She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
You watch this one thing out of curiosity, morbid curiosity, or by accident, and at the slightest poke the goddamned mindless algorithm starts throwing this shit at you.
The algorithm is “weaponized” for who screams the loudest, and I truly believe it started due to myopic incompetence/greed, not political malice. Which doesn’t make it any better, as people don’t know how to take care of themselves from this bombardment, but the corporations like to pretend that ~~they~~ people can, so they wash their hands for as long as they are able.
Then on top of this, the algorithm has been further weaponized by even more malicious actors who have figured out how to game the system.
That’s how toxic meatheads like infowars and joe rogan get a huge bullhorn that reaches millions. “Huh… DMT experiences… sounds interesting”, the format is entertaining… and before you know it, you are listening to anti-vax and qanon excrement, your mind starts to normalize the most outlandish things.
EDIT: a word, for clarity
Whenever I end up watching something from a bad channel I always delete it from my watch history, in case that affects my front page too.
Huh, I tried that. Still got recommended incel-videos for months after watching a moron “discuss” the Captain Marvel movie. Eventually went through and clicked “dont recommend this” on anything that showed on my frontpage, that helped.