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YouTube’s Product Chief on Online Radicalization and Algorithmic Rabbit Holes

169 points by Bhilai 8y ago

lvs 8y ago
This is nothing more than a very long-winded PR denial.
api 8y ago
The thing is this is how algorithmic timelines, lists, etc. work. They're programmed to drive engagement. Fear, hate, outrage, sensationalism, and controversy are what does that as has been known since the time of P. T. Barnum.
minimaxir 8y ago
> Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hole effect on YouTube? > I’m trying to describe to you the nature of the problem. So what I’m saying is that when a video is watched, you will see a number of videos that are then recommended. Some of those videos might have the perception of skewing in one direction or, you know, call it more extreme. There are other videos that skew in the opposite direction. I assisted with data research on YouTube recommended videos (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-youtubes-recommendation-rabbithole https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-y...), and this claim is misleading at best. There may be some videos that aren't extreme, but that doesn't matter if they are a) in the extreme minority and/or b) appear very far down in the queue of 20+ recommended videos when users typically either do "Up Next" or look at/action only the top few recommendations. This isn't a "both sides" issue.
- nailer 8y ago
  The Buzzfeed article quotes the SPLC, a partisan organisation that has labelled anti-FGM compaigners and Muslim reform groups as 'hate' groups (and only admitted the mistake under threat of legal action). https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty-law-center-has-lost-all-credibility/2018/06/21/22ab7d60-756d-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty...
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    If "fucked up majorly once" means you should be disregarded, Marc Thiessen of "torture is legal and effective" fame should go on your disregard list too.
    - nailer 8y ago
      There's two examples in the comment you're replying to, and you can find more in less time it took you to write that reply.
- manfredo 8y ago
  I don't think this is a fair summary of what the Product Chief is saying. When people talk about the YouTube rabbit hole, they're talking about watching video A, which links to B, to C, etc. until they reach content considered extreme. This is simplistic, but say all videos are on a 1-10 integer scale in terms of politics. YouTube always recommends 80% videos that are on the same value as the currently viewed video and 10% are one value higher and 10% are on one value lower. It doesn't push anyone in either direction. Randomly clicking on recommended videos will randomly move you up or down (and usually not move at all). But, no matter where you begin, you can always reach either end in 4 clicks - cue people talking about the YouTube rabbit hole. But hey, maybe it's not enough to merely prefer content that isn't extreme, what if we wanted to actively push people to the center? We could recommend 80% videos that are one value higher or lower towards the center spectrum (or the same is the viewed video is at 5 or 6), and 10% videos that are at the same value, and 10% towards one value away from the center. Randomly clicking on videos _will_ bring most viewers to the center in this system. But we can still reach the extremes in just 4 clicks. This is why complaining that users can go down a rabbit hole feels disingenuous to me. They always will be _able_ to do so - unless YouTube never recommends videos that aren't more centrist than the video being viewed. I suppose YouTube could just ban all videos that are at 1 and 10 in our spectrum, but that's basically just calling for censorship. And not to mention, 2 and 9 will just become the new definition of extreme. Edit: many of the comment lead me to think that I haven't made what is and isn't in scope of my comment clear. Allow me to point out two things in particular. 1. YouTube already does prohibit hate speech. How well it enforces its rules is a valid point of discussion, but not what I'm talking about here. I'm pointing out that the ability to get to the extremes of what _is_ allowed on the platform through recommendations should not in and of itself be a point of concern. 2. I'm also aware that sometimes the recommendation are very messed up in context of the current video - e.g. shock videos getting recommended to kids. But this is more about trolls deliberately gaming the recommendation algorithm, which I see as a distinct issue from the alleged rabbit hole pattern of recommendations.
  - strangeloops85 8y ago
    The alternative is that Youtube could choose NOT to recommend videos for large categories of videos, particularly those related to kids or other categories (for example, Rohingya-related videos in Myanmar in the current time period). You need not censor the videos, however you can choose to make their discovery less easy. There's no law that says they have to recommend videos. There is however sufficient evidence at this time around the rabbit-hole effect causing real-world harm. This isn't 2005. It's about time Youtube, and social media properties adopt the medical principle: "first, do no harm". Perhaps they will do this willingly, but somehow I doubt it. To wit: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-infowars-75-fascist-activists-red-pilled/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-in...
- Adverblessly 8y ago
  I think that the claim you quoted is actually the less interesting claim in the article, the more interesting one is this: > ...It’s equally — depending on a user’s behavior — likely that you could have started on a more extreme video and actually moved in the other direction. > That’s what our research showed when we were looking at this more closely.. Now this is also a bit of a weasely claim. First because of "depending on user's behaviour" which isn't very clear (but for now I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they are trying to say "unless the user is actively seeking radical content"). Second because this claim could be true and YT would still be radicalizing (i.e. it could go 1->3, 3->2, 2->4, 4->3, 3->5, 5->4 in terms of extremeism giving a gradual slope towards radical while still maintaing that you are equally likely to navigate to more extreme content as you are to navigate to less extreme content). OTOH, if I understand the article you linked to correctly, all it says it that if you keep clicking "Up Next" you'll eventually get from mainstream content to extreme content, which doesn't invalidate the above YT claim if their research shows that users aren't actually doing that. Given that you assisted with that research maybe you could make it more clear what you tested and how it shows the "rabbit hole" effect?
  - ehsankia 8y ago
    Honestly both of these are pretty easy claims to check. Not by manually looking and choosing recommended videos, but by following a random walk. If it is true that it all drags you into extreme videos, then if you take a random walk from any video, choosing recommendations at random, you would always end up down the hole in extreme videos. In a lot of these experiments though, people explicitly pick the more extreme of the recommendations repeatedly, which of course will lead you down the rabbit hole.
- kettlecorn 8y ago
  I have an unlisted video with about 15 views that when viewed in an incognito tab constantly recommends stuff like "Ben Shapiro owns liberal professor", alongside gun videos. I just did an experiment where I clicked one of these and clicked "next" a bunch going through their recommended videos. It immediately dove into alt-right stuff, and eventually led to videos of antifa protestors getting beaten up. This is normal on YouTube.
  - opportune 8y ago
    I wonder how much of this is due to sponsorship. Aren't Ben Shapiro, PragerU, etc. billionaire-funded outreach programs? Can you pay Youtube to give your videos higher positioning in recommendation lists without their higher positions being explicitly labeled as "sponsored"?
    - derp_dee_derp 8y ago
      No, they are not billionaire funded. It is more likely to be a result of PragerU their lawsuit against youtube and YouTube adjusting their algorithm to give them a bit of a boost
      - opportune 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU#Funding I'm not sure if Ben Shapiro is being directly funded but it looks like PragerU is mostly funded either directly by billionairs or by think tanks (which are often also funded by billionaires but I don't have time to dig into all of the different ones mentioned here)
  - nailer 8y ago
    Alt right as in you found videos advocating for a white ethno state on youtube? Because that's the opposite of Ben Shapiro. Antifa are pretty explicitly ('by any means necessary', carrying baseball bats, beating people up) a violent group, people can and do enjoy seeing others retaliate.
