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You're right that YouTube is not obligated by law to recommend videos. They do however follow their internal guidelines, which try to keep the platform open to
by robbrit 8y ago
You're right that YouTube is not obligated by law to recommend videos. They do however follow their internal guidelines, which try to keep the platform open to ideas. Some of those ideas are distasteful to the majority of the employees at YouTube, however they will still in general respect people's rights to present those ideas.
Allowing monetization (where much of YouTube's controversies have been) is a completely different story since it also involves the demands of advertisers. The advertisers do have a right to avoid paying money to extremist content, just like you have a right not to donate to causes you don't believe in.
> first, do no harm
Easier said than done.
Challenge one is to define "harm" without classifying all sorts of alternative political ideas as "harmful".
Challenge two is once you've defined "harm", build a system that works at YouTube scale that can actually filter it. Also consider that it's a moving target - people are able to figure out how to get around YouTube's filtering algorithm, so YouTube needs to constantly update it to keep ahead of these people.
- strangeloops85 8y agoRecommendations, and autoplaying videos in particular based on them, clearly drive growth and profits. But they are clearly the crux of the problem. Sure, defining harm is not straightforward. But it's possible, and frankly as a private platform, it is their choice. One could, for example, take a broader definition of harm, and use that to limit recommendations, but still host the video and allow it to return in search results. Is this the right answer? I don't know. But it's silly to just throw up your hands and somehow take recommendations as some sacrosanct part of the system, when it was clearly a choice to have them to begin with.