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.
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.
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
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).
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.
Great advice in here. Now, how do I de-radicalize my mom? :(
I had to log into my 84-year-old grandmother’s YouTube account and unsubscribe from a bunch of stuff, “Not interested” on a bunch of stuff, subscribed to more mainstream news sources… But it only works for a couple months.
The problem is the algorithm that values viewing time over anything else.
Watch a news clip from a real news source and then it recommends Fox News. Watch Fox News and then it recommends PragerU. Watch PragerU and then it recommends The Daily Wire. Watch that and then it recommends Steven Crowder. A couple years ago it would go even stupider than Crowder, she’d start getting those videos where it’s computer voice talking over stock footage about Hillary Clinton being arrested for being a demonic pedophile. Luckily most of those channels are banned at this point or at least the algorithm doesn’t recommend them.
I’ve thought about putting her into restricted mode, but I think that would be too obvious that I’m manipulating the strings in the background.
Then I thought she’s 84, she’s going to be dead in a few years, she doesn’t vote, does it really matter that she’s concerned about trans people trying to cut off little boy’s penises or thinks that Obama is wearing ankle monitor because he was arrested by the Trump administration or that aliens are visiting the Earth because she heard it on Joe Rogan?
Oof that’s hard!
You may want to try the following though to clear the algorithm up
Clear her YouTube watch history: This will reset the algorithm, getting rid of a lot of the data it uses to make recommendations. You can do this by going to “History” on the left menu, then clicking on “Clear All Watch History”.
Clear her YouTube search history: This is also part of the data YouTube uses for recommendations. You can do this from the same “History” page, by clicking “Clear All Search History”.
Change her ‘Ad personalization’ settings: This is found in her Google account settings. Turning off ad personalization will limit how much YouTube’s algorithms can target her based on her data.
Introduce diverse content: Once the histories are cleared, start watching a variety of non-political, non-conspiracy content that she might enjoy, like cooking shows, travel vlogs, or nature documentaries. This will help teach the algorithm new patterns.
Dislike, not just ignore, unwanted videos: If a video that isn’t to her taste pops up, make sure to click ‘dislike’. This will tell the algorithm not to recommend similar content in the future.
Manually curate her subscriptions: Unsubscribe from the channels she’s not interested in, and find some new ones that she might like. This directly influences what content YouTube will recommend.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