swamy_g 8y ago
If you call Jordan Peterson videos or Joe Rogan clips extremist videos, then I think this is clearly a step in the wrong direction. Their videos thrive on YouTube not because they hold extreme views, it's because their videos are very engaging, fun and you learn something from it. If this is a ploy to push more mainstream narratives through YouTube that is akin to watching CNN/CBS or ABC, then I'll be looking for other platforms.
- Allvitende 8y ago
  Couldn't agree more.
- fmihaila 8y ago
  Such a pity your post is in the basement. Sometimes it is costly to be genuinely moderate. I'll keep you company here.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  >extreme views >videos are very engaging, fun and you learn something from it. This is not an either/or situation. Extremist content can be engaging, fun, and appear to be informative.
  - brogrammer5 8y ago
    How is their content "extremist" though?
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      I never said it was. However, JRE hosted Alex Jones (conspiracy theorist "mass shooting victoms are crisis actors"), Gavin McInnes (white supremacist), and Milo yiannopolous (conservative provocateur who among other things supports pedophilia in the gay community. Joe himself I can't comment on. He chooses to promote controversial and actively extreme people though. Sometimes he disagrees with those people, sometimes he doesn't.
      - 8y ago
css 8y ago
> The first is that using a combination of those tools of authoritative content and promoting authoritative content is something that can apply to other information verticals, not just breaking news. How is this not a clear admission they are a publisher and not just a platform?
ousta 8y ago
the stupid idea that it is the algorithm driving people to extreme content. It is not. people are driven by that. our whole societies are driven by violence, fear, disruptive stuff
ve55 8y ago
Seems to be a complaint that the Internet's Overton window is difficult to easily control. Good.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Seconded. My beef with all this is our current Overton window has been compressed to right of center economically. American opinion and general support for solid, center left economic policy is high and growing. Medicare For All, and friends. Our mainstream media simply does not report on, nor offer much opinion favorable to labor, and or framed from a labor point of view. It used to. When I was a kid, we would compare the various points of view, learn to identify them, and discuss what having the means to society. This lack of control is a good thing. I think we've got problems it's a struggle with, but I don't think they're as bad as what's being represented, nor do I think a nicely centered window makes any sense. I think the people should decide that.
  - ozmbie 8y ago
    It’s not a lack of control, it’s a different kind of control. Driven by algorithms and engagement metrics which appear to promote extreme content. That difference is what has people worried because the political and social endgame is not yet clear.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      It is both. There are plenty of places to have discussions online, sans a managed feed.
    - sisu2019 8y ago
      I think the extremeness of content is just another anti-free speech talking point. I'm sure there is vile stuff on youtube but if it actually comes down in these threads are are videos by Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Tim Pool. These people are simply not extreme and smearing them this is way is only about shutting down opposing ideas. I also don't doubt that you can (sometimes) get to really extreme content within four clicks but we have to keep in mind that the recommendation lists can be 40 videos long. So just roughly estimating it: if 1% of videos was extreme content because 1% of the population are extremist you would expect, on average, to see roughly one and a half extreme video if you sampled 4 * 40 random videos. In addition, just doing a quick test with Jordan Peterson in incognito mode I get the following very telling result. If I click a video called "Jordan Peterson EDUCATES College Professors In An Epic Q & A", I get mostly other Jordan Peterson videos with some Ben Shapiro sprinkled in. If I click on "Jordan Peterson Destroys Q&A | 25 February 2019" I suddenly get a wide range of people suggested with the common thread being that the title also contains "DESTROY", "SNAP", "OWNS" and so on. This makes me think the 'problem' might just be that people who keep clicking on the most outrageous titles will eventually see the most outrageous videos. From a technical perspective I would say that is working as intended.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
charlesism 8y ago
"There’s more work to be done" is the understatement of the year.
mberning 8y ago
Why is it an acceptable expectation for the user to self moderate certain information but not others? For example, if I watch a video about modding a car, then that links me to another video of more extreme modification, and so on, up to the point that I am no longer interested and stop watching. That is OK for the people at YouTube. But when it comes to politics they feel that people cannot decide what they do and don’t agree with and self moderate. I get that you could make the argument that politics is different, but is it that much different than some other topics that could lead to undesirable outcomes?
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  Car modding has a) very high up-front costs, relative to developing political ideas and b) arguably very little chance of doing large-scale damage to a society. If car modding videos led you down a rabbit hole towards "watch how fast I can go if I cut the brake lines with these $3 wire cutters! Those braking requirements are just a conspiracy between big auto and the shadow government to keep you from reaching car enlightenment, so make sure to drive through the front window of your nearest car dealership"... and then people started doing that, we would have a different attitude about them.
  - mberning 8y ago
    It was just an example, but who are you to say it’s not already a huge problem? It surely is to somebody. Maybe they work at YouTube. Modified vehicles spew enormous amounts of pollution into the environment which as we all know is a huge crisis. Driving highly modified vehicles on public roads is also a huge public safety hazard. Nobody needs 1000 horsepower on public roads. See how this can get out of hand? It all depends on who is deciding what is problematic.
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    Are they going to take the same stance to videos about gaming, because gaming addiction is a real problem and a progressive diet of “Lets Plays” normalizes unhealthy amounts of video games, by showing people whose entire life is video games? Why is that different than politics?
wbronitsky 8y ago
I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. They are being removed from a private platform for not complying with the rules of the platform. You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. Neither would you say that a man trying to convince kids to get into his van outside of McDonalds was being censored for being kicked out of the McDonalds. Both of those are private businesses regulating the behavior of their customers, and not in any way censorship. > Randomly clicking on videos The entire point is that people don't click on random videos, they click on videos they think are interesting. Call it "rage clicks", curiosity, or some people are just bad people and want to see bad things, just don't call it random, because thats obviously wrong.
- dwiguy 8y ago
  the act of censoring something can be done by private entities, not just the government. Is it their right to do so? absolutely.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Where in my comment did I say that YouTube doesn't have the right to ban content? Nowhere. It always puzzles me why this response always crops up, even when I never even remotely try to claim that platforms have any legal obligation to host content. I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. I have zero doubt that this is their right, but people and companies have the right to do plenty of things that aren't good for society. Saying that it's bad for society to implement a partisan recommendation algorithm is not at all the same thing as saying it is or should be illegal.
    - 4werfaw34r 8y ago
      I sympathize with your frustration. My theory of HN comments: People prefer to respond to familar arguments, rather than the arguments you make in your comments. People prefer to discuss topics that they are familiar or passionate about, rather than the specific topics addressed in the articles or parent comments. Posting Fast and Slow
