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The algorithms aren't complex: People who watched video A and also watched video B and were very likely to comment and interact with it, therefore people watchi

The algorithms aren't complex: People who watched video A and also watched video B and were very likely to comment and interact with it, therefore people watching video A should be presented with video B. It is not making a judgement on video A or B, just that it has noticed the relation. Of course, we now all understand that the most engaging type of content on the internet is the most offensive, negative, and aggressive content. This is no different than much of what is shown on TV, where vast quantities of it are pure garbage, including much of what is shown on the "serious" news channels. Too frequently, the people writing about this and the politicians talking about it really just want to be the ones to set the line on what is "toxic" and "offensive" and have a very strong desire to influence what Google and these other companies should censor. There's also a very strong contingent of the old guard media that wishes to be restored as gatekeeper and view this as their opportunity.

Kalium 8y ago
> Too frequently, the people writing about this and the politicians talking about it really just want to be the ones to set the line on what is "toxic" and "offensive" and have a very strong desire to influence what Google and these other companies should censor. I've definitely seen this pattern from people. It's rarely overt, but I do see demands that others "punch down" or that "toxic" things be treated a certain way. This is always coupled with an implicit assumption that there's some clearly understood definition of what those mean that just happens to be exactly what the person using those idioms would offer. Like you, I think this pattern suggests people trying to grab for the privilege of writing definitions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
porpoisely 8y ago
Good point. It does seem like these people just want their "toxic" videos visible and the other side's "toxic" videos censored. At the end of the day, it's all about control and propaganda. How about hmmdaily and the people who are against "toxic" video just put out interesting videos? Why not compete instead of trying to censor everything? Also, I've never heard of hmmdaily. If anyone knows what it is and what their agenda is, I'd love to learn more about it.
- hobs 8y ago
  For the same reason fast food wins in a competition with healthy food. Its easy to eat, easy to find, it surprises you not at all, and its very bad for you. There are not two sides to every issue, especially when it comes to espousing conspiracy theories, and fake news. Pretending its about "why dont we just compete in the marketplace of ideas" is naive at best.
- monksy 8y ago
  > At the end of the day, it's all about control and propaganda. Ding ding ding. It's funny how overt manipulation is well supported.
mythrwy 8y ago
Why does YouTube think I want to watch "Student Shuts Down Social Justice Warrior College Professor"? I'm conservative(ish) in a fiscal sense, but don't read conservative news (because it sucks), don't search for conservative topics (nor really any political topics), and am not interested in any alt-right or political conflict type videos. Yet a smattering of this kind of thing often winds up in sidebar suggestions. I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. Probably paranoid though and it's more like conflict gets eyeballs to serve ads to. Which is a statement on human nature more than Google. Who knows, but it is annoying.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- w323898 8y ago
  >I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. What's frustrating is that I like to get exposed to a variety of viewpoints, but YouTube very aggressively (as far as I can tell) puts users into left/right boxes, as opposed to just serving content that is historically or politically themed. I'd be very surprised if it turned out YouTube was NOT intentionally pushing people to anger-addictive extremist content, especially right-wing content, because it's a product that encourages the viewing habits their metrics prioritize.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Recommendations are not based on political alignment, they're based on how interests cluster. If watching a video on Austrian economics is correlated with watching "Louder With Crowder", that's what they'll recommend to you. There's no intent behind it.
nemothekid 8y ago
>People who watched video A and also watched video B and were very likely to comment and interact with it, therefore people watching video A should be presented with video B. I don't think this is how YouTube's recommendation algorithm has worked in a long time. I won't argue that the current recommendation algorithm is somehow nefarious in nature, but I'm willing to bet there are factors that are weighed a lot heavier than the fact "I watched A so I should watch B". Your recommendations hardly change based on what video you are watching at the current moment. My personal theory is that YouTube overemphasizes watch time to a point where any long video gets suggested as long as it has a high completion time. You could be "batshit liberal" and still be stuck in the "alt-right recommendation loop" simply because YouTube thinks you will finish those videos regardless of your political orientation.
- naravara 8y ago
  >My personal theory is that YouTube overemphasizes watch time to a point where any long video gets suggested as long as it has a high completion time. So the key to crowd-killing the Alt-Reich on YouTube then, is to have large numbers of people find and open up their videos, let them play for a couple of minutes, and then dislike, and leave the page?
chasing 8y ago
Private company: Not censorship. And, yeah, it's tough to specifically define what's "toxic" and/or "offensive." But YouTube's algorithms are unforgivably dumb about it.
- capulate89 8y ago
  If YouTube were suddenly banning all LGBT content so as to protect children or some such thing, wouldn't we call that censorship? It's a ludicrous idea that censorship must always come from a government.
  - chasing 8y ago
    As a private company, YouTube can choose what it wants to host and/or promote. No one is preventing the purveyors of toxic videos from making and distributing them on their own.
    - dev_dull 8y ago
      Definitely with limitations. For example a cake maker can be compelled to bake a cake for a gay wedding. You don’t think a private company can be compelled not to censure?
      - chasing 8y ago
        For what it's worth, the cake maker won that case at the Supreme Court. So they were, in fact, not compelled to bake a cake for a gay wedding. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44361162 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44361162
  - duckMuppet 8y ago
    Censorship can come from anywhere. But I can choose to visit YouTube, FB, et al, or I can choose to go to a different platform, though it may not be as populated or as polished as the former. It's much harder for me to choose a govt which doesn't censor or enforce censorship. The govt controls many aspects to out lives.. The police can come to my house and take away my children if I tell them being gay or transgender are mental health issues. YouTube can only kick me off for stating such. The govt also can censor based on which grants out gives funding for. Another reason academia is broken. They are some real reasons to fear censorship.
sj3k 8y ago
You are missing the point of the piece. The author is saying YouTube has the ability to not show content that is flat-out wrong and dangerous. The author is saying the same thing you are. The algorithms can be easily adjusted - but they wont be, because controversy = time on Youtube. They absolutely do not have to recommend content that would radicalize a man enough to take a rifle into a pizza parlor to free alleged child sex slaves. This is not about setting the line about what is "offensive." this about taking responsibility for providing a huge platform for dangerous ideas to spread. No Im not advocating for thought police but I really do think most would agree that platforms have to start taking responsibility for promoting QAnon style conspiracies and white-supremacist ideas.

