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Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

I regularly get recommendations for extremist content on Youtube, even though it's not thematically related to anything I already watch. The most harmless ones are Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate videos, but not too far behind is conspiracy stuff, fundamentalist religious channels, "spiritual" videos about faith and ghosts and living the Matrix. Like you, I used to click on the <not interested> options to little effect, so now I just ignore them. It's actually a running joke with my friends that in the YT app on my iPad I often get an extremist suggestion exactly in the third slot of the suggested videos list.

Here's my theory on why that happens: Youtube knows I'm male, kind of old, a tech nerd, and that I likely don't have any kids or a wife. That's it. It's the kind of content I'm supposed to like in my gender/age/status cohort.

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It's the kind of content I'm supposed to like in my gender/age/status cohort.

Yes. This is exactly how personalized advertising works.

Advertisers pay to target specific groups/cohorts in a statistical manner. Sorry that you don't like your cohort but this is a well known and unavoidable byproduct of their statistical approach.

It's like when a friend has cancer. You search for it on Google and the next thing you know, you're bombarded with ads for quack remedys.

The only effective solution --- avoid those who play this game.

Advertising doesn't have to work this way. There are alternatives --- such as basing it strictly on expressed interest. If you search for cancer, you should expect some ads related to cancer. What you shouldn't expect is these ads tracking you all over the internet.

Advertising works but there is not much independent evidence to show that personalized advertising is really any more cost effective.

I fully agree, although in my case it's not advertising per se. I'm on YT Premium, I don't get ads as such. But they're still trying to "sell" me engagement, of course. There is very little doubt in mind my that extremist content is maximally engaging, especially for the many people who actually fall down the rabbit hole and get their filter bubble permanently modified.

While YT staff may not actually hold these extremist views themselves, my guess would be they're nevertheless actively pushing it for commercial reasons. Just like it turned out that the supposedly liberal pre-Elon old guard of Twitter had special protections in place that made accounts such as LibsOfTikTok immune to getting banned, I am quite certain Youtube has the same protections for extremist channels that would otherwise run afoul of its T&C on the daily.

although in my case it's not advertising per se

The slickest and most subversive form of advertising is that which isn't immediately recognized as such.

Again, you're not wrong, but that response isn't quite fair to the point I was trying to make.

More to the point, personalised advertising doesn't mean you are supposed to like it; it means they like reaching you.

It means they like spending money to annoy you.

The question for advertisers --- is this really more cost effective than a simple, non-personalized, context based approach?

There is evidence that advertisers are increasingly deciding it is not. For example --- Amazon's context based ads are one of it's fastest growing areas.

https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-amazons-growing-ad-bu...

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