She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.
Yes, I agree - there have always been malevolent forces at work within the media - but before facebook started algorithmically whipping up old folks for clicks, cable TV news wasn’t quite as savage. The early days of hate-talk radio was really just Limbaugh ranting into the AM ether. Now, it’s saturated. Social media isn’t the root cause of political hatred but it gave it a bullhorn and a leg up to apparent legitimacy.
Talk radio or television broadcasts the same stuff to everyone. It’s damaging, absolutely. But social media literally tailors the shit to be exactly what will force someone farther down the rabbit hole. It’s actively, aggressively damaging and sends people on a downward spiral way faster while preventing them from encountering diverse viewpoints.
I agree it’s worse, but i was just thinking how there are regions where people play ONLY Fox on every public television, and if you turn on the radio it’s exclusively a right-wing propagandist ranting to tell you democrats are taking all your money to give it to black people on welfare.
Uh, no. For one, Republicans spend like fuck, they just also cut taxes so they end up running up the deficit. Social welfare programs account for a tiny fraction of government budgets. The vast majority is the military and interest payments on debt.
Populism and racism is as old as societies. Anciant Greece already had it. Rome fell to it. Christianism is born out of it.
Funnily enough, people always complained about how bad their society was because of this new thing. Like 5 thousand years ago already. Probably earlier even.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t do anything about it. We definitely should. But common sense won’t save us unfortunately.
block youtube/facebook/and any social media . though dns .with pihole for the time being .
and in the meantime try to reset her youtube(or delete and create new one -if she doesnt use gmail)
Go into the viewing history and wipe it. Then maybe view some more normal stuff to set it on a good track. That should give a good reset for her, though it wouldn’t stop her from just looking it up again, of course.
My mother‘s partner had some small success, on the one hand doing what you do already, unsubscribe from bad stuff and subscribe to some other stuff she might enjoy (nature channels, religious stuff which isn‘t so toxic, arts and crafts…) and also blocked some tabloid news on the router. On the other hand, he tried getting her outside more, they go on long hikes now and travel around a lot, plus he helped her find some hobbies (the arts and crafts one) and sits with her sometimes showing lots of interest and positive affirmations when she does that. Since religion is so important to her they also often go to (a not so toxic or cultish) church and church events and the choir and so on.
She‘s still into it to an extent, anti-vax will probably never change since she can’t trust doctors and hates needles and she still votes accordingly (which is far right in my country) too which is unfortunate, but she‘s calmed down a lot over it and isn‘t quite so radical and full of fear all the time.
Edit: oh and myself, I found out about a book “How to have impossible conversations” and the topics in there can be weird, but it helped me in staying somewhat calm when confronted with outlandish beliefs and not reinforce, though who knows how much that helps if anything (I think her partner contributed a LOT more than me).
Reading this makes me realize I’m not alone as I thought. My mother too has gone completely out of control in the last 3 years with every sort of plot theory (freemasonry, 5 families ruling the world, radical anti-vax, this Pope is not the real Pope, EU is to blame for anything, etc.). I manage to “agree to disagree” most of the time but it’s though sometimes… People, no matter their degree of education, love simple explanations to complex problems and an external scapegoat for their failures. These contents will always have an appeal.
Yeah you are not alone at all, there is an entire subreddit for this r/qanoncasualties and while my mother doesn‘t know it, a lot of this stuff comes from this Q thing. Like why else would a person like her in Austria care so much about Trump or Hillary Clinton or a guy like George Soros? Also a lot of it is thinly veiled borderline Nazi stuff (it‘s always the jews or other races or minority groups at fault), which is the next thing, she says she hates Nazis and yet they got her to vote far right and support all sorts of agendas. There is some mental trick happening there where “the left is the actual Nazis”.
Well she was always a bit weird with religion, aliens, wonder cures and other conspiracy stuff, but it really got turned towards these political aims in the last years. It feels malicious and it was distressing to me, though I‘m somewhat at peace with it now, the world is a crazy place and out of my control, I just try to do the best with what I can affect.
By now it is beyond apparent that corporations cannot be relied upon to regulate themselves. In the mindless dynamic they have set in motion, the mindless endgame is to keep us in a perpetual state of anguish.
How this type of vulgarly cynical content is not considered obscene and banned, is a failure of the highest magnitude.
It’s not going to be easy.
most likely she’ll be exposed to this shit elsewhere too, not only on youtube. fully reset the browser in ANY case. delete history, cookies, everything.
besides that, I see multiple options. you can consider them all or in various combinations
Any change should be done gradually i think. If the elder person notices that what shes watching is suddenly not the shows she subscribed to. Then she will clam up and refuse to watch the new shows unt OP bring back her “account”.
That’s exactly the point. If anyone dicides to cut me of from my shit, I would cut them of.
You can’t alter their behaviour with that kind of approach unless they have big dementia already. Imo, the only thing that helps would be talking to her and getting her into other activities.
Switch her to FreeTube on desktop. Can still subscribe to keep a list of channels she likes, but won’t get the YouTube algorithm recommendations on the home page.
For mobile something like newpipe for the same algorithm removed experience.
