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.
At this point I would set up a new account for her - I’ve found Youtube’s algorithm to be very… persistent.
Unfortunately, it’s linked to the account she uses for her job.
You can make “brand accounts” on YouTube that are a completely different profile from the default account. She probably won’t notice if you make one and switch her to it.
You’ll probably want to spend some time using it for yourself secretly to curate the kind of non-radical content she’ll want to see, and also set an identical profile picture on it so she doesn’t notice. I would spend at least a week “breaking it in.”
But once you’ve done that, you can probably switch to the brand account without logging her out of her Google account.
I love how we now have to monitor the content the generation that told us “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” watches like we would for children.
We can thank all that tetraethyllead gas that was pumping lead into the air from the 20s to the 70s. Everyone got a nice healthy dose of lead while they were young. Made 'em stupid.
OP’s mom breathed nearly 20 years worth of polluted lead air straight from birth, and OP’s grandmother had been breathing it for 33 years up until OP’s mom was born. Probably not great for early development.
Shoutout to lead paint and asbestos maybe?
Asbestos is respiratory, nothing to do with brain development or damage.
Delete watch history, find and watch nice channels and her other interests, log in to the account on a spare browser on your own phone periodically to make sure there’s no repeat of what happened.
I’m a bit disturbed how people’s beliefs are literally shaped by an algorithm. Now I’m scared to watch Youtube because I might be inadvertently watching propaganda.
deleted by creator
It’s even worse than “a lot easier”. Ever since the advances in ML went public, with things like Midjourney and ChatGPT, I’ve realized that the ML models are way way better at doing their thing that I’ve though.
Midjourney model’s purpose is so receive text, and give out an picture. And it’s really good at that, even though the dataset wasn’t really that large. Same with ChatGPT.
Now, Meta has (EDIT: just a speculation, but I’m 95% sure they do) a model which receives all data they have about the user (which is A LOT), and returns what post to show to him and in what order, to maximize his time on Facebook. And it was trained for years on a live dataset of 3 billion people interacting daily with the site. That’s a wet dream for any ML model. Imagine what it would be capable of even if it was only as good as ChatGPT at doing it’s task - and it had uncomparably better dataset and learning opportunities.
I’m really worried for the future in this regard, because it’s only a matter of time when someone with power decides that the model should not only keep people on the platform, but also to make them vote for X. And there is nothing you can do to defend against it, other than never interacting with anything with curated content, such as Google search, YT or anything Meta - because even if you know that there’s a model trying to manipulate with you, the model knows - there’s a lot of people like that. And he’s already learning and trying how to manipulate even with people like that. After all, it has 3 billion people as test subjects.
That’s why I’m extremely focused on privacy and about my data - not that I have something to hide, but I take a really really great issue with someone using such data to train models like that.
Just to let you know, meta has an open source model, llama, and it’s basically state of the art for open source community, but it falls short of chatgpt4.
The nice thing about the llama branches (vicuna and wizardlm) is that you can run them locally with about 80% of chatgpt3.5 efficiency, so no one is tracking your searches/conversations.
Reason and critical thinking is all the more important in this day and age. It’s just no longer taught in schools. Some simple key skills like noticing fallacies or analogous reasoning, and you will find that your view on life is far more grounded and harder to shift
Just be aware that we can ALL be manipulated, the only difference is the method. Right now, most manipulation is on a large scale. This means they focus on what works best for the masses. Unfortunately, modern advances in AI mean that automating custom manipulation is getting a lot easier. That brings us back into the firing line.
I’m personally an Aspie with a scientific background. This makes me fairly immune to a lot of manipulation tactics in widespread use. My mind doesn’t react how they expect, and so it doesn’t achieve the intended result. I do know however, that my own pressure points are likely particularly vulnerable. I’ve not had the practice resisting having them pressed.
A solid grounding gives you a good reference, but no more. As individuals, it is down to us to use that reference to resist undue manipulation.
My personal opinion is that it’s one of the first large cases of misalignment in ML models. I’m 90% certain that Google and other platforms have been for years already using ML models design for user history and data they have about him as an input, and what videos should they offer to him as an ouput, with the goal to maximize the time he spends watching videos (or on Facebook, etc).
