Im just kinda confused. The last overtly religious video I watched was when I was having an existential crisis 7 years ago, why on earth does yt see me watching a video about the history of waffles and think: "you know what this guy wants to see? Someone going on about how our Lord and saviour Elon musk is going to bring about the rapture."
Maybe you don't want to watch it. But the algorithm is meant to maximize viewing time. And someone (several someone's) with a similar profile and tastes to yours went on a viewing rampage in the past. So they are shooting their shot that you'd behave like your peers.
This kind of videos are also engagement bait. So they are the algorithm darlings. Optimizing for engagement will always result in the most extremist and unhinged content being promoted. The mildly curious about spirituality to religious nutjob pipeline is very real.
Hmmm you sure you're not watching other techbro stuff? Religion isn't the only factor in play with Elon Musk the Saviour. That said, have a satanic algorithm cleanser here and a magical one here, pushing you towards "atheist mystic scholar" which is pretty much the diametrical opposite of TV evangelist fare. If you want hardcore scholar stuff within an Abrahamic context that also exists. With that under your belt and seen the algorithm should realise that rapture heroin will have no effect on you, presumably it's pushing it because it gets a lot of engagement when it leads people down that path.
Go into your YT history (https://www.youtube.com/feed/history) and delete the offending video. Your recommendations should be back to normal within 24 hours (ish). There’s even a search bar for it.
Report them, and say don't recommend. It's our civic duty to spam reports so they get taken down automatically. That will increase the amount it suggests to you but to stop that make playlist that can run overnight, fill it with good shit you've already watched so you don't miss anything new and just let that run. It will hopefully clean that shit out a bit.
God how I love using newpipe or invidious to watch yt instead. Whenever I feel like finding stuff, the recommendations are always related to the video currently being watched, which can lead to interesting rabbit holes.
One even pseudo-related vid and they'll spam you. Esp if you're in a region where Jesus sells pretty well. I got a ton of that shit when I was in Kansas city for work.
Plus YT is a business, and for the right price they'll show whatever people pay them to show. Welcome to the cyberpunk dystopia
Fuck youtube. You watch one wrong video and half of your recomendations are fucked. And why in 2024 there's no proper tag system yet? I guest keeping things opaque makes them more money.
They used to have a definitive tag system and got rid of it, just like annotations and video responses. sad. Of all things, tags were probably the best too. The new algorithmic garbage has sucked for years.
Tags still exist, but YouTube itself has a blurb on top of the text box for inputting tags to the effect of "unless the main search terms used to find this video are often mispelled, this won't do much".
I was watching Gun Jesus and almost fucked my recommendations forever when it tried to toss up Garand Thumb as a recommendation.
"Fortunately" he blew his dogwhistles way too hard in the video and I caught on that this wasn't just dudes shooting at ballistic gel in interesting ways.
I love gun Jesus but man I have to be ever so vigilant to not autoplay the the recommendations. Almost every other youtube gun enthusiast is a raging asshole.
Go into your YT history (https://www.youtube.com/feed/history) and delete the offending video. Your recommendations should be back to normal within 24 hours (ish). There's even a search bar for it.
Oh hell yeah he's great! I'm ashamed to admit he's how I learned that schnitzel is not actually a type of sausage as I previously had assumed for whatever reason lol
This is why I don't use anything with recommendation algorithm anymore.
These recommendation algorithm are so aggressive in recommending anything related to your click (accidentally touched a ritz ad, now I will throw up if I see any more cracker ads), and also baits like these.
Now I use newpipe/mastodon/lemmy, I can click on whatever I want, and not worrying about stupid recommendations.
I haven't been getting that level of craziness yet, but I just always ignore practically everything that isn't someone I've subbed to and isn't about a cartoon/anime I like, isn't from someone I have already seen before and like but ain't subbed to, and isn't a game/topic I'm interested in.
I've seen some of the people I see on the front page of the Odysee app that I've never interacted with in any other way than scrolling past them appear on the front page of my patched yt app. It's insane, but it won't be a big issue for me, in terms of strictly just using the app, until they replace every suggestion with those nutjobs.
I remember about a decade ago I made an r/AskReddit post that was called something like "who would be the real life Batman?"
Loads of people said it would be Elon Musk and were getting moist over the guy. I wonder how many of those people still actually like him, and how many have fallen further down his rabbit hole.
At best, Musk is Tony Stark during his alcoholic arc: emotionally unstable, incapable of good decisions and still rich enough to cause trouble to everyone