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The way the algorithm pushes steadily more radical content is really concerning. Try making a completely fresh browser profile and deliberately browsing around

The way the algorithm pushes steadily more radical content is really concerning. Try making a completely fresh browser profile and deliberately browsing around right-leaning or "anti-SJW" channels and see how long it takes before YouTube starts pushing videos about white genocide and the impending destruction of western civilization by the muslim hordes (not very long in my experience). edit: I just tried this again and not much has changed. Started by viewing Joe Rogan's interview with Elon Musk on a fresh profile. The first suggestion from there is a Jordan Peterson anti-feminist video, from there we get a Jordan Peterson anti-islam video, then "The Suicide of Europe" by PragerU, and from there the floodgates are opened to fear-mongering about "rapefugees". That's less than a dozen clicks on highly related videos to get from Elon Musk smoking weed to videos with an overtly racist agenda, on a profile that's never sought out that kind of content previously.

tivert 8y ago
> The way the algorithm pushes steadily more radical content is really concerning. Try making a completely fresh browser profile and deliberately browsing around right-leaning or "anti-SJW" channels and see how long it takes before YouTube starts pushing videos about white genocide and the impending destruction of western civilization by the muslim hordes (not very long in my experience). Seems like they're trying to profile the user for recommendations too early, or just generally suggesting based on too small of a sample of videos. The blank profile is like a knife balanced on edge, where the slightest push will tip it one way or the other. If they'd just hold off the personalized recommendations entirely until you had 100 or 200 videos, it might be better.
- extrapickles 8y ago
  It sounds like they are overfitting the recommendations. They really need to get the users explict preference, rather than trying to infer it from what videos they watch, as that data is tainted by the recommendation engine. Also they have killed the annotation system that most video creators have used to manually recommend videos to their viewers, which is probably going to cause even more overfitting of recommendations.
manfredo 8y ago
Interestingly, YouTube actually recommends liberal content at a rate substantially higher than conservative content. Centrists content links to liberal content about three times more frequently than it links to conservative content. Is there evidence to corroborate the claim that YouTube is pushing people to extreme content? The data seems to indicate otherwise. https://www.thepostmillennial.com/does-youtube-facilitate-right-wing-radicalization-the-data-says-otherwise/ https://www.thepostmillennial.com/does-youtube-facilitate-ri...
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- shaki-dora 8y ago
  Sure, if CNN is „iberal“, and QAnon is „conservative“.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. The implication of your comment seems to be that extremist content is more conservative. On the whole I agree. Which is why the fact that YouTube steers people towards conservative content less than centrist or liberal content broadly contradicts the claim that YouTube is steering people to radical content.
- bengale 8y ago
  The extremity doesn't seem to be the same in my experience. It could be because I fall slightly more that way that it's able to get a better handle on my preferences but I don't find I get suggested the insanity of the left when I watch more liberal videos in the same way I do when I watch conservative ones. It's a tricky one to measure though.
neetdeth 8y ago
Ok, I'll bite. What exactly did Google do wrong here? I'd be persuaded if you could show that a random walk through the recommendations ended up in far-right opinion some disproportionate percentage of the time. What you did was a goal directed search. At every point you selected the most right leaning perspective, and in the end you got where you wanted to go. The only way to stop this from happening is to ban objectionable opinions from the platform entirely, or alternatively to disconnect them from the graph of recommendations. The latter is what YouTube's "limited state" already does.
- sincerely 8y ago
  From the post you're responding to: >The first suggestion was... It doesnt sound like they were choosing the most right-leaning perspective, but rather the first on the list (the one that would play after your current video finishes if you have autoplay enabled).
  - neetdeth 8y ago
    Well, I tried to reproduce it with a private browsing window. That Jordan Peterson video was in the #4 position in the sidebar from the Musk interview. However, it was the first video that did not include Joe Rogan. So far so good. Thereafter, clicking the first recommended brought me to another Peterson video, then Gordon Ramsay, and then into an endless loop of Kitchen Nightmares clips. Certainly, there's some stochastic element here, but I'm still not convinced.

tivert 8y ago

> The way the algorithm pushes steadily more radical content is really concerning. Try making a completely fresh browser profile and deliberately browsing around right-leaning or "anti-SJW" channels and see how long it takes before YouTube starts pushing videos about white genocide and the impending destruction of western civilization by the muslim hordes (not very long in my experience). Seems like they're trying to profile the user for recommendations too early, or just generally suggesting based on too small of a sample of videos. The blank profile is like a knife balanced on edge, where the slightest push will tip it one way or the other. If they'd just hold off the personalized recommendations entirely until you had 100 or 200 videos, it might be better.

extrapickles 8y ago
It sounds like they are overfitting the recommendations. They really need to get the users explict preference, rather than trying to infer it from what videos they watch, as that data is tainted by the recommendation engine. Also they have killed the annotation system that most video creators have used to manually recommend videos to their viewers, which is probably going to cause even more overfitting of recommendations.

manfredo 8y ago

Interestingly, YouTube actually recommends liberal content at a rate substantially higher than conservative content. Centrists content links to liberal content about three times more frequently than it links to conservative content. Is there evidence to corroborate the claim that YouTube is pushing people to extreme content? The data seems to indicate otherwise. https://www.thepostmillennial.com/does-youtube-facilitate-right-wing-radicalization-the-data-says-otherwise/ https://www.thepostmillennial.com/does-youtube-facilitate-ri...

deleted 8y ago
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shaki-dora 8y ago
Sure, if CNN is „iberal“, and QAnon is „conservative“.
- manfredo 8y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. The implication of your comment seems to be that extremist content is more conservative. On the whole I agree. Which is why the fact that YouTube steers people towards conservative content less than centrist or liberal content broadly contradicts the claim that YouTube is steering people to radical content.
bengale 8y ago
The extremity doesn't seem to be the same in my experience. It could be because I fall slightly more that way that it's able to get a better handle on my preferences but I don't find I get suggested the insanity of the left when I watch more liberal videos in the same way I do when I watch conservative ones. It's a tricky one to measure though.

neetdeth 8y ago

Ok, I'll bite. What exactly did Google do wrong here? I'd be persuaded if you could show that a random walk through the recommendations ended up in far-right opinion some disproportionate percentage of the time. What you did was a goal directed search. At every point you selected the most right leaning perspective, and in the end you got where you wanted to go. The only way to stop this from happening is to ban objectionable opinions from the platform entirely, or alternatively to disconnect them from the graph of recommendations. The latter is what YouTube's "limited state" already does.

sincerely 8y ago
From the post you're responding to: >The first suggestion was... It doesnt sound like they were choosing the most right-leaning perspective, but rather the first on the list (the one that would play after your current video finishes if you have autoplay enabled).
- neetdeth 8y ago
  Well, I tried to reproduce it with a private browsing window. That Jordan Peterson video was in the #4 position in the sidebar from the Musk interview. However, it was the first video that did not include Joe Rogan. So far so good. Thereafter, clicking the first recommended brought me to another Peterson video, then Gordon Ramsay, and then into an endless loop of Kitchen Nightmares clips. Certainly, there's some stochastic element here, but I'm still not convinced.