And the models eventually found out that if you radicalize someone, isolate them into a conspiracy that will make him an outsider or a nutjob, and then provide a safe space and an echo-chamber on the platform, be it both facebook or youtube, the will eventually start spending most of the time there.
I think this subject was touched-upon in the Social Dillema movie, but given what is happening in the world and how it seems that the conspiracies and desinformations are getting more and more common and people more radicalized, I’m almost certain that the algorithms are to blame.
100% they’re using ML, and 100% it found a strategy they didn’t anticipate
The scariest part of it, though, is their willingness to continue using it despite the obvious consequences.
I think misalignment is not only likely to happen (for an eventual AGI), but likely to be embraced by the entities deploying them because the consequences may not impact them. Misalignment is relative
If youtube “Algorithm” is optimizing for watchtime then the most optimal solution is to make people addicted to youtube.
The most scary thing I think is to optimize the reward is not to recommend a good video but to reprogram a human to watch as much as possible
I think that making someone addicted to youtube would be harder, than simply slowly radicalizing them into a shunned echo chamber about a conspiracy theory. Because if you try to make someone addicted to youtube, they will still have an alternative in the real world, friends and families to return to.
But if you radicalize them into something that will make them seem like a nutjob, you don’t have to compete with their surroundings - the only place where they understand them is on the youtube.
My normal YT algorithm was ok, but shorts tries to pull me to the alt-right.
I had to block many channels to get a sane shorts algorythm.“Do not recommend channel” really helps
Using Piped/Invidious/NewPipe/insert your preferred alternative frontend or patched client here (Youtube legal threats are empty, these are still operational) helps even more to show you only the content you have opted in to.
the damage that corporate social media has inflicted on our social fabric and political discourse is beyond anything we could have imagined.
This is true, but one could say the same about talk radio or television.
Talk radio or television broadcasts the same stuff to everyone. It’s damaging, absolutely. But social media literally tailors the shit to be exactly what will force someone farther down the rabbit hole. It’s actively, aggressively damaging and sends people on a downward spiral way faster while preventing them from encountering diverse viewpoints.
I agree it’s worse, but i was just thinking how there are regions where people play ONLY Fox on every public television, and if you turn on the radio it’s exclusively a right-wing propagandist ranting to tell you democrats are taking all your money to give it to black people on welfare.
Well it’s kind of true.
Actually, liberal taxes pay for rural white America.
Yes, I agree - there have always been malevolent forces at work within the media - but before facebook started algorithmically whipping up old folks for clicks, cable TV news wasn’t quite as savage. The early days of hate-talk radio was really just Limbaugh ranting into the AM ether. Now, it’s saturated. Social media isn’t the root cause of political hatred but it gave it a bullhorn and a leg up to apparent legitimacy.
In the google account privacy settings you can delete the watch and search history. You can also delete a service such as YouTube from the account, without deleting the account itself. This might help starting afresh.
I was so weirded out when I found out that you can hear ALL of your “hey Google” recordings in these settings.
Log in as her on your device. Delete the history, turn off ad personalisation, unsubscribe and block dodgy stuff, like and subscribe healthier things, and this is the important part: keep coming back regularly to tell YouTube you don’t like any suggested videos that are down the qanon path/remove dodgy watched videos from her history.
Also, subscribe and interact with things she’ll like - cute pets, crafts, knitting, whatever she’s likely to watch more of. You can’t just block and report, you’ve gotta retrain the algorithm.
Yeah, when you go on the feed make sure to click on the 3 dots for every recommended video and “Don’t show content like this” and also “Block channel” because chances are, if they uploaded one of these stupid videos, their whole channel is full of them.
Would it help to start liking/subscribing to videos that specifically debunk those kinds of conspiracy videos? Or, at the very least, demonstrate rational concepts and critical thinking?
Probably not. This is an almost 70 year old who seems not to really think rationally in the first place. She’s easily convinced by emotional misinformation.
Probably just best to occupy her with harmless entertainment.