Kalium 8y ago

> Too frequently, the people writing about this and the politicians talking about it really just want to be the ones to set the line on what is "toxic" and "offensive" and have a very strong desire to influence what Google and these other companies should censor. I've definitely seen this pattern from people. It's rarely overt, but I do see demands that others "punch down" or that "toxic" things be treated a certain way. This is always coupled with an implicit assumption that there's some clearly understood definition of what those mean that just happens to be exactly what the person using those idioms would offer. Like you, I think this pattern suggests people trying to grab for the privilege of writing definitions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

porpoisely 8y ago

Good point. It does seem like these people just want their "toxic" videos visible and the other side's "toxic" videos censored. At the end of the day, it's all about control and propaganda. How about hmmdaily and the people who are against "toxic" video just put out interesting videos? Why not compete instead of trying to censor everything? Also, I've never heard of hmmdaily. If anyone knows what it is and what their agenda is, I'd love to learn more about it.

hobs 8y ago
For the same reason fast food wins in a competition with healthy food. Its easy to eat, easy to find, it surprises you not at all, and its very bad for you. There are not two sides to every issue, especially when it comes to espousing conspiracy theories, and fake news. Pretending its about "why dont we just compete in the marketplace of ideas" is naive at best.
monksy 8y ago
> At the end of the day, it's all about control and propaganda. Ding ding ding. It's funny how overt manipulation is well supported.

