446
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
446 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
79476 readers
5895 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
You used to be able to see what Google thought about you.
https://myadcenter.google.com/controls
Can't check myself if they still do but on the advertiser end they definitely let you target demographics.
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.