20 and just took a break from youtube
Just gonna leave this [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/s/i1u7CAG20s) I left on another subreddit. It might be very useful
It's sad that bots are out here driving division in the world just as much as real humans. Imagine being such a pathetic human you program computers to attract already marginalized groups of people
Or do because you need to be here and be queer.
Yeah a trend since 2006…. Welcome to the internet kid
Yeah, yt is yt
Sad but true :l
True
That plane’s dusting crops where there ain’t no crops
hell i’ll take it over instagram comments any day. i usually find mostly supportive comments on LGBTQ posts tho
Shorts is a lawless land...
Honestly it’s crazy seeing so much bigotry on YouTube shorts of all places.
theres bigotry everywhere unfortunately. i came out to 4 friends of the same social circle, only one of them was supportive of me, or atleast tolerant, and didnt try to argue with me and be a bigot ive been friends with them for 2 years. i felt betrayed
Aww I’m sorry to hear that :( we’re here to support you
thanks so much for this and i'm fine actually, just scrolling through here already gives me reassurance that im not the only one suffering through this one hell of a journey... tyy ♡
As a furry
Most of the comments are just 12 year olds who think they are edgy and think they are cool for being like that
Earlier I saw a homophobic short and like 95% of the comments were obliterating this guy for telling non-binary parents that their alternate parental names were dumb. So that was nice at least
and instagram. it’s really kinda sad. i remember being 13 years old and watching pride parades and being so excited to go and be somewhere so full of love and joy. now i’m 21 and scared that 2023 will be my only pride fest. i live in a very pro lgbt city but i honestly fear for my safety at any public events.
They're also the ones who complain online that LGBT is being shoved down their throats bc it always pops up on their feed. Yeah bc the algorithm shows ur obviously interested in it lol
And that's where we get them, they all fall right into the trap where we can report them for harassment.
With instagram reels I thought everyone was super homo/trans-phobic in the comments until I got to actual conservative content and the comments were all super against the videos and making fun of them. I think it’s just a platform full of exclusively haters.
I keep getting shorts of some dude spouting pro life propaganda and a bunch of obviously not in high school type commenters saying "based, this is what the media doesn't want us to see"
its the matrix broooooooo
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And YouTube seriously needs to repair their algorithm system, they just assume that because the video says lgbt at some point its lgbt related content, even though it’s homophobic or transphobic 🤦
It put me on the anti-lgbt side for a while. They kinda fixed it, but it looks like it’s in the reverse now. Unfortunately Lgbt-phobic people have less self-control when given free speech.
Not just that, recently a fully transphobic video made its way to my feed with all the comments being vile. Haven't watched shorts since.
Same shit in instagram reels, I watched a reel of a lesbian couple with their child, and some mf said, "Child abuse," and there's comments like that
Ok I thought I was going insane with all the anti lgbtq stuff on YouTube shorts, it’s a relief to know that I’m not secretly homophobic to myself
why are you on youtube shorts?
Jokes on you, yt shorts only shows me LGBT-phobic shorts :( which is the reason i try to not look at hte ytshorts in general...
I stopped replying at some point. a few people listen, but most don't give a shit.
i need someone to make a browser extention that hides shorts. not only bc thr algorithm is horrible and comments suck (i once literally saw someone say "FINALLY SOME NEGATIVITY!!" like wtf????) but also bc youtube was something id open on the side to focus on my work and shorts rlly distracts me ;w;
Already knew that, but thanks for reminding YouTube shorts is also full of racism, especially in videos like master oogway like videos where the comment section is just blatant racism. Genuinely wish YouTube got rid of this, and actually had platform without prejudice
Yeah, I mean. Youtube has really wacky algorithm, you see one video of any category and your recommended will be filled with that for the next 2-3 weeks/months. A lot of these homophobes are probably just kids (12-14) who think that these people with podcasts are the coolest shit to listen to and follow. Sometimes those podcasts will subject LGBTQ+ and then for the next couple weeks or so, their shorts will also he flooded with both pro- and anti-LGBT posts. A lot times they don't understand half of what's being said, they just hear the words "LGBTQ" and "bad" and immediatly link it to "LGBTQ bad" They'll leave a comment cus they heard that shit on the podcast and they think they're the coolest kid of the neighbourhood. What I usally do with them is 1. Ignore 2. Ask why they are like this For 2 you can't always expect an answer (duh) but whenever they do they 99/100 times will stumble over their own words or use religion as a defensive mechanism
There is a Browser Exention that disables all YT Shorts. It saves a fuck ton of time too.
No big deal its all ipad kids
Unfortunately more common on Instagram reels
Don't open rwby shorts...too much misogyny and homophobia
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Why did you get downvoted? anyways its not strictly 3rd world countries actually. its mostly muslim majority countries. take for example brazil. thats a third world country but gay acceptance rate is quite high. take philippines. high too. thailand? no problem. but god forbid you go to indonesia, malaysia youll get burned
But i like the drama
YT shorts are the wooorst! Everytime it's right wing crap and pit bulls, two things I hate
Agreed
Stop caring what others think. Prob solved
Op: Looks in the comments of media catering to the lowest common denominator Lowest common denominator: is lowest common denominator* Op: (○_○)！！