I love FreeTube but sometimes I just can’t get videos to play. Or they take forever to play because I have to pause for buffering. Still better than the actual site but still can be frustrating.
i’m really sorry to hear that you’re going through a difficult time rn. it’s a very frustrating situation to be in. i’m sending you a hug and good wishes.
In addition to deleting history, could you get direct access to the account and watch better/different content to hopefully get that stuff more recommended too?
I don’t really know what to look up that could interest her without being a window for more or that kind of videos, she likes history, but all the Spanish history channels are whitewash colonialism shit that reinforce the bad algorithm. I’m starting to watch and like videos from channels like “old things never die” or from guys who clean carpets and so on, hopefully that moves the algorithm to more neutral international kinda documentary style of videos.
This may sound outlandish BUT HEAR ME OUT I can use the brand channel myself on your behalf, I speak Spanish so I can discern very neutral anti-propaganda history channels, as well as some crafts and cleaning videos in Spanish too all while blocking all the channels you would tell me. For my kind of work I have a shit ton of free time on my hands I tend to spend 6h-ish hours watching YouTube or sometimes 12-ish if I also set stuff in the background, I will deliver a fully pledged clean algorithm with tons of fresh content for her.
I did that once,
All it did was lock-in the algorithm to serve alt-right alpha-male misogynistic BS just because (guessing) google knows I have an odysee account, and it started out by catering to that demographic…
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
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Make her a new account, pre-train it with some wholesome stuff and explicitly block some shit channels.
i dont know but im just glad youre alive bc the fish bumped you out of the water with its nose
Great advice in here. Now, how do I de-radicalize my mom? :(
the damage that corporate social media has inflicted on our social fabric and political discourse is beyond anything we could have imagined.
This is true, but one could say the same about talk radio or television.
Yes, I agree - there have always been malevolent forces at work within the media - but before facebook started algorithmically whipping up old folks for clicks, cable TV news wasn’t quite as savage. The early days of hate-talk radio was really just Limbaugh ranting into the AM ether. Now, it’s saturated. Social media isn’t the root cause of political hatred but it gave it a bullhorn and a leg up to apparent legitimacy.
Social media is more extreme, but we can’t discount the damage Fox and people like Limbaugh or Michael Savage did.
Talk radio or television broadcasts the same stuff to everyone. It’s damaging, absolutely. But social media literally tailors the shit to be exactly what will force someone farther down the rabbit hole. It’s actively, aggressively damaging and sends people on a downward spiral way faster while preventing them from encountering diverse viewpoints.
And it sucks people back in like a breadcrumbing ex when it hasn’t seen you active recently.
I agree it’s worse, but i was just thinking how there are regions where people play ONLY Fox on every public television, and if you turn on the radio it’s exclusively a right-wing propagandist ranting to tell you democrats are taking all your money to give it to black people on welfare.
Well it’s kind of true.
Actually, liberal taxes pay for rural white America.
Uh, no. For one, Republicans spend like fuck, they just also cut taxes so they end up running up the deficit. Social welfare programs account for a tiny fraction of government budgets. The vast majority is the military and interest payments on debt.
Agreed, Ted Kaczynski was right about technology evidently.
It was just in the news that he was an MK ULTRA subject. Fucked up shit.
He was pretty good at math too
Populism and racism is as old as societies. Anciant Greece already had it. Rome fell to it. Christianism is born out of it.
Funnily enough, people always complained about how bad their society was because of this new thing. Like 5 thousand years ago already. Probably earlier even.
Which is not to say we shouldn’t do anything about it. We definitely should. But common sense won’t save us unfortunately.
block youtube/facebook/and any social media . though dns .with pihole for the time being . and in the meantime try to reset her youtube(or delete and create new one -if she doesnt use gmail)
Go into the viewing history and wipe it. Then maybe view some more normal stuff to set it on a good track. That should give a good reset for her, though it wouldn’t stop her from just looking it up again, of course.
This is the right answer. Removing browsing history is an easy step with very big effect
This. Watch the majority report lol
Oh no! Sam Seder, what a fucking nightmare!
And now the song will repeat in my head, forever.
My mother‘s partner had some small success, on the one hand doing what you do already, unsubscribe from bad stuff and subscribe to some other stuff she might enjoy (nature channels, religious stuff which isn‘t so toxic, arts and crafts…) and also blocked some tabloid news on the router. On the other hand, he tried getting her outside more, they go on long hikes now and travel around a lot, plus he helped her find some hobbies (the arts and crafts one) and sits with her sometimes showing lots of interest and positive affirmations when she does that. Since religion is so important to her they also often go to (a not so toxic or cultish) church and church events and the choir and so on.
She‘s still into it to an extent, anti-vax will probably never change since she can’t trust doctors and hates needles and she still votes accordingly (which is far right in my country) too which is unfortunate, but she‘s calmed down a lot over it and isn‘t quite so radical and full of fear all the time.
Edit: oh and myself, I found out about a book “How to have impossible conversations” and the topics in there can be weird, but it helped me in staying somewhat calm when confronted with outlandish beliefs and not reinforce, though who knows how much that helps if anything (I think her partner contributed a LOT more than me).
