How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.
Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.
Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content.
By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content.
Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user.
Youtube shorts are the worst. I am transgender so my historic is really not right wing
30mins on shorts and I end up in Shapiro’s Dreamland. It’s a nightmare
Pirate Software has the only shorts on YT worth watching imho
My favourite thing about his shorts is trying to guess if it’s going to be a wholesome one or one where either him or his chat bestow cursed knowledge onto each other
The only political thing I watch is Behind the Bastards and the algorithm keeps trying to get me to watch right wing shit. I installed a third party channel blocker and open suspicious channels in private tabs and it still serves me right wing chuds complaining about being suppressed by “woke google”. I would troll the comments section if it wasn’t for the fact that that counts as “engagement”.
I despite all my lgbt content got served some 1 mil subs catholic lady saying how she loves red pill, pro life or something like this. Such women always have this crazy light in the eyes, it creeps me out.
You can feel that she is in some kind of state of altered reality, like someone on drugs. High on something.
It has either gotten better or just improved its suggestions for me over time. I basically never get right wing content anymore. There’s plenty of garbage, but it’s stupid garbage rather than dangerous garbage.