allen.kai•6d agoProlific Poster

Warning: My YouTube recommendations started predicting my mood before I did

Last Tuesday I opened YouTube looking for a specific car repair video and the homepage was already full of sad acoustic covers and breakup playlists. I hadn't even typed anything yet but the algorithm picked up on my quiet crying from last night somehow. Has anyone else caught their feed shifting gears before they even realized how they felt?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_harris6d ago

Waiting for the funeral homes recommendations to auto-populate before you've made any calls is a wild thought, @kelly385. I caught my feed shifting to hyper-loud punk music once right before I realized I was annoyed at my boss, and it was unsettling. Maybe it's just me but having your mood analyzed by a big dumb computer kind of takes the fun out of feeling things.

kelly3856d ago

Oh man the algorithm is literally spying on our tears now! I swear mine served me a full on "sad girl autumn" playlist before I even admitted I was having a rough week. Next thing you know it'll be recommending funeral homes before my grandpa even passes. Creepy but also kinda impressive how it knows us better than we know ourselves.

blair_taylor326d ago

Clear your watch history and search history manually once a week, it messes with their tracking enough to stop the creepy mood predictions. @angela_harris is right though, that punk playlist timing is wild and makes you wonder what other data theyre mining.