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If it's on your front page and recommendations it's probably because you fed the algorithm a lot of "you won't believe what conservative said!" and now youtube thinks you want that content. It's also seasonal with the election/post-election cycle, ads are more aggressively funded during those seasons.

As for the second half, I fail to make the connection between classic rock and political conservatism. It really just sounds like to me that content creators are being asked for the lowest common denominator music that the widest audience enjoys, you can look it up and 60s-80s rock is extremely popular beyond other genres. It's the same reason movie review channels get mega-clicks for Marvel/Star Wars flicks.

They're still there mind you, but I wouldn't call it disproportional to the amount of conservatives there are irl.

Occam's razor dictates the second one. It's a tried-and-true tactic among corporations to pander to hyper-political loonies to get both engagement and outrage bucks.

Do you share your youtube account with someone? Over the last 3 years I haven't received a single right wing recommendation or ad despite having watched right wing content in the past. Arguably a lot of recommendations feel more left leaning than anything.

As for video recommendation algorithms, your mileage may vary but I do occasionally get some ads featuring Fox News pundits' talk shows even though I pay no attention to such things. Bear in mind that most of my observation comes from the typical comment section you see on YouTube, which often favors right-wing talking points. And also the fact that any video featuring Joe Biden will get bombed with dislikes.

The sheer abundance of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, hardline conservatives, batshit crazy bible thumpers and even literal white supremacists that often get positive reception on the platform even on videos that has nothing to do with politics raises my suspicions that a good chunk of the YouTube demographic really are engaged in a vicious cycle of content baiting that is further consolidated by their political ideologue.

It doesn't help that many of the people I see who listen to classic rock music frequently overlaps with the aforementioned conservative Facebook conspiracy theorist/bible thumper crowd.

No its just like Wisehowl here said you yourself just watched many videos of that type so the algorithm keeps giving it to you because it believes you want it

Overall this whole claim that "The far-right is controling Youtube" is beyond dumb because it relies on the "Anti-SJW=Conservative/Right-winger" fallacy

No!! disliking wokeness and Social "Justice" idiocy does't make you a Conservative or a "Trump supporter" just like how being a leftist doesn't make you a SJW or a Communist

Overall people really need to stop thinking in absolutes its very unproductive and cause problems

I confirm, I share my YT account with an aunt and I receive nothing but TikTok crap, specially their ads whenever I see YouTube videos on my smartphone it made me considering to close my YT account and make a new one.

I never said that the far-right is controlling YouTube or whatever. What I'm asking is how YouTube managed to develop a significant userbase of some particularly unpleasant conservatives.

I'm also not saying that obnoxious liberals are nonexistent in the site, either. There's always the crazies on every side of the political spectrum wherever you go on the internet, but I do notice that the hardline conservatives, especially the conspiracy mongering ones, have a significant platform AND public support from making inflammatory statements to outright spreading misinformation on YouTube. How do you explain videos featuring any liberal or left-wing content get downvoted to oblivion while conspiracy videos claiming vaccines contain microchips used to spy on freedom-loving citizens by the evil pedo cabal have 99:1 like-to-dislike ratio?

So, er, I don't want to sound accusatory or sarcastic here, but are you feeling alright Lazlo?

I've just read through all you've written and it's coming across to me at least that this seems to be getting you really stressed out and paranoid.

You really shouldn't be worrying about likes and dislikes on a Youtube video, especially political ones.

In general, a left-wing or liberal stance is the default political stance of most westerners and their content makes up the vast majority of political content on YouTube, so overall, the amount of likes they get is going to be less because it's the normal.

Hell, I primarily use YouTube these days as a music player and to watch history documentaries; but I still get videos coming through in my suggestion bar about left-wing takes on current political events.

Because of that, any right-wing content has to be deliberately sought out and it'll be in the minority, which means that the amount of likes it receives will be disproportional to left-wing content, as there is less content to dilute the user base for each individual creator.

Also, why wouldn't people want to make videos about Queen?

Freddie Mercury was, and still is, a massive gay icon.

I don't watch reaction videos, as they all tend to be staged garbage anyway, but since there are hundreds of the bastards these days, I'm not surprised that they're making videos about 80's music.

To be fair though, due to all major studios having only a handful of songwriters on hand, a lot of the mainstream music these days is sung in the same style and independent artists don't really get played on the radio these days.

Here's the hits from last year:

The 2010's had a bit of it, but you've still got some standout songs that are instantly recognisable, like "Hey Soul Sister", "Bad Romance" and "Love the Way You Lie"

The 2000's were absolutely amazing for great tunes and each one stands out and is distinguishable from each other

And then you have the 90's, which are the best because that's what I grew up with.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are songs from the 80's that you probably didn't even realise with 80's songs, just due to how varied that decade was and how almost everyone of my generation was born with the ability to automatically sing these songs from birth.

I have noticed mostly conservatives responding to YouTube's curated content.

Good example is the Top News section:

I follow a few politics channels, so this is probably semi-tailored for me, but it's still very obvious that it's heavily curated. I don't follow any of these channels and there's no reason why a video with 9.1k views should be considered "top."

These curated vids are all universally poorly received. They always have 50%+ dislike ratios and lots of pissed conservatives in the comments (assuming comments are enabled):

So I don't blame anyone for getting the sense that YouTube's userbase is predominantly conservative.

