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From the speech transcript [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16237684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16237684 ]: “Social media companies deceive the

From the speech transcript [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16237684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16237684 ]: “Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes. They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies.” Good points to raise, but as a former Googler, I’m a bit surprised how he does not distinguish between Google and FB at all. Are we all Google addicted then? Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

Animats 9y ago
Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. It used to be. But that was a while ago. Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads. As I've pointed out for years, when search works right, the search engine doesn't make any money. Page and Brin made that point in the original Google paper.
- beaner 9y ago
  I feel a little bit like, give me a break... Google actually has some legit products which are actually the most relevant search results for some queries. If those are the only things you see at the top you're not really looking for anything particularly interesting.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- f_allwein 9y ago
  > Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples? "are ads" - do you mean AdWords, or websites in the search results that are actually ads? As a single data point, I just did a Google search for [music subscription services]. First result (for me) is Wikipedia, followed by several comparisons, Spotify on 5th place, and Google Music not ranking in the top 10. Looks good to me.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    It depends on the query, location, and probably bunch of other things. Right now, if I do a Google search for the word "buty" (polish for "shoes"), 8 results fit on my screen, and first 4 of them are ads (explicitly labeled as such) (also, it was 4 out of 7 before I closed the "we've revised our privacy policy" dialog).
  - lukeschlather 9y ago
    What I see is a list of cards that take up most of the page. Each card has a logo in it. First card is Spotify, second card is Google Play. When I click on a card I get a search for that brand where the first result is an ad for that brand's website. On the original page, the only other visible links are an ad for Amazon Music, and (mostly below-the-fold) "best music streaming services" from Consumer Reports.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Disagree. I search something and away all day long. If not would use something else as most would. Now it is true Google gives me what I need on Google but it is not done to try to make me stay or try to drive engagement like Facebook. Google is trying to get you to come back soon while FB is stay and never leave.
lwansbrough 9y ago
> getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Pretty sure virtually every website on the internet is talking to Google one way or another. So it doesn't really matter whether you're on Google or not, does it?
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  This also applies to Facebook with the ubiquity of the Facebook login SDK and tracking.
  - prewett 9y ago
    I deleted my FB cookies on my main browser and only ever login to FB on a different browser to try to minimize this. Although, I guess I could have done incognito mode.
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      Your friends, colleagues, and family likely have you in their contact lists, so Facebook knows you are missing from its graph. In lieu of an active profile they maintain a shadow profile for (at least) your phone number, and whatever additional information people who know you have unwittingly provided to Facebook and its daughters (e.g., WhatsApp). Facebook knows us by our social connections. We don't have to actually use it for that. As long as your browser's privacy add-ons disable Facebook's widgets (the like-button) it probably can't track your browsing habits though.
ladberg 9y ago
Facebook is definitely more in the straight up designed addiction game, but Google isn't far away in my mind. Google's main business is advertising, through Search. To do this, they have to keep you coming back to Google and at the same time know everything about you to give you the most relevant ads. This is done by tailoring the search results to you, which is usually good, but can still create a "bubble" because I'll usually end up seeing articles that agree with my points of view without intending to do so.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. That's one perspective. Another is that it's about taking you were google wants as quickly as possible.
C14L 9y ago
Search "getting you away" from Google? Have you seen the result pages for many "juicy" queries? It's almost entirely Google properties and ads ATF.
charlesism 9y ago
Hm, there's the cesspool that is YouTube. And even with search, there's data collection and tracking. Does anyone on the internet ever really escape Google?
gaius 9y ago
Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. If Google sends you to a site with embedded adwords and analytics in what sense are you “away” from Google?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Also, there's AMP.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    Also OneBox results, perhaps better-known as instant answers. They've been around in various forms since at least as early as 2006[0] [0] https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-results.html https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resu...
cornholio 9y ago