We recommend her a youtube channel about linguistics and she didn’t like it because the Phd in linguistics was saying that is ok for language to change. Unfortunately, it comes a time when people just want to see what already confirms their worldview, and anything that challenges that is taken as an offense.
I think it’s sad how so many of the comments are sharing strategies about how to game the Youtube algorithm, instead of suggesting ways to avoid interacting with the algorithm at all, and learning to curate content on your own.
The algorithm doesn’t actually care that it’s promoting right-wing or crazy conspiracy content, it promotes whatever that keeps people’s eyeballs on Youtube. The fact is that this will always be the most enraging content. Using “not interested” and “block this channel” buttons doesn’t make the algorithm stop trying to advertise this content, you’re teaching it to improve its strategy to manipulate you!
The long-term strategy is to get people away from engagement algorithms. Introduce OP’s mother to a patched Youtube client that blocks ads and algorithmic feeds (Revanced has this). “Youtube with no ads!” is an easy way to convince non-technical people. Help her subscribe to safe channels and monitor what she watches.
Not everyone is willing to switch platforms that easily. You can’t always be idealistic.
That’s why I suggested Revanced with “disable recommendations” patches. It’s still Youtube and there is no new platform to learn.
Ooh, you can even set the app to open automatically to the subscription feed rather than the algo driven home. The app does probably need somebody knowledgable about using the app patcher every half-dozen months to update it though.
Sorry to hear about you mom and good on you for trying to steer her away from the crazy.
You can retrain YT’s recommendations by going through the suggested videos, and clicking the ‘…’ menu on each bad one to show this menu:
(no slight against Stan, he’s just what popped up)
click the Don’t recommend channel or Not interested buttons. Do this as many times as you can. You might also want to try subscribing/watching a bunch of wholesome ones that your mum might be interested in (hobbies, crafts, travel, history, etc) to push the recommendations in a direction that will meet her interests.
Edit: mention subscribing to interesting, good videos, not just watching.
You might also want to try watching a bunch of wholesome ones that your mum might be interested (hobbies, crafts, travel, history, etc) in to push the recommendations in a direction that will meet her interests.
This is a very important part of the solution here. The algorithm adapts to new videos very quickly, so watching some things you know she’s into will definitely change the recommended videos pretty quickly!
OP can make sure this continues by logging into youtube on private mode/non chrome web browser/revanced YT app using their login and effectively remotely monitor the algorithm.
(A non chrome browser that you don’t use is best so that you keep your stuff seperate, otherwise google will assume your device is connected to the account which can be potentially messy in niche cases).
I curate my feed pretty often so I might be able to help.
The first, and easiest, thing to do is to tell Youtube you aren’t interested in their recommendations. If you hover over the name of a video then three little dots will appear on the right side. Clicking them opens a menu that contains, among many, two options: Not Interested and Don’t Recommend Channel. Don’t Recommend Channel doesn’t actually remove the channel from recommendations but it will discourage the algorithm from recommending it as often. Not Interested will also inform the algorithm that you’re not interested, I think it discourages the entire topic but it’s not clear to me.
You can also unsubscribe from channels that you don’t want to see as often. Youtube will recommend you things that were watched by other people who are also subscribed to the same channels you’re subscribed to. So if you subscribe to a channel that attracts viewers with unsavory video tastes then videos that are often watched by those viewers will get recommended to you. Unsubscribing will also reduce how often you get recommended videos by that content creator.
Finally, you should watch videos you want to watch. If you see something that you like then watch it! Give it a like and a comment and otherwise interact with the content. Youtube knows when you see a video and then go to the Channel’s page and browse all their videos. They track that stuff. If you do things that Youtube likes then they will give you more videos like that because that’s how Youtube monetizes you, the user.
To de-radicalize your mom’s feed I would try to
- Watch videos that you like on her feed. This introduces them to the algorithm.
- Use Not Interested and Don’t Recommend Channel to slowly phase out the old content.
- Unsubscribe to some channels she doesn’t watch a lot of so she won’t notice.
You can go into the view history and remove all the bad videos.
My mom has a similar problem with animal videos. She likes watching farm videos where sometimes there’s animals giving birth… And those videos completely ruin the algorithm. After that she only gets animals having sex, and the animal fighting and killing eachother.