jkha0 8y ago
Giving people more of what they want is the optimal user experience. People are ultimately choosing what to watch. It's a clear conflict of interest for traditional media to blame their younger competitors for all the world's problems.
- pixl97 8y ago
  I want more free crack please, it's the ultimate user experience!
coltonv 8y ago
I've noticed an interesting thing in terms of "youtube rabbit holes" towards extreme content. I'm what American society would generally consider "liberal", and I watch a lot of videos about fixing climate change, medicare for all, etc. Interestingly, I don't usually get "liberal" recommendations on my home page. However, if I watch a video from a conservative angle, even just one or two videos, I almost immediately get extreme right wing content in my recommendations. Stuff like PragerU, ReasonTV, NRATV, etc. Even watching videos that I wouldn't consider right wing, just critical of certain left wing sects, like h3h3 for example, tend to almost immediately lead me into videos like "DUMB FEMINISTS GET OWNED - COMPILATION". It's strange the rabbit holes almost always take me deep into right wing territory, but never really into left wing territory.
- vibrato 8y ago
  what about PragerU or the NRA is "extreme" right wing? Only as "extreme" as MSNBC is left...
  - thundergolfer 8y ago
    It is ridiculous to suggest that MSNBC is "extreme left wing", absolutely ridiculous. On the Citations Needed (CN) podcast, there is an episode where an MSNBC tv Anchor goes on to defend CN's criticism of his network. During this podcast, the anchor states that being openly anti-capitalist or socialist will get you laughed out of the room there. To suggest a network with that kind of hostility to criticism of Capitalism is "extreme" left wing is farcical. MSNBC is painfully centre-left and pro-Democratic party.
    - korethr 8y ago
      I think you made his point for him. Your contention is that MSNBC is not extremely left left wing. His contention is that the NRA and PragerU are as extremely right wing to the same degree that MSNBC is extremely left wing. So if MSNBC is not extremely left wing, then I think GP's point is the the NRA and PragerU are perhaps not so extremely right wing as GGP implied
rikkus 8y ago
Whenever I went to YouTube I would get suggested videos that were either interesting and related to stuff I had watched, or not interesting to me, but no problem. The algorithm just didn’t quite judge what I might be interested in as well as it could. Occasionally I would try dismissing one of the suggestions in the hope I wouldn’t see similar again, but then I’d still see it’s kind repeated and was just disappointed it wasn’t taking my request into account. Suggestions are hard though. No problem. One day, though, I made the mistake of following a link to YouTube which turned out to be to a video of an American political figure (not even sure if he is a politician) whose views were of the sort that court controversy - on purpose, I guessed. What I didn’t expect was that YouTube would then offer me videos featuring the same person - or people with similar ultra-polarising messages - every time I returned to YouTube. I hadn’t realised that not only does YT take into account what you have watched a _lot_ of, it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’. While I don’t mind pointless suggestions I will ignore, it’s very concerning that without ‘liking’ or repeatedly watching such material, people are being suggested it time after time, even when they ask to have it taken away.
- harrumph 8y ago
  > it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’. This is my experience as well. YT thinks I love Jordan Peterson. Four or so months ago, I didn't know who he was, and clicked one clip, found it ridiculous and never clicked another one. But my recommendations are lousy with the guy.
  - kristiandupont 8y ago
    You are the second comment here stating this specifically about Jordan Peterson. Weirdly enough, I had that same experience. I saw one video, didn't like it and yet YT keeps recommending this and that video of him or more right-wing people DESTROYING someone. It's frustrating to say the least, not only because I don't want to see it but because I showed a video once when giving a talk, and after it had finished, all those garbage recommendations showed up for everyone to see, making it look like I am secretly some lunatic.
Proven 8y ago
Statist nonsense. "I was radicalized, so I need the State to help me" How about you radicalized yourself, and you should bear the consequences.
yuliyp 8y ago
So it feels like the way YouTube's algorithms work re suggested videos is heavily related to "what other videos did the people who watched this video watch?". Now imagine you have a video that expresses some conspiracy theory. That video is watched by a bunch of people who are into conspiracy theories. Then you come along, and YouTube now recommends you videos that the people who watched the same video as you just watched. And bam you get sucked toward those others who were interested in that video. Now this does work in the other direction, where someone with more normal viewing habits watching a video will steer the conspiracy theorists toward the types of videos they watch, but the size of the pools means it's the polarizing direction that would have a greater effect.
- throwawaysea 8y ago
  Yes, recommenders take content you've interacted with and map it to other content that they see links to (people who hit Like on video X also hit Like on these other videos). But what I'd point out is that I see YouTube respecting _all_ the content I see, rather than just the most recent one or just right-wing content, as some commenters here are alleging. For example my feed usually includes videos from Vox as well as Fox on politics, alongside video game reviews, alongside a NASA stream, alongside woodworking, and so on.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  It's worse than that. YouTube tries to maximize engagement, so it will preferentially recommend videos watched by highly engaged viewers. Guess what category of viewers are highly engaged? Indeed, conspiracists, polemecists, etc. Imagine walking into a college campus and asking the registrar for some recommendations on classes to take and them telling you to go listen to the crazy religious nut shouting from atop a milk crate, because they were so much more engaged with their material than anyone else on campus.
cameldrv 8y ago
* Let me configure the recommender. * Let me turn it off entirely. * Let me adjust the relative weight that the current video gets vs my past views (i.e. do I want to see related videos to this one, or ones that YouTube generally thinks I'll click on) * Let me adjust the weighting of thumbs up vs. watch time. * Let me configure the homepage * Let me make the entire recommender panel be just subscriptions or items from a particular list * Let me replace the recommender entirely with something of my own devising, called back through a webhook These things would make YouTube much more useful for me. I'm not going to YouTube just to kill time, and I pay them $13/mo. They're not getting any ad revenue from me, so why am I stuck with their recommender that only cares what it thinks will cause me to spend the most time on YouTube. I am not interested in spending the most time on YouTube. I'm interested in getting the most out of it in the minimum time.
- harryf 8y ago
  In other news YouTube released Stories (Snapchat / Instagram feature) to make help users be "more engaged" ... https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18117670/youtube-stories-creators-subscribers-instagram-philip-defranco https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18117670/youtube-stories... ... give users so much control over their experience is counter to having algorithms that suck them into spending more time.
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    Considering that pretty much every huge service goes into the direction of less control over time (Amazon, Netflix are other examples), I assume that for other people this has to somehow be great and actually increase their engagement. For me (and I assume many others on HN) it simply makes the experience worse and recommendations less relevant.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Being great and increasing engagement are not necessarily correlated.
canthonytucci 8y ago
At one point, if you watched an Asmongold video, you'd be bombarded with suggestions for more of them. Never seen it happen as strong with any other topic. I don't know about increasing levels of extreme, but I can definitely see it possible that suggestions could get people to a place where they are feeling like an idea or a thing is more popular than it really is. He talks about it briefly here (nsfw) https://youtu.be/Rstb4IRXZLQ?t=625 https://youtu.be/Rstb4IRXZLQ?t=625
IronWolve 8y ago
