Replace her existing account with a new one. Make up some excuse. Use the don't recommend channel option when a bad recommendation comes up.
You can go into the view history and remove all the bad videos.
My mom has a similar problem with animal videos. She likes watching farm videos where sometimes there's animals giving birth... And those videos completely ruin the algorithm. After that she only gets animals having sex, and the animal fighting and killing eachother.
Invidious or Freetube if she's on a personal computer.
It's not going to be easy. most likely she'll be exposed to this shit elsewhere too, not only on youtube. fully reset the browser in ANY case. delete history, cookies, everything.
besides that, I see multiple options. you can consider them all or in various combinations
completely block youtube (for example via hosts)
new account
unsubscribe from everything
reset/delete watch history
https://myadcenter.google.com/personalizationoff?hl=en
enable restricted mode (essentially making it a kids account)
change location/region of the account
go here: https://myaccount.google.com/u/0/yourdata/youtube?hl=en&pli=1
Any change should be done gradually i think. If the elder person notices that what shes watching is suddenly not the shows she subscribed to. Then she will clam up and refuse to watch the new shows unt OP bring back her "account".
Could also help to deactivate the personalized advertising functionality in the Google/YouTube settings (basically wipe currently stored preference, the forbid YouTube from making suggestions based on your interests). This will keep her feed fairly generic (and bad, oh boy) so that she would have to actively search for or subscribe to these videos.
Great advice in here. Now, how do I de-radicalize my mom? :(
If you're keeping the channel, the "Don't recommend this" method while also deleting watch history with controversial content would help. but honestly, closing the account and opening a new one with a fresh recommendation slate is the way.
Get your mom on bondi rescue. She will never watch anything again in her life
To begin with, I'd stop her using the YouTube website logged in.
Set her up with Inoreader - then when you find something interesting, you can visit the 'video' page and subscribe to the feed...
If you log her out, that will mean she just uses it without logging in - which works ok for feeds. She can browse, but it's fresh.
Just a few suggestions that work for me - via RSS feed (not subscribed in Youtube):
With inoreader it's a simple task to mark all items in a folder as read if you want to skip them. Also, with the inoreader account you can log in remotely at any browser, then you can find stuff you think is cool and subscribe - then that will show up in her feeds.
Not only video/youtube.
!dadjokes works too - Lemmy stuff, any stuff.https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com/home
Then some interesting pinned tabs/bookmarks like https://window-swap.com/
Then you should also show her the new Radio
I love this site, I found a couple of dozen and added them in pyradio app so I've always got interesting listening when I don't want to stare at the screen.
Redirect youtube to an invidious instance by editing hosts file
No joke, the answer is for her to stop watching YouTube. I drastically reduced my YouTube consumption from like multiple hours a day to max 30 minutes. The algorithm takes into account how many hours you've watched per day.
Idk on here, but if you need help on reddit there is a sub called Qanoncasualties and it's basically a support group for family members with Q whoevers.
Next to deleting, you can enable the option to automatically delete it every 3 months.
Google account -> Data & privacy -> History Settings -> YouTube History -> auto-delete
But, the best is to have a new account.
I too faced this dilemma. So I uninstalled every ad blocker and made it very tedious videos. It kinda helped.
Find several wholesome channels that have a decent amount of content and look at the playlists. Make sure auto play is on and just plow through playlist after playlist ever night.
I did this by mistake once with kid videos. Iy wreaked my feed for so long 🤣
In addition to deleting history, could you get direct access to the account and watch better/different content to hopefully get that stuff more recommended too?
What if you started disliking these extremist videos, and explicitly liking more tame videos with the kind of content she would enjoy? This might tell the algorithm to prefer less polarizing videos over time.
The caveat is, I've heard likes/dislikes "don't count" unless you've watched a certain percentage of the video, at least more than a few seconds. So you can't just sit there and speed through clicking dislike on everything.
Another thing you can try is clicking algorithm-suggested videos that seem less radical than the current one. For example, on the home screen, click on something innocuous that's trending. From "related videos," in any video, pick literally anything that's not what she's already watching.
You will probably have to do this for a while, but eventually she might "latch on" to whatever the algorithm starts suggesting. She almost certainly won't stop watching those radical videos entirely - people that age are set in their ways. But maybe you can get her to watch less.
I thought the algorithm responds to downvotes with more of the same content because negativity drives engagement. I very rarely downvote because I don't want YT to know what I don't like. I do however tell it to completely block rage-bait channels. This works for my home feed but not in trending.
I had to log into my 84-year-old grandmother's YouTube account and unsubscribe from a bunch of stuff, "Not interested" on a bunch of stuff, subscribed to more mainstream news sources... But it only works for a couple months.
The problem is the algorithm that values viewing time over anything else.
Watch a news clip from a real news source and then it recommends Fox News. Watch Fox News and then it recommends PragerU. Watch PragerU and then it recommends The Daily Wire. Watch that and then it recommends Steven Crowder. A couple years ago it would go even stupider than Crowder, she'd start getting those videos where it's computer voice talking over stock footage about Hillary Clinton being arrested for being a demonic pedophile. Luckily most of those channels are banned at this point or at least the algorithm doesn't recommend them.
I've thought about putting her into restricted mode, but I think that would be too obvious that I'm manipulating the strings in the background.
Then I thought she's 84, she's going to be dead in a few years, she doesn't vote, does it really matter that she's concerned about trans people trying to cut off little boy's penises or thinks that Obama is wearing ankle monitor because he was arrested by the Trump administration or that aliens are visiting the Earth because she heard it on Joe Rogan?
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