Delete all watched history. It will give her a whole new sets of videos. Like a new algorithms.
Where does she watch he YouTube videos? If it’s a computer and you’re a little techie, switch to Firefox then change the user agent to Nintendo Switch. I find that YouTube serve less crazy videos for Nintendo Switch.
change the user agent to Nintendo Switch
You mad genius, you
This never worked for me. BUT WHAT FIXED IT WAS LISTENING TO SCREAMO METAL. APPARENTLY THE. YOURUBE KNEW I WAS A LEFTIST then. Weird but I’ve been free ever since
Kittens are good. Maybe some BBC stuff? Get her into the nature shows. Damn near anything on BBC Earth should be great for that.
Diy building stuff: Simone Goertz is awesome, as is Laura Kampf.
For some super chill diy, check out SteadyCraftin
ClickSpring builds super cool old shit and is just beautiful to watch.
Either The Action Lab or Steve Mould should work for understanding science.
For fun experiments and sciencey things, Mark Rober is entertaining.
Want something food related? I’ve heard good things about Tasting History (Max Miller), haven’t checked him out myself, though. Or James Hoffman does a great show all about coffee.
Does she knit or crochet? There are hundreds of channels about yarny things - Tiny Fiber Studios does stuff like that.
Or maybe she likes other things. Sashiko Story teaches the art of sashiko (Japanese embroidery). The Violet Unicorn teaches weaving.
How about music? Tim Reynolds is incredible, as is Marcin.
Maybe some BBC stuff?
Gardener’s World, the way the show is presented is soothing yet fascinating at the same time. There are a lot of full episodes on YouTube, and it is healthy content for a 70-year old mind… or much younger, even.
Just stay away from bbc news politics coverage of the uk, it’s dogshit, almost as bad as the tabloids. world coverage and other fun stuff is fine.
The videos you watch on Youtube influence the ones you’re recommended. I once put in a couple of 8 hour cat videos for to entertain a feline friend while I was away, and for a while Youtube kept recommending them to me. I had convinced it that I was a cat.
Get her to watch other videos (or even watch them on her behalf using her account), and also mark the awful ones at Not Interested > I Don’t Like This Video using the thumbnail menu. It’ll take some concerted effort though.
Also, even if you manage to get the recommendations out off of her front page generally, if one shows up and she clicks on it, it’ll start recommending them again. Youtube’s recommendation algorithm is really crappy, and assume you’re all about the things you watch recently.
This is a suggestion with questionable morality BUT a new account with reasonable subscriptions might be a good solution. That being said, if my child was trying to patronize me about my conspiracy theories, I wouldn’t like it, and would probably flip if they try to change my accounts.
Yeah the morality issue is the hard part for me… I’ve been entrusted by various people in the family to help them with their technology (and by virtue of that not mess with their technology in ways they wouldn’t approve of), violating that trust to stop them from being exposed to manipulative content seems like doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Really? That seems far-fetched. Various people in the family specifically want you not to mess with their technology? ??
If the algorithm is causing somebody to become a danger to others and potentially themselves, I’d expect in their right state of mind, one would appreciate proactive intervention.
eg. archive.is/https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/12/fox-news-brain-meet-the-families-torn-apart-by-toxic-cable-news
I think this is pretty much what it boils down to. Where do you draw the line between having the right to expose yourself to media that validates your world view and this media becoming a threat to you to a point where you require intervention?
I’ve seen lots of people discussion their family’s Qanon casualties to recognize it’s a legitimate problem, not to mention tragic in many cases, but I would still think twice before ‘tricking’ someone. What if she realizes what’s happening and becomes more radicalized by this? I find that direct conversation, discussion, and confrontation work better; or at least that worked with family that believes in bullshit.
That being said, the harmful effects of being trapped in a bubble by an algorithm are not largely disputed.
Wondering if a qanon person would be offended at you deradicalise them seems like overthinking - it’s certainly possible, but most likely fine to do anyway. The only cases where you’d think twice is if something similar has happened before and if this person has a pattern of falling into bad habits/cultish behaviour in the past. In which case you have a bigger problem on your hands or just a temporary one.