I think this part strikes right at Google, since they are much more an infrastructure provider, not just a site you can avoid using: <<Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines. “This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.>>
- curun1r 9y ago
  It's worth noting that Soros is likely to be predisposed to seeing the "red flags" (pun intended) of oppressive government spying and despotism having experienced first-hand during his formative teen years the Nazi occupation of Hungary and the subsequent Soviet period, initially in-country and then from afar in England. It's both a valuable paranoia, but also one that's likely to be prone to overestimate the worst-case scenario and the slipperiness of the slope, so to speak. I'm definitely concerned by the surveillance state that's developing, but I also believe that our flag is significantly less red than both the Nazi and Soviet flags, both literally and figuratively. I think it's important that we're wary of slippages in freedoms of citizens without resorting to hyperbole and comparing the current situation to oppressive regimes which murdered so many millions of their own citizens definitely feels hyperbolic.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Yeah, I don't think anyone seriously believes that any first-world country is a fascist state. The worry is, one might become such state in 10-20 years, with all the oppression infrastructure readily available to use.
  - wslh 9y ago
    You underestimated the part when he studied philosophy.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    Human nature hasn't really changed in the last hundred years. My great grandfather was imprisoned as an enemy of the people and my father was tracked by the Securitate political police - it's not such a distant dystopia for me so I empathize with Soros. The danger here is that we might be lulling ourselves in a complacent state "it can't happen to us", because of our values, democracy, political system, etc. while at the same time putting in place massive infrastructure ripe for totalitarian abuse. At a moment's notice, the situation can transition radically with the monsters lurking in the shadows taking full control of an unstoppable surveillance machine, indeed of a capacity not even Orwell could imagine - now capable of autonomous decision and self enforcement for absolute compliance. The trigger could be something as banale as a military conflict - our capacity to chose freedom as opposed to complete physical security has steadily gotten worse. Once in place totalitarian rule is strongly self enforcing and very very hard to shake, it corrodes all social cohesion and institutions, turning individuals into survival or full denial mode.
yabatopia 9y ago
Google's main business is advertising, search is just one of the vehicles to deliver the ads. Google wants you to see, watch and click as many ads as possible. The top search results are all ads and look very similar - more than ever - to real search results. And than you have Youtube, a gorefest of ads and unfiltered comments, with creators begging for likes and subs.
- iamgopal 9y ago
  My long trail search never have ads. For only very common words they show advertise. How else they going to afford this free facility ?
Sir_Substance 9y ago
>Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Uuuuum...off the top of my head with no investigation at all: If I search for anything that could plausibly involve a video, I get a string of youtube links at the top of my google search. Google favors AMP links over sending me to the actual website. I'm sure I could come up with more, given half a second. Ever been directed to bing maps from google, for example?
room271 9y ago
Youtube?
Shivetya 9y ago
facebook's addiction is that most people love to be heard and seen. they want to be center of attention. I cannot fault facebook for enabling that. If anything it may have brought more people into association with others than any previous internet platform. for me what Soros and many politicians have in common is they see two very powerful people enabling systems they don't hold sway over. Soros and his type with their money don't have it and politicians cannot control the message. so both groups throw their wealth, influence, and power, behind efforts to convince people that entities like google and facebook are a threat to the people where they really are a threat to the old power brokers that are loathe to give them up. it wasn't too long ago they controlled the message, either directly or through sycophants in the media. the internet through companies like google and facebook ended that control and hence constitute a threat
- bornonline1 9y ago
  It's not that people don't want be be seen and heard, but that socials encourage the desire to be seen and heard. It the past, fame wasn't a priority.
zingmars 9y ago
Google's main business is ads, not Search, but even then Google still owns YouTube, Gmail and other things that are used by people every single day. On top of that they haven't been particularity neutral as far as politics are concerned and have even changed search for political reasons (fighting "fake news"). So yes, Google is definitely an influencer just like Facebook is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
test001only 9y ago
"Target users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes." There is whole lot of other industries that do this - marketing, food packaging, adding additives like sugar, advertisement. He just described what every business does. It is ironic to hear from a billionaire who made his money investing in free market that Google and Facebook should be regulated.
- BorkJames 9y ago
