Bad advice given on the internet

I have a YouTube account and it knows exactly what I like and I never get Trump videos in my recommendations.

I mostly get videos about sport, video games, movies, music and history.

Strangely enough those are topics that I enjoy...

I don't get any videos about trump I get videos about gaming or podcasts I watch on YouTube .I was watching a video today .a mum was complaining about Spotify playing songs with naughty lyrics to her young child.

She has to sign up for Spotify kids at extra cost to make sure only under 12 rated songs are played .

I don't use tik tok. I don't know if it's true ,I just heard if you use tik tok theres sorts of videos that come up on for you page including political videos .

my ma doesn’t do those things.

Like others I am not subjected to any such videos. My feed is all Jujitsu videos and warbly solo acoustic singers with their guitar :)

I do not believe the algorithm is out to get people to watch such things either. Rather I suspect it looks at what videos you are watching - and the vast database who also watch them - figures out what those people also like and stayed engaged with - then shows you recommendations based on that.

For example lately if you are watching videos of American stand up comedians you are quite likely to get Trump related recommendations. Right now that community are erring towards Trump for a few reasons - their concerns about free speech being prime among them.

Not having a YouTube account or cookies likely is irrelevant. I suspect not having a YouTube account with a history of what you watched makes the algorithm more likely to suggest things you are not into. It has less to work with.

The algorithm however draws likely on much more than that. Everything under your google "My Activity" history seems fair game. Anything I google tends to show up quite quickly in related YouTube videos.

I suspect they also use your IP Address to track who you are (not cookies) but also where and who you live with. So if you live in an IP Range of people obsessed with Trump, the algorithm will likely suspect you might be interested in Trump too.

Recently a neighbour bought a rather impressive sporty car. I suspect my neighbours must have googled the car and its price tag a lot because I very quickly started getting Google Ads and YouTube recommendations about that very car. Color and all.

It's things like this that give rise to the urban legend that your phone is "listening to everything you say". I do not think our phones listen to us. I do not think they have to. Much simpler, cheaper, more basic tricks will have the same results and look like magic and spying.

Not a bad point sir. But also my posts was already long enough without me expounding on it too much. The thing is when you are playing with huge numbers "Guessing games" as you put it can result in a hell of a lot of hits. I work and study heavily with statistics too. And I also do a lot of "mentalism magic" which is another realm where you use very simply tricks to produce results that look like miracles and mind reading.

A very simply algorithm can give results that look like magic and mind reading.

It would take incredibly complex algorithms to look into what the actual content of every video is. Even more complex to have everyones phone listen to them and target them with ads that match what they were talking about.

But incredibly simple algorithms such as "If a person watches video X, suggest to him the 10 videos that other people who also watched X not only watched but watched to the end" will have amazing results.

You are right that "guesisng games" is part of what I am saying because I - like you and everyone on this thread - have no idea what you tube and tiktok algorithms actually are. But I have written enough of my own algorithms, programmed long enough, worked enough statistics and more to know you can get powerful results from cheap and simple techniques.

So my suspicion - and again I grant you there is some guess work on my part too, you are not wrong there - is that although it sometimes seems like our phones must be listening to us or the alogorithms are trying to produce a given result - the reality is probably a lot simpler and cheaper and more basic (and more base in some ways).

Yes, you are right, they covered Russel Brand before he went down the Christian rabbit hole after the sexual abuse allegations.

It would be nice if they covered him again, as he seems to have become more extreme in his views and grifting. For example, he was selling a “magical amulet” for $250 last week to protect wearers from “corrupting” WiFi waves.

The latest table of guru ratings from the podcast is below. Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey and others got added in.

right

Rogans problem is that he portrays himself as a casual, curious everyman, open to all views. But in reality, he is heavily biased. He will give easy interviews and agree with his right leaning guests, while being more skeptical towards his leftie guests. He also spreads a huge amount of misinformation on conspiracy theories, UFOs, covid, vaccines and alternative medicine. He will give a platform to guests to spread this misinformation, ones who have no empirical evidence to back up their claims.

To give an example, he talked about how the Jan 6th insurrection was a False Flag operation by the FBI. This conspiracy theory is unproven.

Or lately I remember him talking about how the State of the Nation speech by Biden was prerecorded. He said that if you looked at the time on his watch you would see that it wasn’t live. This stupid anti-democratic party conspiracy theory was debunked on the show, by one of the staff. They pointed out to him that the republicans would have to be in on it since they appear with Biden while he makes the speech.

The point is that Joe will “fall” for these right wing propaganda/conspiracy stories, but never ones from the left.

Rogan tries hard enough (for an American) but he's a bit of a flute in all fairness, to put it rather mildly.

I think Zecharia Sitchin and his tales of the Anunnakai can top that.