• lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.

    What the hell is everyone watching? YT recommends me Red Letter Media, Veratasium, old movies, Blender tutorials and a bunch of other stuff that’s never going to drive me to self-harm. I don’t understand. May be this woman doesn’t have ad blocker installed and is forced to sit through a bunch of soul crushing PSAs? Why is my experience so drastically different from this?

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      2 hours ago

      Truth is these people watch garbage and the algo delivers… garbage.

      I’m not trying to victim blame but, i mean… not my YouTube either (but I’ve seen the front pages of some…stupid people too say it nicely).

      • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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        54 minutes ago

        Meanwhile my girlfriend and I just got done watching a 2 hour video on Japans creepiest educational video, subject of which is the Heian era of Japan. Her algorithm pulls are goated.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Watching those hack frauds causes psychological harm. Rich Evans is known to trigger depression

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      Algorithms try to push body negativity if it thinks you’re a teen girl because they tend to scroll more and buy more when depressed.

      If it thinks you’re a single man then it tries to push manosphere stuff.

      On YouTube I find I my relevant suggestions last about a month before I have to mark a bunch of videos as not interested or block a bunch of channels.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Yeah there was a period where it noticed I watched a few trans youtubers and so it started promoting anti trans content, it was around the election (I forget if before or after), but either way it disgusted me that they’d do that

      • lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Algorithms aren’t that smart. Maybe there needs to be general education about how they work so people will understand that viewing a video is like searching for a topic in google so people will understand how much control over what they see and use the technology appropriately.

        If you watch a video about anorexia that’s like typing “Anorexia” in Google or pressing 9 on a remote control, you’re getting channel 9. That’s why to me this sounds crazy. It’s like someone complaining their TV keeps pushing the cooking channel at them.

          • lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Sure, google knows I’m a 50+ year old man but YT isn’t pushing me a bunch of videos about retirement and how to keep the damn kids off my lawn. If I made a new account and it knew nothing about me, it might. But right now it knows I’m interested in obscure early 20th Century comic books and early 70s horror anthology shows.

            Edit:

            I misunderstood what you said. I use ad blocker so I don’t see ads. Sometimes they get through and it’s always Wix. That is kind of a mystery to me.

      • hector@lemmy.today
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        9 hours ago

        On a podcast I was listening to a researcher had made an account and subscribed to just like technology and sports and within a few months they had him on like manisphere stuff with tate and those types of assholes

        • lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          I get some manosphere stuff for the same reason, but mostly ignore it. At the risk of getting beat up here, I like Joe Rogan. His celebrity interviews are entertaining and I like wacky subjects like UFOs and such which he covers. Plus I’m a gamer so I watch videos about guns frequently because I find that fascinating though I don’t want to own one. So that’s why I’ll get recommended manisphere stuff. And I’ll get curious and take a look at those videos, and get more recommendations. But when I stop watching them, they go away. My recommendations are based on whatever I’m interested in at the time.

          Everybody talks about Andrew Tate but I have never ever seen any of his videos. Him or Mr. Beast. They never get recommended. I only know about Tate because everybody everywhere else is complaining about him. So I don’t what that researcher did to get that.

          • hector@lemmy.today
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            7 hours ago

            I’ve never seen any of his videos either or any of the manosphere stuff, but I don’t get on YouTube like that. But this researcher I think he signed up for Tech and sports and then just played the auto suggestion from there and it ended up on like Nazi shit and entertain pimping out people’s daughters. And treating them like shit. I tried to give Rogan a chance, I found out he was a Bernie Sanders supporter and he even had Sanders on his show last year and I tuned in and listened to maybe eight episodes around then and I can’t get past his pretending to believe Republican bullshit, like the president’s lawsuits against media, pretending those are in good faith and with merit, most of all his castigating of environmental protesters, as paid actors, as an environmental protester I take issue with that Above All Else.

            I appreciate that he is leading his flock to better outcomes on some subjects but I just can’t get past his cynical self-interested Embrace of lies that are extremely harmful. It’s not like this asshole needs more money from those lies either. That is actually why I am on lemme much now I said basically the same thing and reddit violated me for a 3-day ban for advocating violence. Literally just said the exact same thing about Rogan here, I appeal but I will never know how it turns out because at a 3-day ban I abandoned the accounts. Over half a dozen just in a few years now.

            He would be half likable if he was not such a cynical pos pushing the most harmful lies, quite knowingly. Still though I appreciate he say acknowledged inflation is understated, since the 70s, it was 5 to 8 pc by the unchanged mdtric, 2 to 3 under the newer just by 2008.

            Absolutely no one will touch that one. It is the most harmful.of all actions perhaps as no one affords what they could while experts tell us we have never had higher buying power.

            Seriously, I think there is some systematic pollution that is inhibiting the fear Center or other parts of the brain and making people more docile. Because previous generations never would have stood for this shit. Also rampant texoplasmosis which inhibits the fear Center in the brain. I’m serious about that done not even half joking anymore. Something is wrong with people.

      • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        My youtube is used exclusively by my toddler, with me seeing about 10 videos a month. It pushes me AI generated sprunky and brainrot bullshit.

    • thax@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      Sounds like you consume useful information. I wager she uses socials as many: to compare herself to others, perusing a mix of ego-affirming and ego-damning content. These are powerful emotional hooks and oscillating between those states can be confounding. Add a dash of fatalism, which is not hard to come by in this culture, when at a low, and I think it easy to see how one might capitulate.

      There are a lot of people out there that think their personality traits are inherent and that their physical attributes are static. In fact, my brother was one of these people, to an extent. He passed away at 40 years old due to morbid obesity. I attribute his downfall to capitulation by way of comparison. He came to think the hole was too big and that his genetics were too poor to make changes, despite me providing an example to the contrary. Sadly, my parents fanned the flames of his dissonance with their own identity-bound delusions.

      So, my guess is that you have developed a healthy personal philosophy and have not surrounded yourself with the type of people or digital content that renders that philosophy dissonant.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        But it should also be noted, teenagers are particularly targeted by and vulnerable to such messaging. In my 30s I can look around and see the evidence against such comparisons, but at 16 I was just some kid who worried she’d never be attractive or well liked. Had I been in spaces that encouraged such attitudes such as Instagram or 4chan I would have been really vulnerable to it.

        Young people are often overly worried about such things because adolescence is a difficult and transitory stage where these worries are developmentally appropriate. They’re supposed to have adults who can help them deal with this, and peers that they can learn by interacting with, but it’s normal to not believe your parents on such issues and interactions with peers has been moved online with social media and there’s little interaction with adults. This has led room for teenagers to be preyed on by algorithms that encourage their worst instincts and online communities that teach anything from antisocial behavior to masochistic epistemology.