  The difference is that most people feel like they understand cereal, although the marketing for most cereals are directly targeting children it's just a box of cereal so nobody cares. Most people don't understand Google or Facebook (or even the internet as a generalized service) so saying advertisements are manipulating people in regards to that pushes some beyond the threshold of comfort. It's not really the one thing that causes an issue for them, but the whole stack of other things behind it that eventually causes them to focus on a singular point that's easiest for them to complain about. Nobody wants to complain about their personal lack of knowledge, but a big bad unknown scary thing is easy to rally against.
- goialoq 9y ago
  Soros made his money by betting against people less shrew then he, not by manipulating people's minds. He's like a poker player who is opposed to modern slot machines that scream for attention and mislead about their odds of winning. Both are casino games, there's a clear ethical difference.
- tinymollusk 9y ago
  It's possible that Soros is blind to those other issues because they always existed for him in some shape, during his life. Internet-based addiction, internet-based anything, computer-based anything, is something he was aware of it's introduction. That is much easier to notice, when you're alive during the change, rather than living with food additives always existing. (I think this would be called the Normalcy Bias.) I suggest instead of seeing it ironically, see it as Soros being blinded by his biases, like we all are. Given that, it would be better to say "yes, this, AND it's also similar to XYZ", rather than appearing to dismiss what I think are very accurate views (on the danger of FB/attention merchanting).
benevol 9y ago
> Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible Google Analytics. On virtually every website, tracking everybody, all the time. Google is trying to get as much data about us as they can, and if you are an ex-Googler, you are pretty blue-eyed.
amelius 9y ago
> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Away to a place that will show more Google ads.
csomar 9y ago
I’d say google control information way more than facebook. For serious stuff, work or study you usually go to google. There is little recourse for content if it doesn’t display there.
Chathamization 9y ago
Google's Youtube is incredibly pernicious. Every time you visit to watch a specific video, they bombard you with the videos that they've decided are the most likely to distract you. They even have autoplay on by default so you can get sucked in to a video you didn't decide to watch before you realize it.
philipodonnell 9y ago
Youtube? If you ever watch a kid going through one of those toy unwrapping channels its not far-fetched to think that there's something going on there that's playing on the way their brain works to keep them coming back for more.
- jamesblonde 9y ago
  Unboxing is the technical term :) Yes, my kids watch that crap, too. It's fiendishly addictive for them, scarily so.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    Ah, yes. Thank you. :-) I am about to have my first so I expect there is a whole new world of YouTube-related lingo to learn!
po 9y ago
YouTube is at least 2x as bad as Facebook is in terms of indulging you in your addiction to whatever crazy conspiracy theory you want today (which is saying a lot). Facebook is perhaps better at exposing you to your neighbor's crazy conspiracy theory. Somehow Google has managed to capture all of the profit from YouTube with none of the political/brand consequences by keeping the brand separate. It's working in the mass media and shockingly it's also somehow working in the minds of tech workers. Everyone talks about Facebook and Twitter but I rarely hear about YouTube even though I suspect they are way more influential with younger crowds.
- the_af 9y ago
  In my experience, YouTube is a lot less spammy and attention-grabbing than facebook. It may be that my usage pattern is completely different to most users, but I almost always use YouTube by actively searching for stuff (I don't have a feed of "YouTube news", like it happens on facebook). There are no "This man wanted to surprise his wife and you'll never guess what happened" links in YouTube. I only get notifications about channels I'm subscribed to. Very occasionally -- almost never -- after watching a video I will click on suggested videos, because they are almost always relevant (besides music, I'm interested in hobby/miniatures/boardgames and the suggestions I get are almost always relevant). Disclaimer: I use YouTube with uBlock, so I never have to see unskippable ads. In my opinion, this is the only way to use YouTube (and the only way which makes listening to playlists feasible); if this possibility ever goes away, I'll likely stop using YouTube. edit: a sibling comment mentioned autoplay. Autoplay is indeed one of YouTube's spammy features, and I wish it went away. With Facebook, it's almost constant spam about stuff I'm not interested in. People -- my contacts! -- share all kinds of crap. And Twitter is even worse, with lots of spam and with ads I constantly need to remind Twitter I don't want to see.
- ataturk 9y ago
  Youtube has a lot of solid content, tutorials, documentaries, reviews. I've learned so much there and done so very efficiently. I wouldn't sweat the "fake" information, it's not that big of a deal.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
agumonkey 9y ago
It's half true now. Google used to help you find your way on the web, but now it's your world third eye. There's not really information outside google anymore. It will parse it, synthesize it in cards, connect it to local areas, pop up videos about it, etc etc.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
camus2 9y ago
> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. As a googler, you don't even know that your own company provides analytic tools for websites, as well as personalized integrated search for websites? ads on third party websites? webmaster tools? script cdn? font hosting? AMP cache ? ... getting out of "google.com" doesn't mean that the user stops being tracked by google.

