this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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I almost never watch "shorts" but my suggestions for it seem to have an...uhhh...adult theme. I don't watch any such thing with YouTube. Does everyone see garbage like this?

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[–] arin 24 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Way to out yourself. Their algo depends on what you spend time watching. Lol

[–] Got_Bent 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Eh. Pretty much all of my viewing is related to physics I don't understand, astronomy I don't understand, and weird history stuff. I still get the soft porn algorithm on shorts.

Closest I come to viewing is when I'm scrolling and my phone interprets that as a click. Then I get pissed off because that fraction of a second for the algorithm is like letting a single pregnant cockroach into your kitchen.

[–] Passerby6497 3 points 8 months ago

Try to remember to select the 'Don't recommend this channel' any time you see those sorts of videos. I've been doing that a ton lately and my shorts feed is mainly shit that's actually interesting, and the more I ban those shit vids, the better my feed has been getting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, the simplicity and also effectiveness of advertising algorithms are sometimes overstated.

There is a huge amount of data that is stored about users, and that does definitely make its way into the ads that we see. Grouping all the user information into ad categories is not a simple task, so there's a lot of mismatch that happens. But a lot of the time it's also location-based, time-based (when who views what) or even just what the biggest spenders want us to see based on our demographics. Tits and ass are fairly demographic agnostic, so they appear in a lot of feeds regardless of preference or orientation.

Right-wingers are fairly desperate to push their viewpoints and pay a lot to so, so we end up with a lot of vague associations or fully non existent ones resulting in that kind of content appearing in feeds. I'm a left leaning, queer and trans woman living outside the US and I see these bullshit ads from time to time (which for obvious reasons is pretty infuriating). I honestly think that having a small online footprint and using adblockers, privacy-friendly browsers and operating systems, etc. is going to become more and more common just as a mode of self-care.

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff 10 points 8 months ago

This is just untrue. Shorts defaults to the same for me as a gay man who has never clicked on a single one of them.

[–] RogueFoo 7 points 8 months ago

I had a phase, where it suggested loads of shorts from turkish cigarrette factories. I never watched anything cigarrette related and my subs contain mostly science communication, makers and some commentary channels

[–] PutangInaMo 6 points 8 months ago

Idk when I made a new account on Facebook all it did was show me fake pages with porn. After a while the algorithm caught up to my style and now I have to go find it randomly lol

[–] miridius 3 points 8 months ago

While that is true, it's also true that if the algo has no data on you it just shows you what most other people want to see, which is usually boobs

[–] T00l_shed 3 points 8 months ago

I constantly get pro right wing, pro Christian garbage in my feed. I keep spamming do not recommend channel and not interested and yt keeps shoveling that garbage in my shorts feed. Ads are also "suggested" based on geophraphic area.

[–] RampantParanoia2365 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] TangledHyphae 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've never had anything softcore-adjacent even, mine are filled with magicians and obscure shorts that are not sexual in any way, at any point in history. They seem highly targeted toward my viewing history at any given moment in time.

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff 0 points 8 months ago

My viewing history is disabled, so maybe pseudo-porn is just the default

[–] jj4211 2 points 8 months ago

I'll say that at least a few months ago, on a brand new system I went to YouTube and it looked pretty much like this, with a fresh history and no login. I thought it was unusual and then I logged in and they mostly went away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it seems to show me mostly comedy stuff, tool and hardware stuff, and some computer and retro gaming stuff. But almost none of this kind of stuff.