I have recommendations, search and watch history all turned off for my youtube account. This worked pretty good for blocking dumb recommends clogging up my screen on the roku app when I was still using a smart-tv and the stop-gap of an old xboone I bought as well. The absolute deluge of ads the past 6 months finally motivated me enough to dig out an old PC so I can watch a 10 minute video without having to be subjected to the same stupid Dwayne Johnson santa clause commercial every 2 minutes. A wireless keyboard from Goodwill rounds out the hardware, and with the vimium plugin on firefox I don't have to screw around with a mouse most of the time.

But I digress; what I want to talk about is how, despite the aforementioned settings, youtube shows recs on the desmtop site. And it's about half full of "LIBRULS GIT CUCKED BY TRUMP PRESSCONFERENCE RONPAUL2012 FANTASY BLUNT ROTATION" slop. I'm subscribed to, like, 2 explicitly political channels but even if all my subscriptions were political, these suggestions are showing up on every video. Right now, I have a pink noise video playing and there is a couple of chuds staring at me with dead fisheyes under the headline "INTERNET ON FIRE AS TRUMP DROPS CHILLING PRESS CONFERENCE".

Like, fuck you, youtube. I'm not here to be force-fed trash like a foie-gras content goose. Especially not shit that is so explicitly biased. And doubly especially so explicitly biased in the exact opposite direction that my entire account history (because I know that, despite having all the history turned off, they are still tracking it) would indicate.

This is directly related to the way that advertising and news media is designed to make you miserable all the time. Nobody watches the Happy Puppy Funtime News Network, they watch Palestinians being murdered by the Israeli Government and Wildfires devouring half of California. Nobody wants to buy dickpills if they're satisfied with the size of their dick; you have to make them feel inadequate so that they give you money for your dickpills.

This may be a sign that it's time to either give up internet videos (one of the few tech addictions I've struggled to give up) or I'm going to be moving to one of the 3rd party frontends like vanced or invidious. I simply cannot tolerate this trash.