I guess despite them being Qanon, I still see and believe in the human in them, and their ultimate right to believe stupid shit. I don’t think it’s ever ‘overthinking’ when it comes to another human being’s privacy and freedom. I actually think it’s bizarre to quickly jump into this and decide to alter the subscriptions behind their back like they’re a 2 year old child with not even perception to understand basic shit.
Nobody said this had to be an instant/quick reaction to anything. If you can see that somebody has ‘chosen’ to fall into a rabbithole and self destruct, becoming an angrier, more hateful (bigoted) and miserable person because of algorithms, dark patterns and unnatural infinite content spirals, I’d recognise that it isn’t organic or human-made but in fact done for the profit motive of a large corporation, and do the obvious thing.
If you’re on Lemmy because you hate billionaire interference in your life why allow it to psychologically infect your family far more insidiously on youtube?
Exactly, no one said that.
Consider it from a different angle - if a techy Q-anon “fixed” the algorithm of someone whose device they had access to due to tech help. That person would rightfully be pissed off, even if the Q-anon tech nerd explained that it was for their own good and that they needed to be aware of this stuff etc.
Obviously that’s materially different to the situation at hand, but my point is that telling someone that what you’ve done is necessary and good will probably only work after it’s helped. Initially, they may still be resistant to the violation of trust.
If I think of how I would in that situation, I feel a strong flare of indignant anger that I could see possibly manifesting in a “I don’t care about your reasons, you still shouldn’t have messed with my stuff” way, and then fermenting into further ignorance. If I don’t let the anger rise and instead sit with the discomfort, I find a bunch of shame - still feeling violated by the intervention, but sadly realising it was not just necessary, but actively good that it happened, so I could see sense. There’s also some fear from not trusting my own perceptions and beliefs following the slide in reactionary thinking. That’s a shitty bunch of feelings and I only think that’s the path I’d be on because I’m unfortunately well experienced in being an awful person and doing the work to improve. I can definitely see how some people might instead double down on the anger route.
On a different scale of things, imagine if one of my friend who asked for tech help was hardcore addicted to a game like WoW, to the extent that it was affecting her life and wellbeing. Would it be acceptable for me to uninstall this and somehow block any attempts to reinstall? For me, the answer is no. This feels different to the Q-anon case, but I can’t articulate why exactly
Better to be embarrassed temporarily than lose a decade of precious time with your family on stuff that makes you angry on the internet.
You’re seeing a person who freely made choices here, perhaps like the gamer, but I see a victim of opportunists on youtube, who may have clicked on something thinking it was benign and unknowingly let autoplay and the recommendations algorithm fry their brain.
You probably think the gamer situation is different because they, unlike the boomer, are aware of what’s happening and are stuck in a trap of their own making. And yes, in such a situation, I’d talk it out with them before I did anything since they’re clearly (in some ways) more responsible for their addiction, even though iirc some people do have a psychological disposition that is more vulnerable that way.
edit: I want to clarify that I do care about privacy, it’s just that in these cases of older angry relatives (many such cases), I prioritise mental health.
I reworded my comment to clarify (my original wording was a bit clumsy).
I don’t really think they’re a danger to others anymore than their policy positions in my option are harmful to some percentage of the population. i.e. they’re not worried about indigenous populations invading and killing people with poison arrows, but they do buy into some of the anti-establishment doctors when it comes to issues like COVID vaccination.
It’s kind of like “I don’t think you’re a great driver, but I don’t think you’re such a bad driver I should be trying to subvert your driving.” Though it’s a bit of a hard line to draw…
Well, I assume neither you or I are psychologists that can determine what one person may or may not do. However these algorithms are confirmed to be dangerous left unchecked on a mass level - e.g. the genocide in Burma that occurred with the help of FB.
Ultimately if I had a relative in those shoes, I’d want to give them the opportunity to be the best person they can be, not a hateful, screen-addicted crazy person. These things literally change their personality in the worst cases. Not being proactive is cowardly/negligient on the part of the person with the power to do it imo.
