1y ago

Why does YouTube keep recommending anti-Korea/Japan stories and pro-China stories from the South China Morning Post

I never click on them and I don’t consume any other content related to those countries but every so often I’ll see an anti (those countries) headline in my feed and then the next few days will have pro occupied China stories

It feels like targeted propaganda since I never see good stories about the other countries and it makes me wonder why YouTube hasn’t been broken up if they are too big to monitor that

38 comments

Are they actual video recommendations by YouTube or are they adverts disguised as videos.
If the are the former press the 3 vertical dots next to the video and select not interested or don't recommend thos channel.
If they are the latter go into your Google ad centre and turn off advert personalisation.
If you still get them, purge your watch history.
- Actual videos but no account to block them
  
  Are you watching videos about Asia?
  YouTube always starts recommending far right authortian content, because if someone watches that stuff, statistically they'll watch a lot of them. Without an account, they're just exposing you to them hoping you'll bite and get hooked.
  
  Whatever videos you're watching are subject adjacent to these videos.

Generally the algorithm tries to recommend "controversial" content as that makes people spend more time on the platform which leads to you in turn seeing more ads in that time.
As to any specifics, nobody knows. Even Google engineers have no clue as they have no granual control of that algorithm.
- I see this "drives engagement" claim all the time and at first glance it makes sense. But why would they do things like remove recommendations completely for users without watch history turned on? That is the exact opposite of driving engagement.
  
  They need watch history to be able to track different metrics about you so it's a gamble to make people that are used to relying on those recommendations to turn it back on. And they don't remove recommendations completely, just from the home page as far as I know. I don't use YouTube native client.

This is why I ublock origin and have a Pi-hole. Filtering tools are a major requirement for me.
The open internet, as beautiful as it is, does allow state run propaganda to disguise as common ads. And for me, fuck that.

I started getting those too. Only recent Asian YouTube material I've been watching has been a podcast in Japan and one Piece anime clips lol. I get the South China posts every day now.

50 cent army is no joke

Vaguely related: yesterday I subscribed to a Japanese guitarist's channel and then Youtube started spamming my feed with Hungarian political videos. Someone tell me how THAT works, lol. I only ever watch weeb stuff on Youtube.

I recommend block tube on desktop. It's a great extension. It's been the best way to get back some control over the algorithm, which can suck if you use YouTube logged in and without an account sucks too with what tends to trend.

What part of the world are you from, if I may ask?
If it's not simply from what you consume (which could include anything done on a Google product, including an android phone), it could be the metric of where you live, and this content is popular in that region.
- Canada but I think it gave me some Asian recipes and got me stuck into that

I tried looking for positive stories about trans people to show one of my friends who was going down a conservative transphobic rabbit hole.
I couldn't for the life of my find anything other than videos by Fox News, Ben Shapiro and other conservative talking heads and alt-right conspiracy accounts.
Then I later found out through an article of an online magazine about one trans teen person who said their YouTube channel was being banned and an their content blocked. They were just videos of their daily lives as a trans person and the challenges they faced.
Social networks receive money by powerful conservative media groups to push their content up and establish policies in their favor.

Same reason I get ads promoting far right personalities. The snowflakes that complained about conservatives not being able to fairly get their garbage views across fucked up the algorithms and those algorithms are skewed as to not hurt their feelings.

Because youtube can? Whoever pays more , their content is reached to more people. Its all bout that money.

Ah yes, SCMP is truly a pro-China news source. Nevermind that it's blocked in mainland China.
- I can only report what I see from the recommendations
  
  The truth is hard, sometimes.
- ... like TikTok

38 comments