If only someone took the rss feeds from youtube channels and made your own front end. Ditch their portal. Turn youtube into a type of podcast db, its just a media storage site. Then you could create your own portal, parse the views/ratings and provide real statistics. I don't watch youtube for youtube, I watch youtube for user-created content. And some of that content has already moved off onto 3rd party sites. Floatplane anyone? Patreon anyone? list goes on. I just wish finding video content was as easy as searching for podcasts. Youtube provides RSS links, I use them to add to my podcast player.
sfashset 8y ago
Just out of curiosity - we have people on this thread and on other parts of the internet, claiming they'll watch one "extremist", typically right wing video, and then have their recommendations blitzed with even more extreme/right wing content. This is the "rabbit hole" effect that's being referred to in the article. Can anyone say that they have distinctly not encountered this effect? I can recall having watched maybe a couple of Joe Rogan clips, a Jordan Peterson interview, and even some stuff I would label alt-right content. I'm personally fairly left-ish/liberal, so I find these videos boring/offensive and eventually will go back to my normal youtube consumption - music, sports, some tech videos. My recommendations are all of the latter categories, not of extreme/political right wing category. I guess due to selection bias, most people who don't have a problem with their recommendations won't report anything, while most people who do will leave comments that they too experienced the rabbit hole effect. I'm wondering if that leads to the problem described being overstated. Or am I really the only person who's managed to watch some fairly extreme right wing content, and had my recommended videos stay intact?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mindgam3 8y ago
It’s almost like the YouTube guy is taking his talking points directly from Zuckerberg’s script. ----------- 1. “of course we take this seriously” - Mohan: "Having said that, we do take this notion of dissemination of harmful misinformation, hate-filled content, content that in some cases is inciting violence, extremely seriously." - Zuckerberg 2016: "we take misinformation seriously. We’ve been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously." 2. “we’re simply trying to help people get accurate information” - Mohan: "when users are looking for information, YouTube is putting its best foot forward in terms of serving that information to them." - Zuckerberg 2016: “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information.” 3. “fear not, it’s our users who are in power/in control” - Mohan: "But YouTube is also still keeping users in power, in terms of their intent and the information that they’re looking for." - Zuckerberg 2004: “People have very good control over who can see their information.” - Zuckerberg 2017: “Our full mission statement is: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That reflects that we can’t do this ourselves, but only by empowering people to build communities and bring people together.” And last but definitely not least, 4. “we’re proud of our progress, but there’s more work to do” - Mohan: "It’s an ongoing effort. I think we’ve made great strides here. But clearly there’s more work to be done." - Zuckerberg 2016: “We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done.” - Zuckerberg 2018: “I’ve learned a lot from focusing on these issues and we still have a lot of work ahead…I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in 2018… I’m committed to continuing to make progress on these important issues as we enter the new year.” Why anyone would copy Zuckerberg’s script at this point is beyond me. ----------- Sources: - Zuck 2004: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/?page=single https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-registe... - Zuck 2016: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 - Zuck 2017: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/bringing-the-world-closer-together/10154944663901634/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/bringing-the-... - Zuck 2018: https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10105865715850211/ https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10105865715850211/
- ams6110 8y ago
  It's because they are both spouting standard PR cliches.
BEEdwards 8y ago
>Yeah, so I’ve heard this before, and I think that there are some myths that go into that description that I think it would be useful for me to debunk. This is no myth bro, go to youtube pick a political video leave on autoplay, watch it go to shit.
charliebrownau 8y ago
Funny how its NEVER "radicalization" when it comes from the Global Socialist LEFT pushing self identification, refusal to admit science+Biology+facts and refusal to talk about ideas without abusing someone or calling them some "hate" name
habosa 8y ago
I work at Google but not on anything related to YouTube. This opinion is my own: that was very disappointing to read. I use YouTube, I don't browse it. I search for what I want, and then I watch it. Yet YouTube seems absolutely determined to send me down rabbit holes for some reason. For instance my friend sent me a video by some cable news neo-philosopher (a Jordan Peterson type) and since then I can't get rid of low-quality vids in my recommendations that are trying to make me angry. "{Person} totally EVISCERATES {other person}" being the calmest of them. The recommendation algorithm is also just not even good at its job. I am Jewish and the number of videos I have seen recommended to me that are thinly-veiled anti-semitism is pathetic. Do they really think I am going to watch those? The one thing from the article I do believe is that these extremist videos (mostly) don't monetize. So why do they dominate? Honestly I think we just suck at building recommendation systems. I am not a big fan of Facebook, but I applaud their recent ban of white supremacist content. Freedom of speech is one thing, freedom to use someone else's site to speak to millions is another thing. YouTube should just take a harder stance on all of this dangerous crap. The Sandy Hook deniers and the Antivaxxers will have a hard time finding a new home. </rant>
- fossuser 8y ago
  From the outside it seems like they don't actually design YouTube with features their users would like. I pay for YouTube to avoid ads and wish I didn't have to use their home view which shows me a lot of content I don't care about. I want my homescreen to be my subscriptions (instead I have to manually switch to this every time). I would entirely turn off recommended content if I could, in favor of channels suggesting other channels or something more human curated (like Spotify discovery which in part uses other user's playlists). People are vulnerable to bad information delivered in a manipulative way - especially when this is reinforced by a bunch of recommended videos.
- Avamander 8y ago
  Press three dots - not interested in recommendations based on: [video name], works great for me.
dmitryminkovsky 8y ago
The big question in my life is whether an app can succeeed in 2019 without manipulating user psychology like this. I built Pony [0], an email platform that delivers once a day, to see if this is possible. In the UI I eschewed every traditional user manipulation technique I could think of: there are no notifications, there are no unread message counts. There even isn’t read/unread message state. I truly wonder whether people can adapt to a totally unstructured online platform, an unguided, unprompted experience that they create for themselves. My bet is they can. [0]: https://www.pony.gg https://www.pony.gg
- BucketSort 8y ago
  > Pony is the world’s first non-instant messaging platform The postal service would like a word with you.
  - dmitryminkovsky 8y ago
    Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
- BucketSort 8y ago
  Look at this persons profile. He's a spammer.
username223 8y ago
Thank $deity for https://youtube-dl.org https://youtube-dl.org. I can't be bothered to deal with Google's "up next" algorithm.
annadane 8y ago
Radicalization aside, is anyone just annoyed with how much worse the recommendations are compared to how they were? Damn near impossible to discover anything given how biased it is towards "popular" content as opposed to, y'know, related to what you're watching
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  Yup. It's just... shitty. I subscribe to a lot of channels and well more than half of the videos on the recommendations list are just recent videos from my subscription feed. I recognize that they are trying to create some sort of dumbed down landing page experience, but it just sucks. I feel as though there was a period of time when it was much better, but that time has sadly long passed.
whotheffknows 8y ago
This is what google okay is for. Trust me.

