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I was referring to the word 'just': > your use of the word 'just' in this way, When using 'just' in this way you down-play the problems. 'Hidden agenda' might

I was referring to the word 'just': > your use of the word 'just' in this way, When using 'just' in this way you down-play the problems. 'Hidden agenda' might have been a bit extreme on my part. What I had in mind was the down-playing of issues to seem smarter than others. In the context of the Cumex fraud you could say "It is just stealing". When doing this you project that we shouldn't be concerned, it is _just_ stealing, which it isn't. It becomes counter productive to solving the issues because when someone who doesn't know about the problems surrounding YouTube's algorithms and reads that 'it is just "addiction peddling"' they might conclude that people are overreacting. My issue here is that, in YouTube's case, this is not 'just' attention peddling. I also don't agree with you that this is 'a logical consequence of a system that optimises for maximum engagement'. Netflix, as we have established, also wants my attention, but that doesn't mean that I go from Rick and Morty to Nazi propaganda. On YouTube you can go from listening to music to getting lectured by White Supremacists without actively seeking this extreme content out. They have optimised their algorithm to make this transition very gradual in order for you to stay engaged along the way and in effect they have created a mechanic in which people slowly get radicalised. It is very easy to down-play this by saying this is logical and just attention peddling, but I'd say it is closer to psychological abuse of people in their most private and vulnerable moments. All this _just_ to make money from advertisement. The algorithms might not have started out this way, but there has been enough criticism on what is happening for YouTube to finally do something about it, yet they haven't. This means it is intentional.

krageon 8y ago
I think the core problem here is that you view addiction peddling as less of a problem than slow radicalisation. I don't view things in that way. At best they are similarly bad, but to me it seems like addiction is a much bigger societal problem (with a larger slice of people vulnerable to it) and therefore this problem needs to be highlighted the most. In this context, putting "just" before it can be seen as a way to remove focus from the detail that someone else is focus on to look at the bigger problem. That is what I see here as well. Your conclusion that it is intentional is too fast. There is a less evil interpretation of real life, and that is that it's not practical for them to implement this in a way that still yields addicted users while avoiding radicalised users. Their money is more important than a problem that a minority is vocal about; it's an unfortunate consequence, but that doesn't make it the intent.

krageon 8y ago

I think the core problem here is that you view addiction peddling as less of a problem than slow radicalisation. I don't view things in that way. At best they are similarly bad, but to me it seems like addiction is a much bigger societal problem (with a larger slice of people vulnerable to it) and therefore this problem needs to be highlighted the most. In this context, putting "just" before it can be seen as a way to remove focus from the detail that someone else is focus on to look at the bigger problem. That is what I see here as well. Your conclusion that it is intentional is too fast. There is a less evil interpretation of real life, and that is that it's not practical for them to implement this in a way that still yields addicted users while avoiding radicalised users. Their money is more important than a problem that a minority is vocal about; it's an unfortunate consequence, but that doesn't make it the intent.