> Tay is an instance of deliberate manipulation, but YouTube is a case of wrong incentives. I think it near-certain that YouTube is both. Considering the obvio

> Tay is an instance of deliberate manipulation, but YouTube is a case of wrong incentives. I think it near-certain that YouTube is both. Considering the obvious value of getting your video into as many people's recommendation streams as possible, there's surely a whole "SEO, but for YouTube" industry out there, working furiously to game the system. Anecdotally (albeit not "an industry" per se), on a number of occasions I've observed... let's call them "radical activist groups", organising off-YouTube to flood a favoured video or channel with activity, with the explicit goal of causing YouTube to make it more visible to "the masses".