How to de-radicalize my mom's youtube algorithm?

driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 1426 points –

She's almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she's anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I'm trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.

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It's not going to be easy. most likely she'll be exposed to this shit elsewhere too, not only on youtube. fully reset the browser in ANY case. delete history, cookies, everything.

besides that, I see multiple options. you can consider them all or in various combinations

Any change should be done gradually i think. If the elder person notices that what shes watching is suddenly not the shows she subscribed to. Then she will clam up and refuse to watch the new shows unt OP bring back her "account".

I would be really pissed if my kids would delete my stuff..

I’m not questioning what’s right and wrong or if this even changes someone’s opinion.

It’s merely a technical approach that can somewhat work until it’s filled up with the same crap again in a few weeks.

The person got there once - it’ll likely happen again. But combining this with conversation and actual facts, can be a start.

That's exactly the point. If anyone dicides to cut me of from my shit, I would cut them of.

You can't alter their behaviour with that kind of approach unless they have big dementia already. Imo, the only thing that helps would be talking to her and getting her into other activities.