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.
I think it’s sad how so many of the comments are sharing strategies about how to game the Youtube algorithm, instead of suggesting ways to avoid interacting with the algorithm at all, and learning to curate content on your own.
The algorithm doesn’t actually care that it’s promoting right-wing or crazy conspiracy content, it promotes whatever that keeps people’s eyeballs on Youtube. The fact is that this will always be the most enraging content. Using “not interested” and “block this channel” buttons doesn’t make the algorithm stop trying to advertise this content, you’re teaching it to improve its strategy to manipulate you!
The long-term strategy is to get people away from engagement algorithms. Introduce OP’s mother to a patched Youtube client that blocks ads and algorithmic feeds (Revanced has this). “Youtube with no ads!” is an easy way to convince non-technical people. Help her subscribe to safe channels and monitor what she watches.
Not everyone is willing to switch platforms that easily. You can’t always be idealistic.
That’s why I suggested Revanced with “disable recommendations” patches. It’s still Youtube and there is no new platform to learn.