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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

For what it’s worth, I also have YouTube Premium and watch a lot of gun content and conservative political content on YouTube, and I don’t think I’ve ever been recommended any sort of explicitly anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi content.

I do suspect that the recommendation algorithm for Premium is slightly different and perhaps more favorable to gun content. Pretty much all gun content is demonetized, and anything that’s demonetized gets recommended less; I suspect Premium is an exception to this. Also, there may be more gun content than usual lately because SHOT Show, a trade show for the gun industry, is happening this week.

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Same exactly. I have a very specific question for you. I made the mistake of back in 2016 of watching some Jordan Peterson videos (mostly kidding about the word mistake, but read on). I enjoyed them and moved on. Ever since then YouTube has been obsessed with recommending Jordan Peterson videos to me even though I haven’t watched one in ages. Have you had this issue by any chance?

I went through a Jordan Peterson phase maybe a little later than you, but I don’t get a lot of JBP recommendations anymore. When I look at the recommendations I do get, though, it’s generally content I’ve engaged with more frequently and recently. Though I probably watch more YouTube than any other video content overall, so maybe that’s a reason why. (I feel a little sheepish admitting that, but I honestly shouldn’t because there’s a lot of good content.)

Thanks. I'm getting slightly obsessed as to why YouTube thinks I'm obsessed :O

Thanks. FWIW I wasn't trying to "yuck your yum" for gun folks. Just not my personal bag of tea. I was raising it as an example of how useless the feedback mechanisms were for correcting the recommendation engine, not trying to draw some line between gun content and Nazi loving.

I appreciate that and I didn't take any offense. I just wanted to add my own experience. And I do think there might be something to the recommendation algorithm being different for Premium.

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