169 points by Bhilai 8y ago

lvs 8y ago

This is nothing more than a very long-winded PR denial.

api 8y ago

The thing is this is how algorithmic timelines, lists, etc. work. They're programmed to drive engagement. Fear, hate, outrage, sensationalism, and controversy are what does that as has been known since the time of P. T. Barnum.

minimaxir 8y ago

> Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hole effect on YouTube? > I’m trying to describe to you the nature of the problem. So what I’m saying is that when a video is watched, you will see a number of videos that are then recommended. Some of those videos might have the perception of skewing in one direction or, you know, call it more extreme. There are other videos that skew in the opposite direction. I assisted with data research on YouTube recommended videos (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-youtubes-recommendation-rabbithole https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-y...), and this claim is misleading at best. There may be some videos that aren't extreme, but that doesn't matter if they are a) in the extreme minority and/or b) appear very far down in the queue of 20+ recommended videos when users typically either do "Up Next" or look at/action only the top few recommendations. This isn't a "both sides" issue.

nailer 8y ago
The Buzzfeed article quotes the SPLC, a partisan organisation that has labelled anti-FGM compaigners and Muslim reform groups as 'hate' groups (and only admitted the mistake under threat of legal action). https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty-law-center-has-lost-all-credibility/2018/06/21/22ab7d60-756d-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty...
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  If "fucked up majorly once" means you should be disregarded, Marc Thiessen of "torture is legal and effective" fame should go on your disregard list too.
  - nailer 8y ago
    There's two examples in the comment you're replying to, and you can find more in less time it took you to write that reply.
manfredo 8y ago
I don't think this is a fair summary of what the Product Chief is saying. When people talk about the YouTube rabbit hole, they're talking about watching video A, which links to B, to C, etc. until they reach content considered extreme. This is simplistic, but say all videos are on a 1-10 integer scale in terms of politics. YouTube always recommends 80% videos that are on the same value as the currently viewed video and 10% are one value higher and 10% are on one value lower. It doesn't push anyone in either direction. Randomly clicking on recommended videos will randomly move you up or down (and usually not move at all). But, no matter where you begin, you can always reach either end in 4 clicks - cue people talking about the YouTube rabbit hole. But hey, maybe it's not enough to merely prefer content that isn't extreme, what if we wanted to actively push people to the center? We could recommend 80% videos that are one value higher or lower towards the center spectrum (or the same is the viewed video is at 5 or 6), and 10% videos that are at the same value, and 10% towards one value away from the center. Randomly clicking on videos _will_ bring most viewers to the center in this system. But we can still reach the extremes in just 4 clicks. This is why complaining that users can go down a rabbit hole feels disingenuous to me. They always will be _able_ to do so - unless YouTube never recommends videos that aren't more centrist than the video being viewed. I suppose YouTube could just ban all videos that are at 1 and 10 in our spectrum, but that's basically just calling for censorship. And not to mention, 2 and 9 will just become the new definition of extreme. Edit: many of the comment lead me to think that I haven't made what is and isn't in scope of my comment clear. Allow me to point out two things in particular. 1. YouTube already does prohibit hate speech. How well it enforces its rules is a valid point of discussion, but not what I'm talking about here. I'm pointing out that the ability to get to the extremes of what _is_ allowed on the platform through recommendations should not in and of itself be a point of concern. 2. I'm also aware that sometimes the recommendation are very messed up in context of the current video - e.g. shock videos getting recommended to kids. But this is more about trolls deliberately gaming the recommendation algorithm, which I see as a distinct issue from the alleged rabbit hole pattern of recommendations.
- strangeloops85 8y ago
  The alternative is that Youtube could choose NOT to recommend videos for large categories of videos, particularly those related to kids or other categories (for example, Rohingya-related videos in Myanmar in the current time period). You need not censor the videos, however you can choose to make their discovery less easy. There's no law that says they have to recommend videos. There is however sufficient evidence at this time around the rabbit-hole effect causing real-world harm. This isn't 2005. It's about time Youtube, and social media properties adopt the medical principle: "first, do no harm". Perhaps they will do this willingly, but somehow I doubt it. To wit: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-infowars-75-fascist-activists-red-pilled/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2018/10/11/memes-in...
Adverblessly 8y ago
I think that the claim you quoted is actually the less interesting claim in the article, the more interesting one is this: > ...It’s equally — depending on a user’s behavior — likely that you could have started on a more extreme video and actually moved in the other direction. > That’s what our research showed when we were looking at this more closely.. Now this is also a bit of a weasely claim. First because of "depending on user's behaviour" which isn't very clear (but for now I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they are trying to say "unless the user is actively seeking radical content"). Second because this claim could be true and YT would still be radicalizing (i.e. it could go 1->3, 3->2, 2->4, 4->3, 3->5, 5->4 in terms of extremeism giving a gradual slope towards radical while still maintaing that you are equally likely to navigate to more extreme content as you are to navigate to less extreme content). OTOH, if I understand the article you linked to correctly, all it says it that if you keep clicking "Up Next" you'll eventually get from mainstream content to extreme content, which doesn't invalidate the above YT claim if their research shows that users aren't actually doing that. Given that you assisted with that research maybe you could make it more clear what you tested and how it shows the "rabbit hole" effect?
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Honestly both of these are pretty easy claims to check. Not by manually looking and choosing recommended videos, but by following a random walk. If it is true that it all drags you into extreme videos, then if you take a random walk from any video, choosing recommendations at random, you would always end up down the hole in extreme videos. In a lot of these experiments though, people explicitly pick the more extreme of the recommendations repeatedly, which of course will lead you down the rabbit hole.
kettlecorn 8y ago
I have an unlisted video with about 15 views that when viewed in an incognito tab constantly recommends stuff like "Ben Shapiro owns liberal professor", alongside gun videos. I just did an experiment where I clicked one of these and clicked "next" a bunch going through their recommended videos. It immediately dove into alt-right stuff, and eventually led to videos of antifa protestors getting beaten up. This is normal on YouTube.
- opportune 8y ago
  I wonder how much of this is due to sponsorship. Aren't Ben Shapiro, PragerU, etc. billionaire-funded outreach programs? Can you pay Youtube to give your videos higher positioning in recommendation lists without their higher positions being explicitly labeled as "sponsored"?
  - derp_dee_derp 8y ago
    No, they are not billionaire funded. It is more likely to be a result of PragerU their lawsuit against youtube and YouTube adjusting their algorithm to give them a bit of a boost
    - opportune 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU#Funding I'm not sure if Ben Shapiro is being directly funded but it looks like PragerU is mostly funded either directly by billionairs or by think tanks (which are often also funded by billionaires but I don't have time to dig into all of the different ones mentioned here)
- nailer 8y ago
  Alt right as in you found videos advocating for a white ethno state on youtube? Because that's the opposite of Ben Shapiro. Antifa are pretty explicitly ('by any means necessary', carrying baseball bats, beating people up) a violent group, people can and do enjoy seeing others retaliate.

swamy_g 8y ago

If you call Jordan Peterson videos or Joe Rogan clips extremist videos, then I think this is clearly a step in the wrong direction. Their videos thrive on YouTube not because they hold extreme views, it's because their videos are very engaging, fun and you learn something from it. If this is a ploy to push more mainstream narratives through YouTube that is akin to watching CNN/CBS or ABC, then I'll be looking for other platforms.

