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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25408 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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Maybe the TikTok algorithm is advanced enough to know I’m Jewish (I’m not even kidding), but Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content than TikTok does. If anything, I think the Chinese - to avoid entangling themselves not only in foreign conflicts with America but with various other countries besides - have overtly toned down political content on TikTok, whereas Meta and Alphabet (both still controlled by their Jewish founders in terms of voting rights and in Meta’s case day to day leadership) don’t care and no doubt just prioritize by engagement, which necessarily favors political content.

overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content

Out of genuine interest of someone who avoids most social media: how overtly antizionist and antisemitic content is trending on social media? And what kind? Classic Nazi stuff, caricatures of long-nosed Jews sitting on bags of money? Alleged IDF war crimes which may or may not be Hamas fabrications? "From the river to the sea", which denies Israel's right to exist? Narratives parallel to SecureSignals', e.g. that that most Jewish citizens are faithless towards their 'host' country and their true allegiance is to Israel?

FWIW, near-east related content I see on imgur is mostly critical of Israel, but mostly not what I would call "overtly antizionist". Mostly it emphasizes the horrors of Gaza, sometimes perhaps spreading wartime propaganda (e.g. "IDF snipers are deliberately headshotting kids in Gaza", which seems unlikely on priors). I do not recall reading memes which would advocate for Israel to be wiped of the map, or content which mentions Jews directly. But then again, imgur is a filter bubble full of elderly lefties.

but Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content than TikTok does.

No one cars about the pro-palestine content causing offense, they care about social media being used as a tool for organisation.

So you are saying that the people who control social media do not care about narratives? The amount of Gaza content consumed by American public directly influences how they see Israel in polls. These polls directly influence how much aid US politicians are willing to give to Israel. It also shapes the consensus reality of the viewers, who might decide to organize later.

Watching hostile narratives trend while saying this is fine, as long as nobody is trying to organize them seems the kind of rookie mistake not even a boomer tinpot dictator would make. After all, you might control some social media platforms, but not all of them. If people suddenly want to organize, they will find a way (unless you turn the internet off, which is not really an option for dealing with the US population).

I think the Chinese - to avoid entangling themselves not only in foreign conflicts with America but with various other countries besides - have overtly toned down political content on TikTok

I don't think that the intent matters to the Zionist (non-pejorative) caucus. If TikTok had a purely meritocratic algorithm that prioritized views and engagement and it promoted Palestinian content because it's what their users engage with, I don't think it would change the reality for Netanyahu and friends. They would still want the app banned or censored, they don't put any moral priority on the idea that this is what people want to see, or what maximizes engagement/profit for TikTok. They value the Zionist project, they value the Jewish people, they value their own political power. All they want is a fair advantage.

I mean, I’m willing to believe this- but the Jewish lobby might not necessarily know that TikTok isn’t particularly antisemitic.

Powerful enough to steer global policy, powerless enough to skip basic market research.

Entirely plausible that the Zionist lobby both does not understand how the youth engage with social media and has the heft to get this specific policy pushed through in the United States. I still think there’s other things going on but it’s not ‘Jews did WTC’ tier jewbaiting.

Just like Theranos

Instagram and YouTube both recommend me by far more overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content

I've found Youtube to be an unusable cesspool unless I heavily curate my recommendations. That means hitting hide on anything offtopic and removing anything remotely general interest from my watch history. Otherwise within a few days it degrades to such state that it starts pushing videos that are trending locally and you can imagine the result of that.

My general recommendation for YouTube recommendations is use your adblocker to hide the recommendations entirely. If you want to watch something on YouTube you can search for it. If YouTube wants you to watch something, why should you care?

The idea of deciding what content to view based on what an advertising company recommends to me instead of because an actual human recommended it strikes me as completely unhinged. It also seems to be how the vast majority of users interact with the internet for the most part.

People being too lazy to use RSS and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

RSS doesn’t solve the right problem. The problem with the internet is with recommendations, not subscriptions.

It’s finding the stuff that I would like to know about but haven’t heard of yet.

Finding the latest episode/post of Thing I Already Like by Person I Already Like is easy.

Naming it Really Simple Syndication was a disaster by emphasising publishing instead of consuming. Meanwhile semi-nonsense names like Digg, Tumblr and D.e.Lic....iO.u..s ate its lunch.

If they'd just named it Really Simple Subscription instead...

YouTube used to be very good at recommending interesting, relevant content. It still occasionally recommends a gem that I would never have known to search for otherwise.

I've found my recommendations to be often reasonably decent as long as I keep engaging in that heavy curation.

I've found occasional use of the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" options to be sufficient to curate my YouTube recommendations. If I watch one random video on a topic I don't really care about it may show similar videos but only for a few days before giving up or I click "Not interested" and it's gone forever.

I don't really have this problem at all and I'm curious why you do. In not saying that everything I'm getting recommended is a hit but the vast majority is at least in my areas of interest and I don't really get recommended locally trending stuff. Could it perhaps be a difference between in how treat users based on how they make revenue from them?

I'm on YouTube premium. Are you using the free client? Possibly with an adblocker?

I use free tier youtube via the website and adblocker.

I basically only watch guitar / synthesizer / photography (and now some outdoors backpacking) videos. Just a few days ago I watched a few astrophotography videos which resulted in youtube trying to push some conspiracy theory clickbait bullshit about NASA hiding Voyager findings.

I'm not on Instagram, but YouTube has very thoroughly banned all right-wing content creators I would consider to be "anti-Semitic" even without posting that content on YouTube. Keith Woods recently had his YouTube account which had been running for years banned with 0 strikes because MediaMatters ran a piece on him calling him an anti-Semite. Same with Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes has been banned although he of course did actually post anti-semitic content. American Renaissance/Jared Taylor is banned despite Taylor famously never engaging in anti-semitism. It's a totally closed platform for anti-Semitism and right-wing content altogether, although I'm assuming you call opposition to Israel's war "anti-Semitism", which comes frequently from the left, and presumably YouTube allows that to some degree. The only anti-semitism I've seen out of YouTube has come from the left wing as the right wing has all long-been totally banned.

Pax Tube?

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