Animats 9y ago

Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. It used to be. But that was a while ago. Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads. As I've pointed out for years, when search works right, the search engine doesn't make any money. Page and Brin made that point in the original Google paper.

beaner 9y ago
I feel a little bit like, give me a break... Google actually has some legit products which are actually the most relevant search results for some queries. If those are the only things you see at the top you're not really looking for anything particularly interesting.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
f_allwein 9y ago
> Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples? "are ads" - do you mean AdWords, or websites in the search results that are actually ads? As a single data point, I just did a Google search for [music subscription services]. First result (for me) is Wikipedia, followed by several comparisons, Spotify on 5th place, and Google Music not ranking in the top 10. Looks good to me.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It depends on the query, location, and probably bunch of other things. Right now, if I do a Google search for the word "buty" (polish for "shoes"), 8 results fit on my screen, and first 4 of them are ads (explicitly labeled as such) (also, it was 4 out of 7 before I closed the "we've revised our privacy policy" dialog).
- lukeschlather 9y ago
  What I see is a list of cards that take up most of the page. Each card has a logo in it. First card is Spotify, second card is Google Play. When I click on a card I get a search for that brand where the first result is an ad for that brand's website. On the original page, the only other visible links are an ad for Amazon Music, and (mostly below-the-fold) "best music streaming services" from Consumer Reports.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Disagree. I search something and away all day long. If not would use something else as most would. Now it is true Google gives me what I need on Google but it is not done to try to make me stay or try to drive engagement like Facebook. Google is trying to get you to come back soon while FB is stay and never leave.

lwansbrough 9y ago

> getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Pretty sure virtually every website on the internet is talking to Google one way or another. So it doesn't really matter whether you're on Google or not, does it?

stevenwoo 9y ago
This also applies to Facebook with the ubiquity of the Facebook login SDK and tracking.
- prewett 9y ago
  I deleted my FB cookies on my main browser and only ever login to FB on a different browser to try to minimize this. Although, I guess I could have done incognito mode.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Your friends, colleagues, and family likely have you in their contact lists, so Facebook knows you are missing from its graph. In lieu of an active profile they maintain a shadow profile for (at least) your phone number, and whatever additional information people who know you have unwittingly provided to Facebook and its daughters (e.g., WhatsApp). Facebook knows us by our social connections. We don't have to actually use it for that. As long as your browser's privacy add-ons disable Facebook's widgets (the like-button) it probably can't track your browsing habits though.

ladberg 9y ago

Facebook is definitely more in the straight up designed addiction game, but Google isn't far away in my mind. Google's main business is advertising, through Search. To do this, they have to keep you coming back to Google and at the same time know everything about you to give you the most relevant ads. This is done by tailoring the search results to you, which is usually good, but can still create a "bubble" because I'll usually end up seeing articles that agree with my points of view without intending to do so.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. That's one perspective. Another is that it's about taking you were google wants as quickly as possible.

C14L 9y ago

Search "getting you away" from Google? Have you seen the result pages for many "juicy" queries? It's almost entirely Google properties and ads ATF.

charlesism 9y ago

Hm, there's the cesspool that is YouTube. And even with search, there's data collection and tracking. Does anyone on the internet ever really escape Google?

gaius 9y ago

Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. If Google sends you to a site with embedded adwords and analytics in what sense are you “away” from Google?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Also, there's AMP.
- thisacctforreal 9y ago
  Also OneBox results, perhaps better-known as instant answers. They've been around in various forms since at least as early as 2006[0] [0] https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-results.html https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resu...