Allvitende 8y ago
Couldn't agree more.
fmihaila 8y ago
Such a pity your post is in the basement. Sometimes it is costly to be genuinely moderate. I'll keep you company here.
joshuamorton 8y ago
>extreme views >videos are very engaging, fun and you learn something from it. This is not an either/or situation. Extremist content can be engaging, fun, and appear to be informative.
- brogrammer5 8y ago
  How is their content "extremist" though?
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    I never said it was. However, JRE hosted Alex Jones (conspiracy theorist "mass shooting victoms are crisis actors"), Gavin McInnes (white supremacist), and Milo yiannopolous (conservative provocateur who among other things supports pedophilia in the gay community. Joe himself I can't comment on. He chooses to promote controversial and actively extreme people though. Sometimes he disagrees with those people, sometimes he doesn't.
    - 8y ago

css 8y ago

> The first is that using a combination of those tools of authoritative content and promoting authoritative content is something that can apply to other information verticals, not just breaking news. How is this not a clear admission they are a publisher and not just a platform?

ousta 8y ago

the stupid idea that it is the algorithm driving people to extreme content. It is not. people are driven by that. our whole societies are driven by violence, fear, disruptive stuff

ve55 8y ago

Seems to be a complaint that the Internet's Overton window is difficult to easily control. Good.

ddingus 8y ago
Seconded. My beef with all this is our current Overton window has been compressed to right of center economically. American opinion and general support for solid, center left economic policy is high and growing. Medicare For All, and friends. Our mainstream media simply does not report on, nor offer much opinion favorable to labor, and or framed from a labor point of view. It used to. When I was a kid, we would compare the various points of view, learn to identify them, and discuss what having the means to society. This lack of control is a good thing. I think we've got problems it's a struggle with, but I don't think they're as bad as what's being represented, nor do I think a nicely centered window makes any sense. I think the people should decide that.
- ozmbie 8y ago
  It’s not a lack of control, it’s a different kind of control. Driven by algorithms and engagement metrics which appear to promote extreme content. That difference is what has people worried because the political and social endgame is not yet clear.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    It is both. There are plenty of places to have discussions online, sans a managed feed.
  - sisu2019 8y ago
    I think the extremeness of content is just another anti-free speech talking point. I'm sure there is vile stuff on youtube but if it actually comes down in these threads are are videos by Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Tim Pool. These people are simply not extreme and smearing them this is way is only about shutting down opposing ideas. I also don't doubt that you can (sometimes) get to really extreme content within four clicks but we have to keep in mind that the recommendation lists can be 40 videos long. So just roughly estimating it: if 1% of videos was extreme content because 1% of the population are extremist you would expect, on average, to see roughly one and a half extreme video if you sampled 4 * 40 random videos. In addition, just doing a quick test with Jordan Peterson in incognito mode I get the following very telling result. If I click a video called "Jordan Peterson EDUCATES College Professors In An Epic Q & A", I get mostly other Jordan Peterson videos with some Ben Shapiro sprinkled in. If I click on "Jordan Peterson Destroys Q&A | 25 February 2019" I suddenly get a wide range of people suggested with the common thread being that the title also contains "DESTROY", "SNAP", "OWNS" and so on. This makes me think the 'problem' might just be that people who keep clicking on the most outrageous titles will eventually see the most outrageous videos. From a technical perspective I would say that is working as intended.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

charlesism 8y ago

"There’s more work to be done" is the understatement of the year.

mberning 8y ago

Why is it an acceptable expectation for the user to self moderate certain information but not others? For example, if I watch a video about modding a car, then that links me to another video of more extreme modification, and so on, up to the point that I am no longer interested and stop watching. That is OK for the people at YouTube. But when it comes to politics they feel that people cannot decide what they do and don’t agree with and self moderate. I get that you could make the argument that politics is different, but is it that much different than some other topics that could lead to undesirable outcomes?

InitialLastName 8y ago
Car modding has a) very high up-front costs, relative to developing political ideas and b) arguably very little chance of doing large-scale damage to a society. If car modding videos led you down a rabbit hole towards "watch how fast I can go if I cut the brake lines with these $3 wire cutters! Those braking requirements are just a conspiracy between big auto and the shadow government to keep you from reaching car enlightenment, so make sure to drive through the front window of your nearest car dealership"... and then people started doing that, we would have a different attitude about them.
- mberning 8y ago
  It was just an example, but who are you to say it’s not already a huge problem? It surely is to somebody. Maybe they work at YouTube. Modified vehicles spew enormous amounts of pollution into the environment which as we all know is a huge crisis. Driving highly modified vehicles on public roads is also a huge public safety hazard. Nobody needs 1000 horsepower on public roads. See how this can get out of hand? It all depends on who is deciding what is problematic.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  Are they going to take the same stance to videos about gaming, because gaming addiction is a real problem and a progressive diet of “Lets Plays” normalizes unhealthy amounts of video games, by showing people whose entire life is video games? Why is that different than politics?

wbronitsky 8y ago

I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. They are being removed from a private platform for not complying with the rules of the platform. You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. Neither would you say that a man trying to convince kids to get into his van outside of McDonalds was being censored for being kicked out of the McDonalds. Both of those are private businesses regulating the behavior of their customers, and not in any way censorship. > Randomly clicking on videos The entire point is that people don't click on random videos, they click on videos they think are interesting. Call it "rage clicks", curiosity, or some people are just bad people and want to see bad things, just don't call it random, because thats obviously wrong.

dwiguy 8y ago
the act of censoring something can be done by private entities, not just the government. Is it their right to do so? absolutely.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Where in my comment did I say that YouTube doesn't have the right to ban content? Nowhere. It always puzzles me why this response always crops up, even when I never even remotely try to claim that platforms have any legal obligation to host content. I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. I have zero doubt that this is their right, but people and companies have the right to do plenty of things that aren't good for society. Saying that it's bad for society to implement a partisan recommendation algorithm is not at all the same thing as saying it is or should be illegal.
  - 4werfaw34r 8y ago
    I sympathize with your frustration. My theory of HN comments: People prefer to respond to familar arguments, rather than the arguments you make in your comments. People prefer to discuss topics that they are familiar or passionate about, rather than the specific topics addressed in the articles or parent comments. Posting Fast and Slow

jkha0 8y ago

Giving people more of what they want is the optimal user experience. People are ultimately choosing what to watch. It's a clear conflict of interest for traditional media to blame their younger competitors for all the world's problems.