However, I don't think that's the case. I think the actual problem is that YouTube's current policy of aggression curation annoys everyone. Consequently, liberals just don't bother watching the videos, whereas conservatives click on them exclusively to leave a dislike or voice their displeasure, resulting in the imbalance that others end up seeing.

I hope YouTube stops with the curation eventually. It's infantilizing and clogs up my feed with content that I don't care about. But I don't expect them to ease off, in fact I'm pretty confident that it'll just get worse and worse.

Can confirm. I barely interact with politics on YouTube, but whenever I do get something political recommended to me, it's left-wing.

I get far wing political propaganda recommended sometimes, but it's usually mainstream lies instead filing my homepage, other than adds of course

It really is the algorithm. Niche content like conspiracy/anti-vaxx stuff is not recommended to the average user, so it's only seen by those who deliberately seek it out. That's why they get such a high like/dislike ratio. The more "mainstream" stuff that Youtube chooses to recommend to everyone gets poorly received because most people aren't interested.

Take this for example:

Same like/dislike ratio as your conspiracy microchip anti-vax videos. Does it mean that Youtube has a huge furry majority? No, it's just that the algorithm will only show you this if it thinks you are furry trash. You've somehow convinced it that you are a tinfoil-hat wearing nutter.

Assuming I haven't completely lost my mind or YouTube's algorithm is going haywire on me, I think I'll purge my view and search history to see what happens…

YouTube can occasionally be a little odd for me when it comes to things. I don't really watch or subscribe to channels that focus on specifically on politics, but on the subject of "right wing" stuff specifically for some odd reason I get Prager U and Turning Point USA ads on occasion, and on the day I typed this comment I had a recommendation on my front page from a clearly right wing politics focused YT channel that was complaining about schools being more accepting of LGBTQ+ people (and for reference typically my front page is filled with gaming videos, true crime videos, horror series, and vtubers). It's always right wing stuff like that whenever politics does show up for some odd reason, I don't think I've gotten more left wing focused stuff as ads or as an out-of-nowhere recommendation.

I don't share my YT account either, and I'm the only person who uses my phone.

I have been having it pretty fine since like 2018 but that's probably because i deleted all political and other meme videos from my watch history and then disabled it. All that's left there are tons of MLP and Gmod videos and some music. Had to finally do it because i used to fall asleep while watching some videos and when i woke up, there was all kinds of weird shit in my watch history and then my front page would also be filled with all kinds of weird shit too.

I was also in some video streaming sites where you could watch videos with other people and for some reason YouTube suddenly started adding those videos that were played in those streaming sites into my watch history, so it got even worse and i just got tired of manually deleting every video that i didn't wan't there, so i disabled the whole watch history.

Since then my front page has been nothing but old and sometimes new MLP and Gmod related videos every day. Also some chill music and some game documents from Gvmers channel. And i honestly don't mind it at all, it's just the way i like it and wan't to keep it that way. I guess i'm just nostalgic person like that but i just can't help it, hard to let go of the past. Just have to stay logged in.

Sometimes for some reason YouTube may suddenly recommend one or two political related videos or some meme videos but then i just simply click not interested. I have another channel that i usually use to watch those kind of videos and add them to my playlists if needed. Also seems like that if you add a video to your "watch later" playlist, you will start seeing that video in your front page too.

You want to know what YouTube shows and how the algorythm works..? Markiplier did extensive testing of this from Canada:

So there you go. As much as I would like for a fun conspiracy theory to be true to kill an hour or 2 of time in a day pondering about it, it simply is not the case. Your experience matches the way the algorythm works for most people – you just cannot llok past your preconceived bias. You reached the conclusion before you did any actual research.

Long form political vlogs/podcasts do well on YouTube because of 2 factors:

• Political content drives engagement – which all social media platforms reward
• Youtube's algorithm heavily favours longer videos because longer videos mean more mid-roll ads
• Political vlogging, due to the factors above, has among the best effort:reward ratio on the platform; they get good engagement, get favoured by the algorithm, and don't require a lot of editing, just your opinions, a microphone, and an avatar.

Conservative content is more common on YouTube and Facebook compared to eg. Twitter and Reddit, and that's down to differences in demographics and policies. YouTube and Facebook tend to have older audiences which tend to lean further right. Twitter and Reddit furthermore have policies which have essentially pushed conservatives off those platforms.

That said, unless you nudge the algorithm into feeding you this stuff, you will probably get mostly mainstream media content. And YouTube also has a healthy left-wing political community too if that's what you're looking for.

Alright, I think I figured out what my issue with the YT algorithm is. I may have inadvertently clicked on a right-wing pundit or a conspiracy theory video some time ago, and the algorithm simply won't live it down. Resetting my view history managed to keep my rec category mostly into music and gaming stuff, which actually worked. So this all may have just been a simple case of me jumping the gun.

YouTube has been like that for YEARS. This is hardly news.

Don't worry, something similar happened to me.

Click one video about history? Here's a bunch of historical youtubers! Click on cooking, have a bunch of cooking lessons! Click on a fandom video? You're definitely going to be flooded by weird videos!

That's not even mentioning the random videos the YT algorithm may spit out.