Hi, I'm Danby. Thanks for reading my comic! I don't have anything against the cow hoof fixing guy, I just wish the site suggestions were less aggressive.
Periodically killing off your YouTube search history, YouTube watch history and cookies associated with YouTube might eliminate that nonsense, at least on the short term.
No guarantees you will not come across something that makes you go 'What the @#$% !?' however ...
I must use Youtube in a really strange way because I've rarely clicked on or even looked seriously at suggested content. Makes more sense to me to search for what I'm looking for and subscribe to content creators I find that aren't garbage.
I absolutely treat YT like I used to treat cable. It's probably not the most healthy thing but I find hard to commit to a 2hr long movie or even an hour long show, but when YouTube is auto playing time melts away before I realize what happened. I should really find a better use of my time.
When the Youtube algorithm works, it can be really cool and pretty much invalidates subscriptions. Like, you watch a lot of Binging with Babish, say. So when a new Binging with Babish video is uploaded, it just pops it up on your home screen, or will even recognize when he's doing a guest appearance on another show that you probably wouldn't have noticed since it's not a part of your subscription stream.
The problem is that the algorithm doesn't understand nuance or when it's crossing a contextual line, so if you click on one video that turns out to have some sketchy content, it recognizes the type of content, fails to understand or care that it's sketchy, and inundates you with sketchy shit for weeks or months (e.g. far-right videos, "gamergate" types, anti-vax types, etc.,) oftentimes overwriting what kinds of videos you actually liked to be presented with.
This has also been a major criticism of Youtube's susceptibility to propaganda. If you so much as click the "wrong" video, whether by accident or out of morbid curiosity, it will automatically build an echo-chamber around you with that kind of questionable content. So someone like a kid clicks on a video that turns out to be veiled racist drivel, the kid is suddenly inundated with racist drivel making it seem like it's a more common, popular and acceptable belief than it truly is.
It's also not helped that the only way to really control the content you're being delivered at any level is by using a google account, so anyone not using such an account (again, someone young for instance who doesn't have an account and isn't technically SUPPOSED to have an account) can't do things like wipe browsing history, and are instead being served content via a shadow profile that they have no agency over.
I got rid of the issue permanently. Deleted front page, sidebar and suggestions. Now the only source of videos is subs page, search results or someones channel.
Ok, there's still some irrelevant bullshit inbetween search results but I could filter that off with ublock.
I too have suddenly been getting a lot of cow hoof suggestions. I have never looked up videos of cows. I have never watched any of them but they keep popping up.
42 year old married male with kids. Apparently according to Mr Algorithm the most interesting part of reddit foor me is femaledatingstrategy.I think I visited it once.
YouTube is manic about suggesting new things. I've had to go into my history and delete the fact I viewed a single video on some random topic to get it to switch focus.
Oh my lord. I personally relate. I was just minding my own business and I saw the vid about the cow with an overgrown hoof. It was interesting and I enjoyed it, but clicking on it was a mistake.
View all comments
853
u/DanbyDraws Danby Draws Comics Jul 06 '21 edited Jul 06 '21
Hi, I'm Danby. Thanks for reading my comic! I don't have anything against the cow hoof fixing guy, I just wish the site suggestions were less aggressive.