cornholio 9y ago

I think this part strikes right at Google, since they are much more an infrastructure provider, not just a site you can avoid using: <<Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines. “This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.>>

curun1r 9y ago
It's worth noting that Soros is likely to be predisposed to seeing the "red flags" (pun intended) of oppressive government spying and despotism having experienced first-hand during his formative teen years the Nazi occupation of Hungary and the subsequent Soviet period, initially in-country and then from afar in England. It's both a valuable paranoia, but also one that's likely to be prone to overestimate the worst-case scenario and the slipperiness of the slope, so to speak. I'm definitely concerned by the surveillance state that's developing, but I also believe that our flag is significantly less red than both the Nazi and Soviet flags, both literally and figuratively. I think it's important that we're wary of slippages in freedoms of citizens without resorting to hyperbole and comparing the current situation to oppressive regimes which murdered so many millions of their own citizens definitely feels hyperbolic.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yeah, I don't think anyone seriously believes that any first-world country is a fascist state. The worry is, one might become such state in 10-20 years, with all the oppression infrastructure readily available to use.
- wslh 9y ago
  You underestimated the part when he studied philosophy.
- cornholio 9y ago
  Human nature hasn't really changed in the last hundred years. My great grandfather was imprisoned as an enemy of the people and my father was tracked by the Securitate political police - it's not such a distant dystopia for me so I empathize with Soros. The danger here is that we might be lulling ourselves in a complacent state "it can't happen to us", because of our values, democracy, political system, etc. while at the same time putting in place massive infrastructure ripe for totalitarian abuse. At a moment's notice, the situation can transition radically with the monsters lurking in the shadows taking full control of an unstoppable surveillance machine, indeed of a capacity not even Orwell could imagine - now capable of autonomous decision and self enforcement for absolute compliance. The trigger could be something as banale as a military conflict - our capacity to chose freedom as opposed to complete physical security has steadily gotten worse. Once in place totalitarian rule is strongly self enforcing and very very hard to shake, it corrodes all social cohesion and institutions, turning individuals into survival or full denial mode.

yabatopia 9y ago

Google's main business is advertising, search is just one of the vehicles to deliver the ads. Google wants you to see, watch and click as many ads as possible. The top search results are all ads and look very similar - more than ever - to real search results. And than you have Youtube, a gorefest of ads and unfiltered comments, with creators begging for likes and subs.

iamgopal 9y ago
My long trail search never have ads. For only very common words they show advertise. How else they going to afford this free facility ?

Sir_Substance 9y ago

>Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Uuuuum...off the top of my head with no investigation at all: If I search for anything that could plausibly involve a video, I get a string of youtube links at the top of my google search. Google favors AMP links over sending me to the actual website. I'm sure I could come up with more, given half a second. Ever been directed to bing maps from google, for example?

room271 9y ago

Youtube?

Shivetya 9y ago

facebook's addiction is that most people love to be heard and seen. they want to be center of attention. I cannot fault facebook for enabling that. If anything it may have brought more people into association with others than any previous internet platform. for me what Soros and many politicians have in common is they see two very powerful people enabling systems they don't hold sway over. Soros and his type with their money don't have it and politicians cannot control the message. so both groups throw their wealth, influence, and power, behind efforts to convince people that entities like google and facebook are a threat to the people where they really are a threat to the old power brokers that are loathe to give them up. it wasn't too long ago they controlled the message, either directly or through sycophants in the media. the internet through companies like google and facebook ended that control and hence constitute a threat

bornonline1 9y ago
It's not that people don't want be be seen and heard, but that socials encourage the desire to be seen and heard. It the past, fame wasn't a priority.

zingmars 9y ago

Google's main business is ads, not Search, but even then Google still owns YouTube, Gmail and other things that are used by people every single day. On top of that they haven't been particularity neutral as far as politics are concerned and have even changed search for political reasons (fighting "fake news"). So yes, Google is definitely an influencer just like Facebook is.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

test001only 9y ago

"Target users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes." There is whole lot of other industries that do this - marketing, food packaging, adding additives like sugar, advertisement. He just described what every business does. It is ironic to hear from a billionaire who made his money investing in free market that Google and Facebook should be regulated.

BorkJames 9y ago
The difference is that most people feel like they understand cereal, although the marketing for most cereals are directly targeting children it's just a box of cereal so nobody cares. Most people don't understand Google or Facebook (or even the internet as a generalized service) so saying advertisements are manipulating people in regards to that pushes some beyond the threshold of comfort. It's not really the one thing that causes an issue for them, but the whole stack of other things behind it that eventually causes them to focus on a singular point that's easiest for them to complain about. Nobody wants to complain about their personal lack of knowledge, but a big bad unknown scary thing is easy to rally against.
goialoq 9y ago
Soros made his money by betting against people less shrew then he, not by manipulating people's minds. He's like a poker player who is opposed to modern slot machines that scream for attention and mislead about their odds of winning. Both are casino games, there's a clear ethical difference.
tinymollusk 9y ago
It's possible that Soros is blind to those other issues because they always existed for him in some shape, during his life. Internet-based addiction, internet-based anything, computer-based anything, is something he was aware of it's introduction. That is much easier to notice, when you're alive during the change, rather than living with food additives always existing. (I think this would be called the Normalcy Bias.) I suggest instead of seeing it ironically, see it as Soros being blinded by his biases, like we all are. Given that, it would be better to say "yes, this, AND it's also similar to XYZ", rather than appearing to dismiss what I think are very accurate views (on the danger of FB/attention merchanting).

