YouTube profits from showing people things they might be likely to click on, and from collecting money from people who want people to click on their things. This has something to do with "interests" in some sense of the word but I do not think YouTube's recommendation engine is an unmediated expression of a user's true desires.
With respect, there is no way this is correct - at least not in a meaningful sense.
Are you logged in with a YouTube account? Does anyone else pass YouTube traffic through your IP address, ie do you have children, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc? Do you purposefully block ads and analytics that would make suggestions like this random? Lil durk and Peppa pig are simply not going to be recommended next to each other without reason.
I just loaded YouTube.com and scrolled for _dozens of pages_. There is nothing remotley bizzarre. The most annoying thing is that it supports cut-and-pasters, who take clips from source videos that I watch and repost them.
Cynically, I disagree. i think their recommendation engine is a reflection of a collection of people's true desires. People reveal their preferences through actions (clicking on things) more than thought, which is generally rationalization for a decision already made.
Have a source for that claim? I watch a lot of YouTube with one account and it only recommends things similiar to what I already watch. There's no sudden fake news switch to Fox news or CNN or... anything, really.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po...
It links to this WSJ investigation:
How YouTube Drives People to the Internet’s Darkest Corners https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-youtube-drives-viewers-to-t...
I suspect people who watch a lot of YouTube aren't as badly affected as there is a large dataset to recommend from.
The logic is simple: the more reactions a piece of content generates, the more it will be recommended. "Fake news", at least in the form of incendiary propaganda, is designed to invoke strong emotions. In the case of YouTube (probably applies to FB too), the compound effect is pure amplification.
In a way one could say that YouTube and propaganda thrive from a perverse symbiotic relationship.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtu...
ß: You can easily find other news items on the same topic, but they tend to have either have a paywall or GDPR modal.
Youtube is a carrier, rather like UHF frequency is a band for transmitting carriers. Your television can show anything, depending on which channels you choose to watch. YouTube service also contains just about anything, and there's no such thing as a "YouTube front page" like you have front page of a newspaper. It's your own front page that comes up, based on what you've previously been interested in.
If you are interested in fake news, you'll see fake news in YouTube. Just like if you're interested in supermarket tabloid stories, you'll buy National Enquirer and read that. It's your choice.