You can’t “de-radicalize” your mom because your mom has never been “radicalized” in the first place - if she was, she’d be spray-painting ACAB on the walls and quoting Bakunin or Marx at everyone.
Your mom has been turned into a reactionary - pretty much the opposite of that which is radical. And since you have access to your mom’s youtube account, it’s radical content that is required to start levering open the cognitive dissonance that right-wing content attempts to paper over.
However, it can’t just be any radical content - it has to be radical content that specifically addresses things that are relevant to your mom. I’ll use my own mom as an example… she has always been angry about the fact that my (late) father essentially tossed away the family’s nest-egg in his obsessive attempts to become a successful business owner - I showed her some videos explaining how this neolib cult of business-ownership was popularized by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher (which she had no difficulty believing because my dad was a rabid right-winger who constantly brought these two fuckheads up in conversation during the 80s) which led to a lot of good conversations.
Obviously, your mom will not be as receptive to new information as mine is - so you may have to be a bit sneakier about it. But I don’t see too many other options for you at this point.
Radicalization !== Radical Marxist. Don’t forget radicalism the ideology!. But yes, definitions can change: etymolically and in modern language radicalism politically is to be pushing for a change at the root of something. I think it is pretty fair to say OPs mom could fit this. Radicalism does not have to be and often is not leftist.
Furthermore, in my opinion, reactionary is not a descriptive word- it is wholely used as an insult. It doesn’t describe an ideology, it is just a prejorative used to insult ideological opponents. You can again tell by the fact that nobody uninronically considers themselves a reactionary.
radicalism politically is to be pushing for a change at the root of something
You mean that thing right-wing ideology exists to prevent? There is no such thing as a “right-wing radical” - right-wing ideology exists to protect the status quo and destroy or co-opt that which advocates “change at the root…” it has no reason to exist otherwise.
I think it is pretty fair to say OPs mom could fit this.
The paranoid racism displayed by OP’s mom isn’t “radical” - it’s bog-standard right-wing white supremacist colonialist paranoia.
You can again tell by the fact that nobody uninronically considers themselves a reactionary.
They also generally do not self-identify as fascists or white supremacists, and you can easily anger most right-wingers even by just calling them right-wingers - so your point is… what?
You mean that thing right-wing ideology exists to prevent?
Right wing !== The status quo
There is no such thing as a “right-wing radical”
You did not click the link. You did forget Radicalism.
right-wing ideology exists to protect the status quo and destroy or co-opt that which advocates “change at the root…”
So in a socialist country is advocating for liberalism or monarchism or whatever left-wing and advocating for socialism right wing? Were the Nazi’s left-wing in the Weimar Republic?
The paranoid racism displayed by OP’s mom isn’t “radical”
Iirc there was no mention of racism, and I assume based on the mention of “videos in Spanish” that OPs mom is more than likely Latina. But yeah, QAnon is pretty radical seeing as they definitely aren’t the status quo.
They also generally do not self-identify as fascists or white supremacists
There are plenty who do, but I’ve never heard of someone identifying as reactionary.
you can easily anger most right-wingers even by just calling them right-wingers
I’ve never seen a right-winger being upset by that. Maybe because your definition of right-wing differs a lot from what most people would consider right-wing, they feel they are being mislabeled or mischaracterized.
Right wing !== The status quo
Riiight… I forgot the status quo requires centrists - not right-wingers - to do all the dirty work of violently maintaining the status quo. Because… reasons.
Were the Nazi’s left-wing in the Weimar Republic?
Did you see the Nazis promising capitalists that they would dismantle capitalism? No? How many of those Weimar capitalists got rich and fat off all the slave labor the Nazis provided them? You seem to have a weird idea what the term status quo means.
But yeah, QAnon is pretty radical seeing as they definitely aren’t the status quo.
There is nothing “radical” about QAnon - again, there is no such thing as a “radical right-winger.”
I’ve never seen a right-winger being upset by that.
Lol! Why do you think they refer to themselves as “conservatives” and not right-wingers?
HEAVY use of “Don’t Recommend Channel” is essential to make YouTube tolerable. Clobber all the garbage.
