Ask HN: YouTube started recommending a bunch of Russian propoganda channels?
2 comments
YouTube really likes to show you things from your apparent recent interests. Look up a video about fixing a kitchen sink and they assume your new life passion is plumbing. If you ignore it for a while and watch what you want, the algorithm will figure it out. I don't know how much those manual indicators weigh in on the algorithm - I suspect click through and watch time are their main indicators.
youtube shorts is recommending me videos according to my political views i had 10 years ago. I have since moved to the other side of the spectrum and long videos recommandations are up to date. I find the whole thing amazing.
A few months ago I created a new Google account as my primary account was a Google Workspace account and I wanted to create a YouTube Premium Family, which you can't do with Workspace. I found some tools to copy my subscriptions over, and once I'd done that the new YouTube feed looked basically the same as the old account, just with a few repeated videos I'd seen as it didn't copy watched videos over. I disabled YouTube on the Workspace account so I made sure to use the right one. Since then everything has been great until this week.
Over the last few days my feed has started to have a bunch of Russian propoganda channels filling it. Usually the first five to ten videos are my subscriptions, then after that it's around 50% subscriptions and related and 50% random. The problem is the random videos are heavily weighted towards Russian propoganda, it's not the same as you see on the front page if you are logged out.
My YouTube watch history doesn't show anything unusual and I haven't logged into any devices that others have access to. Nobody in my home or Family watches Russian propoganda, and I don't think anyone at my office would. Whenever I see these videos I select 'Don't recommend channel' or 'Not interested', but YouTube is still recommending the same type of videos.
Any suggestions?