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I don't really see why this is a conspiratorial hypotheses. The goal of youtube is to keep you on youtube watching videos with ads. That is what they are tryi
by pfisch 8y ago
I don't really see why this is a conspiratorial hypotheses. The goal of youtube is to keep you on youtube watching videos with ads. That is what they are trying to do, and it happens to coincide with pushing extreme content as an unintended side effect.
- pulisse 8y agoExactly. No one here, least of all Tufekci, is claiming that YouTube has deliberately engineered their recommendation system to favor extreme content. The argument is that it's an unintended consequence of how the YouTube recommender's objective function interacts with human psychology: (1) YouTube trains its recommenders to maximize time on site. (2) It's a sad fact about humans that sensationalistic or extreme content is highly engaging. (3) YouTube's recommendation system thus learns to serve up sensationalistic and extreme content.