avatarOssiana Tepfenhart

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Did YouTube Try To Radicalize Me?

Holy shit, why did this show up on my feed?

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

As many people know, I get a lot of my inspiration from YouTube. I use YouTube as a search engine for work when I’m not critiquing shows on Netflix, Max, Prime, or Hulu.

Lately, I’ve been noticing something really creepy going on with my feed.

For every feminist vlogger I follow who gives awesome advice, I started to see people pop up on my feed that were new. I didn’t recognize them. The titles seemed innocuous at first.

One of them was a reaction channel where a girl talked about guys staying with a girl for 10 years, only to marry the next girl. I listened, listened, and then noticed something a bit funky.

At first, she sounded reasonable. Then, she started mentioning that the idea that “men don’t marry who they love the most” was “shaming men.” Then, she started hinting that the girl who waited for 10 years was wrong for leaving.

Record scratch. Wait, what?

That didn’t sound feminist. She sounded so chill until she dropped that pickme shit. I looked at the corner and I saw the Daily Wire’s logo. BOOM! I just realized I was watching far-right content.

The more I looked at my feed, the more I started to see names in the manosphere.

There were several that are pointedly anti-female, such as Circle of Kings. I also saw videos hating on certain creators I really love, such as Manifestelle and Vivziepop. (One had a complaint about Vivzie being “woke.”)

I started to block and ask to remove these videos from my feed. I was shocked. If I didn’t know any better, I would have been sucked in without actually realizing I was taking in right-wing, Red Pill content.

It started off so reasonable that I almost didn’t recognize what it was. And that, my friends, is the power of propaganda. You don’t even realize you’re being indoctrinated until it’s usually too late.

What is going on here?

I think there are two factors at play here: the fact that I occasionally run into critiques of the content creators that showed up on my feed and the fact that YouTube has a lonely-to-rightwing pipeline.

Simply put, part of it can be chalked up to an algorithm issue. The platform saw me searching up similar terms on YouTube. Maybe it is a fluke…kind of.

Well, not really.

YouTube has been weaponized by MRAs and the far right.

If you have seen random Red Pill influencers in your YouTube feed, you’re not alone. There has been an ongoing endeavor to use YouTube as a recruiting ground for rightwing extremist groups.

The most well-known route of radicalization happens when men seek out dating advice on YouTube. It usually starts out innocuous, but eventually turns to Red Pill antics, then it devolves to incel stuff.

A 2023 study at UC Davis noted that people who watch YouTube generally start getting more and more right extremist content as years pass. This is not the first time that YouTube has been caught with a rightwing lean.

There’s even a name for the network that tends to promote right-wing beliefs through YouTube and the process of radicalizing casual YouTube viewers. It’s called the “alt-right pipeline.”

It’s also not just a matter of skewing misogynist; racism is involved.

Some might try to say that this is just a fluke or that I’m a misandrist who can’t handle male-positive content. It’s not a fluke, and no, I’m not a manhater. These content creators don’t just stop at misogyny.

What you’re seeing is the slow normalization of misogyny and racism, being presented as a recommended channel related to common problems. What you’re seeing is a known “feature” of YouTube that was paid for by political machines.

They’re not just spreading hate about women. They’re spreading hate about anyone who does not fit the fashie mold — and there’s legit reason to believe YouTube might even be curbing content creators who aren’t right-wing enough.

Black content creators, in particular, have it rough enough to gain public attention.

Content creators have openly come out about the way YouTube radicalizes viewers while seemingly silencing black creators. There was even a lawsuit related to YouTube’s behavior toward black content creators.

Even if you don’t like my leftie politics on feminism, you still have to realize it’s not just misogyny. It’s racism, transphobia, male rage, homophobia, and Christian extremism YouTube peddles.

That’s not good for any of us.

We all like to think this is a thing of the past, but it’s not.

YouTube seems to pretend that they’ve fixed the alt-right pipeline and that they’ve done some work to curb disinformation. They really haven’t done much. They demonetized a couple of big talking heads, but they didn’t attack the core issue.

We often assume that this machine stopped after the Trump elections in 2016 and 2020. It’s not done. It’s still there. So maybe we need to talk about it more, or just warn others that it’s still around.

I’m doing my part about warning others. Are you?

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YouTube
Politics
Psychology
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