pixl97 8y ago
I want more free crack please, it's the ultimate user experience!

coltonv 8y ago

I've noticed an interesting thing in terms of "youtube rabbit holes" towards extreme content. I'm what American society would generally consider "liberal", and I watch a lot of videos about fixing climate change, medicare for all, etc. Interestingly, I don't usually get "liberal" recommendations on my home page. However, if I watch a video from a conservative angle, even just one or two videos, I almost immediately get extreme right wing content in my recommendations. Stuff like PragerU, ReasonTV, NRATV, etc. Even watching videos that I wouldn't consider right wing, just critical of certain left wing sects, like h3h3 for example, tend to almost immediately lead me into videos like "DUMB FEMINISTS GET OWNED - COMPILATION". It's strange the rabbit holes almost always take me deep into right wing territory, but never really into left wing territory.

vibrato 8y ago
what about PragerU or the NRA is "extreme" right wing? Only as "extreme" as MSNBC is left...
- thundergolfer 8y ago
  It is ridiculous to suggest that MSNBC is "extreme left wing", absolutely ridiculous. On the Citations Needed (CN) podcast, there is an episode where an MSNBC tv Anchor goes on to defend CN's criticism of his network. During this podcast, the anchor states that being openly anti-capitalist or socialist will get you laughed out of the room there. To suggest a network with that kind of hostility to criticism of Capitalism is "extreme" left wing is farcical. MSNBC is painfully centre-left and pro-Democratic party.
  - korethr 8y ago
    I think you made his point for him. Your contention is that MSNBC is not extremely left left wing. His contention is that the NRA and PragerU are as extremely right wing to the same degree that MSNBC is extremely left wing. So if MSNBC is not extremely left wing, then I think GP's point is the the NRA and PragerU are perhaps not so extremely right wing as GGP implied

rikkus 8y ago

Whenever I went to YouTube I would get suggested videos that were either interesting and related to stuff I had watched, or not interesting to me, but no problem. The algorithm just didn’t quite judge what I might be interested in as well as it could. Occasionally I would try dismissing one of the suggestions in the hope I wouldn’t see similar again, but then I’d still see it’s kind repeated and was just disappointed it wasn’t taking my request into account. Suggestions are hard though. No problem. One day, though, I made the mistake of following a link to YouTube which turned out to be to a video of an American political figure (not even sure if he is a politician) whose views were of the sort that court controversy - on purpose, I guessed. What I didn’t expect was that YouTube would then offer me videos featuring the same person - or people with similar ultra-polarising messages - every time I returned to YouTube. I hadn’t realised that not only does YT take into account what you have watched a _lot_ of, it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’. While I don’t mind pointless suggestions I will ignore, it’s very concerning that without ‘liking’ or repeatedly watching such material, people are being suggested it time after time, even when they ask to have it taken away.

harrumph 8y ago
> it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’. This is my experience as well. YT thinks I love Jordan Peterson. Four or so months ago, I didn't know who he was, and clicked one clip, found it ridiculous and never clicked another one. But my recommendations are lousy with the guy.
- kristiandupont 8y ago
  You are the second comment here stating this specifically about Jordan Peterson. Weirdly enough, I had that same experience. I saw one video, didn't like it and yet YT keeps recommending this and that video of him or more right-wing people DESTROYING someone. It's frustrating to say the least, not only because I don't want to see it but because I showed a video once when giving a talk, and after it had finished, all those garbage recommendations showed up for everyone to see, making it look like I am secretly some lunatic.

Proven 8y ago

Statist nonsense. "I was radicalized, so I need the State to help me" How about you radicalized yourself, and you should bear the consequences.

yuliyp 8y ago

So it feels like the way YouTube's algorithms work re suggested videos is heavily related to "what other videos did the people who watched this video watch?". Now imagine you have a video that expresses some conspiracy theory. That video is watched by a bunch of people who are into conspiracy theories. Then you come along, and YouTube now recommends you videos that the people who watched the same video as you just watched. And bam you get sucked toward those others who were interested in that video. Now this does work in the other direction, where someone with more normal viewing habits watching a video will steer the conspiracy theorists toward the types of videos they watch, but the size of the pools means it's the polarizing direction that would have a greater effect.

throwawaysea 8y ago
Yes, recommenders take content you've interacted with and map it to other content that they see links to (people who hit Like on video X also hit Like on these other videos). But what I'd point out is that I see YouTube respecting _all_ the content I see, rather than just the most recent one or just right-wing content, as some commenters here are alleging. For example my feed usually includes videos from Vox as well as Fox on politics, alongside video game reviews, alongside a NASA stream, alongside woodworking, and so on.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
It's worse than that. YouTube tries to maximize engagement, so it will preferentially recommend videos watched by highly engaged viewers. Guess what category of viewers are highly engaged? Indeed, conspiracists, polemecists, etc. Imagine walking into a college campus and asking the registrar for some recommendations on classes to take and them telling you to go listen to the crazy religious nut shouting from atop a milk crate, because they were so much more engaged with their material than anyone else on campus.

cameldrv 8y ago

* Let me configure the recommender. * Let me turn it off entirely. * Let me adjust the relative weight that the current video gets vs my past views (i.e. do I want to see related videos to this one, or ones that YouTube generally thinks I'll click on) * Let me adjust the weighting of thumbs up vs. watch time. * Let me configure the homepage * Let me make the entire recommender panel be just subscriptions or items from a particular list * Let me replace the recommender entirely with something of my own devising, called back through a webhook These things would make YouTube much more useful for me. I'm not going to YouTube just to kill time, and I pay them $13/mo. They're not getting any ad revenue from me, so why am I stuck with their recommender that only cares what it thinks will cause me to spend the most time on YouTube. I am not interested in spending the most time on YouTube. I'm interested in getting the most out of it in the minimum time.

harryf 8y ago
In other news YouTube released Stories (Snapchat / Instagram feature) to make help users be "more engaged" ... https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18117670/youtube-stories-creators-subscribers-instagram-philip-defranco https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18117670/youtube-stories... ... give users so much control over their experience is counter to having algorithms that suck them into spending more time.
- Semaphor 8y ago
  Considering that pretty much every huge service goes into the direction of less control over time (Amazon, Netflix are other examples), I assume that for other people this has to somehow be great and actually increase their engagement. For me (and I assume many others on HN) it simply makes the experience worse and recommendations less relevant.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Being great and increasing engagement are not necessarily correlated.

canthonytucci 8y ago

At one point, if you watched an Asmongold video, you'd be bombarded with suggestions for more of them. Never seen it happen as strong with any other topic. I don't know about increasing levels of extreme, but I can definitely see it possible that suggestions could get people to a place where they are feeling like an idea or a thing is more popular than it really is. He talks about it briefly here (nsfw) https://youtu.be/Rstb4IRXZLQ?t=625 https://youtu.be/Rstb4IRXZLQ?t=625

