TLDR if you don't wanna watch the whole thing: Benaminute (the Youtuber here) creates a fresh YouTube account and watches all recommended shorts without skipping. They repeat this 5 times, where they change their location to a random city in the US.
Below is the number of shorts after which alt-right content was recommended. Left wing/liberal content was never recommended first.
- Houston: 88 shorts
- Chicago: 98 shorts
- Atlanta: 109 shorts
- NYC: 247 shorts
- San Fransisco: never (Benaminute stopped after 250 shorts)
There however, was a certain pattern to this. First, non-political shorts were recommended. After that, AI Jesus shorts started to be recommended (with either AI Jesus talking to you, or an AI narrator narrating verses from the Bible). After this, non-political shorts by alt-right personalities (Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, etc.) started to be recommended. Finally, explicitly alt-right shorts started to be recommended.
What I personally found both disturbing and kinda hilarious was in the case of Chicago. The non-political content in the beginning was a lot of Gen Alpha brainrot. Benaminute said that this seemed to be the norm for Chicago, as they had observed this in another similar experiment (which dealt with long-form content instead of shorts). After some shorts, there came a short where AI Gru (the main character from Despicable Me) was telling you to vote for Trump. He was going on about how voting for "Kamilia" would lose you "10000 rizz", and how voting for Trump would get you "1 million rizz".
In the end, Benaminute along with Miniminuteman propose a hypothesis trying to explain this phenomenon. They propose that alt-right content might be inciting more emotion, thus ranking high up in the algorithm. They say the algorithm isn't necessarily left wing or right wing, but that alt-right wingers have understood the methodology of how to capture and grow their audience better.
Alt right videos are made to elicit outrage, hate, and shock which our lizard brains react to more due to potential danger than positive videos spreading unity and love. It’s all about getting as many eyeballs on the video to make money and thi is the way that’s most effective.
So all this stuff about climate change being an existential threat is actually alt right?
Are people making clickbait/ragebait articles about climate change? Are people seeking out clickbait about climate change?
I don't need to be constantly reminded of climate change, but an old "friend" is constantly telling me about the politics of video games he doesn't even have a system to play with.
All alt-right content is made to generate outrage but content that generates outrage does not have to be necessarily alt-right.
Another important part of alt right bullshit is that they blame people that viewers can easily identify on the streets. Crime? It's the immigrants and blacks! Shit economy? Jews and the deep state!
So, I guess the only way to fight climate change is by accusing every petrol CEO of being a deep state Jew gay communist
I don't think you meant it that way, but how are Jews 'easily identifiable' on the street?
Ever seen that caricature of a Jew? The one with a huge nose and a grin, curly hair? That's how the idiots picture all Jews. It doesn't matter that it's a racist/xenophobic stereotype, it has a "clear, recognizable face" of the enemy. It creates an image of "the enemy" in their mind
I feel like they have a hard time defining alt right. If you type in is drinking coffee alt right there is a article, playing video games, driving cars.
There's also an entire industry around mass producing this content and deliberately gaming the algorithm.