mythrwy 8y ago

Why does YouTube think I want to watch "Student Shuts Down Social Justice Warrior College Professor"? I'm conservative(ish) in a fiscal sense, but don't read conservative news (because it sucks), don't search for conservative topics (nor really any political topics), and am not interested in any alt-right or political conflict type videos. Yet a smattering of this kind of thing often winds up in sidebar suggestions. I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. Probably paranoid though and it's more like conflict gets eyeballs to serve ads to. Which is a statement on human nature more than Google. Who knows, but it is annoying.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
w323898 8y ago
>I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. What's frustrating is that I like to get exposed to a variety of viewpoints, but YouTube very aggressively (as far as I can tell) puts users into left/right boxes, as opposed to just serving content that is historically or politically themed. I'd be very surprised if it turned out YouTube was NOT intentionally pushing people to anger-addictive extremist content, especially right-wing content, because it's a product that encourages the viewing habits their metrics prioritize.
zeroname 8y ago
Recommendations are not based on political alignment, they're based on how interests cluster. If watching a video on Austrian economics is correlated with watching "Louder With Crowder", that's what they'll recommend to you. There's no intent behind it.

nemothekid 8y ago

>People who watched video A and also watched video B and were very likely to comment and interact with it, therefore people watching video A should be presented with video B. I don't think this is how YouTube's recommendation algorithm has worked in a long time. I won't argue that the current recommendation algorithm is somehow nefarious in nature, but I'm willing to bet there are factors that are weighed a lot heavier than the fact "I watched A so I should watch B". Your recommendations hardly change based on what video you are watching at the current moment. My personal theory is that YouTube overemphasizes watch time to a point where any long video gets suggested as long as it has a high completion time. You could be "batshit liberal" and still be stuck in the "alt-right recommendation loop" simply because YouTube thinks you will finish those videos regardless of your political orientation.

naravara 8y ago
>My personal theory is that YouTube overemphasizes watch time to a point where any long video gets suggested as long as it has a high completion time. So the key to crowd-killing the Alt-Reich on YouTube then, is to have large numbers of people find and open up their videos, let them play for a couple of minutes, and then dislike, and leave the page?

chasing 8y ago

Private company: Not censorship. And, yeah, it's tough to specifically define what's "toxic" and/or "offensive." But YouTube's algorithms are unforgivably dumb about it.

capulate89 8y ago
If YouTube were suddenly banning all LGBT content so as to protect children or some such thing, wouldn't we call that censorship? It's a ludicrous idea that censorship must always come from a government.
- chasing 8y ago
  As a private company, YouTube can choose what it wants to host and/or promote. No one is preventing the purveyors of toxic videos from making and distributing them on their own.
  - dev_dull 8y ago
    Definitely with limitations. For example a cake maker can be compelled to bake a cake for a gay wedding. You don’t think a private company can be compelled not to censure?
    - chasing 8y ago
      For what it's worth, the cake maker won that case at the Supreme Court. So they were, in fact, not compelled to bake a cake for a gay wedding. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44361162 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44361162
- duckMuppet 8y ago
  Censorship can come from anywhere. But I can choose to visit YouTube, FB, et al, or I can choose to go to a different platform, though it may not be as populated or as polished as the former. It's much harder for me to choose a govt which doesn't censor or enforce censorship. The govt controls many aspects to out lives.. The police can come to my house and take away my children if I tell them being gay or transgender are mental health issues. YouTube can only kick me off for stating such. The govt also can censor based on which grants out gives funding for. Another reason academia is broken. They are some real reasons to fear censorship.

sj3k 8y ago

You are missing the point of the piece. The author is saying YouTube has the ability to not show content that is flat-out wrong and dangerous. The author is saying the same thing you are. The algorithms can be easily adjusted - but they wont be, because controversy = time on Youtube. They absolutely do not have to recommend content that would radicalize a man enough to take a rifle into a pizza parlor to free alleged child sex slaves. This is not about setting the line about what is "offensive." this about taking responsibility for providing a huge platform for dangerous ideas to spread. No Im not advocating for thought police but I really do think most would agree that platforms have to start taking responsibility for promoting QAnon style conspiracies and white-supremacist ideas.