IronWolve 8y ago

If only someone took the rss feeds from youtube channels and made your own front end. Ditch their portal. Turn youtube into a type of podcast db, its just a media storage site. Then you could create your own portal, parse the views/ratings and provide real statistics. I don't watch youtube for youtube, I watch youtube for user-created content. And some of that content has already moved off onto 3rd party sites. Floatplane anyone? Patreon anyone? list goes on. I just wish finding video content was as easy as searching for podcasts. Youtube provides RSS links, I use them to add to my podcast player.

sfashset 8y ago

Just out of curiosity - we have people on this thread and on other parts of the internet, claiming they'll watch one "extremist", typically right wing video, and then have their recommendations blitzed with even more extreme/right wing content. This is the "rabbit hole" effect that's being referred to in the article. Can anyone say that they have distinctly not encountered this effect? I can recall having watched maybe a couple of Joe Rogan clips, a Jordan Peterson interview, and even some stuff I would label alt-right content. I'm personally fairly left-ish/liberal, so I find these videos boring/offensive and eventually will go back to my normal youtube consumption - music, sports, some tech videos. My recommendations are all of the latter categories, not of extreme/political right wing category. I guess due to selection bias, most people who don't have a problem with their recommendations won't report anything, while most people who do will leave comments that they too experienced the rabbit hole effect. I'm wondering if that leads to the problem described being overstated. Or am I really the only person who's managed to watch some fairly extreme right wing content, and had my recommended videos stay intact?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

mindgam3 8y ago

It’s almost like the YouTube guy is taking his talking points directly from Zuckerberg’s script. ----------- 1. “of course we take this seriously” - Mohan: "Having said that, we do take this notion of dissemination of harmful misinformation, hate-filled content, content that in some cases is inciting violence, extremely seriously." - Zuckerberg 2016: "we take misinformation seriously. We’ve been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously." 2. “we’re simply trying to help people get accurate information” - Mohan: "when users are looking for information, YouTube is putting its best foot forward in terms of serving that information to them." - Zuckerberg 2016: “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information.” 3. “fear not, it’s our users who are in power/in control” - Mohan: "But YouTube is also still keeping users in power, in terms of their intent and the information that they’re looking for." - Zuckerberg 2004: “People have very good control over who can see their information.” - Zuckerberg 2017: “Our full mission statement is: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. That reflects that we can’t do this ourselves, but only by empowering people to build communities and bring people together.” And last but definitely not least, 4. “we’re proud of our progress, but there’s more work to do” - Mohan: "It’s an ongoing effort. I think we’ve made great strides here. But clearly there’s more work to be done." - Zuckerberg 2016: “We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done.” - Zuckerberg 2018: “I’ve learned a lot from focusing on these issues and we still have a lot of work ahead…I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in 2018… I’m committed to continuing to make progress on these important issues as we enter the new year.” Why anyone would copy Zuckerberg’s script at this point is beyond me. ----------- Sources: - Zuck 2004: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/?page=single https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-registe... - Zuck 2016: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 - Zuck 2017: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/bringing-the-world-closer-together/10154944663901634/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/bringing-the-... - Zuck 2018: https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10105865715850211/ https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10105865715850211/

ams6110 8y ago
It's because they are both spouting standard PR cliches.

BEEdwards 8y ago

>Yeah, so I’ve heard this before, and I think that there are some myths that go into that description that I think it would be useful for me to debunk. This is no myth bro, go to youtube pick a political video leave on autoplay, watch it go to shit.

charliebrownau 8y ago

Funny how its NEVER "radicalization" when it comes from the Global Socialist LEFT pushing self identification, refusal to admit science+Biology+facts and refusal to talk about ideas without abusing someone or calling them some "hate" name

habosa 8y ago

I work at Google but not on anything related to YouTube. This opinion is my own: that was very disappointing to read. I use YouTube, I don't browse it. I search for what I want, and then I watch it. Yet YouTube seems absolutely determined to send me down rabbit holes for some reason. For instance my friend sent me a video by some cable news neo-philosopher (a Jordan Peterson type) and since then I can't get rid of low-quality vids in my recommendations that are trying to make me angry. "{Person} totally EVISCERATES {other person}" being the calmest of them. The recommendation algorithm is also just not even good at its job. I am Jewish and the number of videos I have seen recommended to me that are thinly-veiled anti-semitism is pathetic. Do they really think I am going to watch those? The one thing from the article I do believe is that these extremist videos (mostly) don't monetize. So why do they dominate? Honestly I think we just suck at building recommendation systems. I am not a big fan of Facebook, but I applaud their recent ban of white supremacist content. Freedom of speech is one thing, freedom to use someone else's site to speak to millions is another thing. YouTube should just take a harder stance on all of this dangerous crap. The Sandy Hook deniers and the Antivaxxers will have a hard time finding a new home. </rant>

fossuser 8y ago
From the outside it seems like they don't actually design YouTube with features their users would like. I pay for YouTube to avoid ads and wish I didn't have to use their home view which shows me a lot of content I don't care about. I want my homescreen to be my subscriptions (instead I have to manually switch to this every time). I would entirely turn off recommended content if I could, in favor of channels suggesting other channels or something more human curated (like Spotify discovery which in part uses other user's playlists). People are vulnerable to bad information delivered in a manipulative way - especially when this is reinforced by a bunch of recommended videos.
Avamander 8y ago
Press three dots - not interested in recommendations based on: [video name], works great for me.

dmitryminkovsky 8y ago

The big question in my life is whether an app can succeeed in 2019 without manipulating user psychology like this. I built Pony [0], an email platform that delivers once a day, to see if this is possible. In the UI I eschewed every traditional user manipulation technique I could think of: there are no notifications, there are no unread message counts. There even isn’t read/unread message state. I truly wonder whether people can adapt to a totally unstructured online platform, an unguided, unprompted experience that they create for themselves. My bet is they can. [0]: https://www.pony.gg https://www.pony.gg

BucketSort 8y ago
> Pony is the world’s first non-instant messaging platform The postal service would like a word with you.
- dmitryminkovsky 8y ago
  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
BucketSort 8y ago
Look at this persons profile. He's a spammer.

username223 8y ago

Thank $deity for https://youtube-dl.org https://youtube-dl.org. I can't be bothered to deal with Google's "up next" algorithm.

annadane 8y ago

Radicalization aside, is anyone just annoyed with how much worse the recommendations are compared to how they were? Damn near impossible to discover anything given how biased it is towards "popular" content as opposed to, y'know, related to what you're watching

InclinedPlane 8y ago
Yup. It's just... shitty. I subscribe to a lot of channels and well more than half of the videos on the recommendations list are just recent videos from my subscription feed. I recognize that they are trying to create some sort of dumbed down landing page experience, but it just sucks. I feel as though there was a period of time when it was much better, but that time has sadly long passed.

whotheffknows 8y ago

This is what google okay is for. Trust me.