Reading this makes me realize I’m not alone as I thought. My mother too has gone completely out of control in the last 3 years with every sort of plot theory (freemasonry, 5 families ruling the world, radical anti-vax, this Pope is not the real Pope, EU is to blame for anything, etc.). I manage to “agree to disagree” most of the time but it’s though sometimes… People, no matter their degree of education, love simple explanations to complex problems and an external scapegoat for their failures. These contents will always have an appeal.
Yeah you are not alone at all, there is an entire subreddit for this r/qanoncasualties and while my mother doesn‘t know it, a lot of this stuff comes from this Q thing. Like why else would a person like her in Austria care so much about Trump or Hillary Clinton or a guy like George Soros? Also a lot of it is thinly veiled borderline Nazi stuff (it‘s always the jews or other races or minority groups at fault), which is the next thing, she says she hates Nazis and yet they got her to vote far right and support all sorts of agendas. There is some mental trick happening there where “the left is the actual Nazis”.
Well she was always a bit weird with religion, aliens, wonder cures and other conspiracy stuff, but it really got turned towards these political aims in the last years. It feels malicious and it was distressing to me, though I‘m somewhat at peace with it now, the world is a crazy place and out of my control, I just try to do the best with what I can affect.
By now it is beyond apparent that corporations cannot be relied upon to regulate themselves. In the mindless dynamic they have set in motion, the mindless endgame is to keep us in a perpetual state of anguish.
How this type of vulgarly cynical content is not considered obscene and banned, is a failure of the highest magnitude.
Redirect youtube to an invidious instance by editing hosts file
It’s not going to be easy. most likely she’ll be exposed to this shit elsewhere too, not only on youtube. fully reset the browser in ANY case. delete history, cookies, everything.
besides that, I see multiple options. you can consider them all or in various combinations
completely block youtube (for example via hosts)
new account
unsubscribe from everything
reset/delete watch history
https://myadcenter.google.com/personalizationoff?hl=en
enable restricted mode (essentially making it a kids account)
change location/region of the account
go here: https://myaccount.google.com/u/0/yourdata/youtube?hl=en&pli=1
Any change should be done gradually i think. If the elder person notices that what shes watching is suddenly not the shows she subscribed to. Then she will clam up and refuse to watch the new shows unt OP bring back her “account”.
I would be really pissed if my kids would delete my stuff…
I’m not questioning what’s right and wrong or if this even changes someone’s opinion.
It’s merely a technical approach that can somewhat work until it’s filled up with the same crap again in a few weeks.
The person got there once - it’ll likely happen again. But combining this with conversation and actual facts, can be a start.
That’s exactly the point. If anyone dicides to cut me of from my shit, I would cut them of.
You can’t alter their behaviour with that kind of approach unless they have big dementia already. Imo, the only thing that helps would be talking to her and getting her into other activities.
Switch her to FreeTube on desktop. Can still subscribe to keep a list of channels she likes, but won’t get the YouTube algorithm recommendations on the home page.
For mobile something like newpipe for the same algorithm removed experience.
I love FreeTube but sometimes I just can’t get videos to play. Or they take forever to play because I have to pause for buffering. Still better than the actual site but still can be frustrating.
It changes instances every time it loads from what I understand. Having it not change might help in that area.
Ahhh that’s makes sense.
If she has no account maybe try to disable youtube from setting cookies. So shell start over every time.
She probably uses the TV app and doesn’t watch it on a PC
i’m really sorry to hear that you’re going through a difficult time rn. it’s a very frustrating situation to be in. i’m sending you a hug and good wishes.
Next to deleting, you can enable the option to automatically delete it every 3 months.
Google account -> Data & privacy -> History Settings -> YouTube History -> auto-delete
But, the best is to have a new account.
In addition to deleting history, could you get direct access to the account and watch better/different content to hopefully get that stuff more recommended too?
I don’t really know what to look up that could interest her without being a window for more or that kind of videos, she likes history, but all the Spanish history channels are whitewash colonialism shit that reinforce the bad algorithm. I’m starting to watch and like videos from channels like “old things never die” or from guys who clean carpets and so on, hopefully that moves the algorithm to more neutral international kinda documentary style of videos.
This may sound outlandish BUT HEAR ME OUT I can use the brand channel myself on your behalf, I speak Spanish so I can discern very neutral anti-propaganda history channels, as well as some crafts and cleaning videos in Spanish too all while blocking all the channels you would tell me. For my kind of work I have a shit ton of free time on my hands I tend to spend 6h-ish hours watching YouTube or sometimes 12-ish if I also set stuff in the background, I will deliver a fully pledged clean algorithm with tons of fresh content for her.
Let me be your YouTube algo dealer. 🤝
You can manage all recommendations by going to account > Your data in YouTube
From there you can remove the watch history and search history or disable them entirely. It should make it a lot easier to reset the recommendations.
This is the best and most actionable info here OP. From there can you install some parental software to block certain kinds of videos?
I did that once, All it did was lock-in the algorithm to serve alt-right alpha-male misogynistic BS just because (guessing) google knows I have an odysee account, and it started out by catering to that demographic…