benevol 9y ago

> Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible Google Analytics. On virtually every website, tracking everybody, all the time. Google is trying to get as much data about us as they can, and if you are an ex-Googler, you are pretty blue-eyed.

amelius 9y ago

> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. Away to a place that will show more Google ads.

csomar 9y ago

I’d say google control information way more than facebook. For serious stuff, work or study you usually go to google. There is little recourse for content if it doesn’t display there.

Chathamization 9y ago

Google's Youtube is incredibly pernicious. Every time you visit to watch a specific video, they bombard you with the videos that they've decided are the most likely to distract you. They even have autoplay on by default so you can get sucked in to a video you didn't decide to watch before you realize it.

philipodonnell 9y ago

Youtube? If you ever watch a kid going through one of those toy unwrapping channels its not far-fetched to think that there's something going on there that's playing on the way their brain works to keep them coming back for more.

jamesblonde 9y ago
Unboxing is the technical term :) Yes, my kids watch that crap, too. It's fiendishly addictive for them, scarily so.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  Ah, yes. Thank you. :-) I am about to have my first so I expect there is a whole new world of YouTube-related lingo to learn!

po 9y ago

YouTube is at least 2x as bad as Facebook is in terms of indulging you in your addiction to whatever crazy conspiracy theory you want today (which is saying a lot). Facebook is perhaps better at exposing you to your neighbor's crazy conspiracy theory. Somehow Google has managed to capture all of the profit from YouTube with none of the political/brand consequences by keeping the brand separate. It's working in the mass media and shockingly it's also somehow working in the minds of tech workers. Everyone talks about Facebook and Twitter but I rarely hear about YouTube even though I suspect they are way more influential with younger crowds.

the_af 9y ago
In my experience, YouTube is a lot less spammy and attention-grabbing than facebook. It may be that my usage pattern is completely different to most users, but I almost always use YouTube by actively searching for stuff (I don't have a feed of "YouTube news", like it happens on facebook). There are no "This man wanted to surprise his wife and you'll never guess what happened" links in YouTube. I only get notifications about channels I'm subscribed to. Very occasionally -- almost never -- after watching a video I will click on suggested videos, because they are almost always relevant (besides music, I'm interested in hobby/miniatures/boardgames and the suggestions I get are almost always relevant). Disclaimer: I use YouTube with uBlock, so I never have to see unskippable ads. In my opinion, this is the only way to use YouTube (and the only way which makes listening to playlists feasible); if this possibility ever goes away, I'll likely stop using YouTube. edit: a sibling comment mentioned autoplay. Autoplay is indeed one of YouTube's spammy features, and I wish it went away. With Facebook, it's almost constant spam about stuff I'm not interested in. People -- my contacts! -- share all kinds of crap. And Twitter is even worse, with lots of spam and with ads I constantly need to remind Twitter I don't want to see.
ataturk 9y ago
Youtube has a lot of solid content, tutorials, documentaries, reviews. I've learned so much there and done so very efficiently. I wouldn't sweat the "fake" information, it's not that big of a deal.
jacksmith21006 9y ago

agumonkey 9y ago

It's half true now. Google used to help you find your way on the web, but now it's your world third eye. There's not really information outside google anymore. It will parse it, synthesize it in cards, connect it to local areas, pop up videos about it, etc etc.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

camus2 9y ago

> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible. As a googler, you don't even know that your own company provides analytic tools for websites, as well as personalized integrated search for websites? ads on third party websites? webmaster tools? script cdn? font hosting? AMP cache ? ... getting out of "google.com" doesn't mean that the user stops being tracked by google.