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Seems like an alarmist headline but not really very alarming when you dig into the details. First of all, this is from "more than 20" staffers. Out of a company

Seems like an alarmist headline but not really very alarming when you dig into the details. First of all, this is from "more than 20" staffers. Out of a company of 2,800 employees and who knows how many content moderators on contract. > One proposal offered a way to keep content that was “close to the line” of violating policies on the platform but remove it from the recommended tab. YouTube rejected that suggestion in 2016, a former engineer said, and instead continued to recommend videos regardless of how controversial they were. This does not seem like a bad thing. Why should videos that do not violate site policies be removed from recommended? This sort of doesn't-break-the-rules-but-we-just-don't-like-it kind of content discrimination is rife for abuse, and would probably cause an even bigger uproar around people's content getting hidden for being "close to the line" but not across it. > Employees outside of the moderation team were also reportedly discouraged from searching YouTube for toxic videos, for lawyers said the company would have a bigger liability if there was proof that staffers knew and acknowledged those videos existed. This one is a bit strange. Why would employees outside the moderation team seeing a toxic video result in liability? Employees outside the moderation team presumably aren't equipped to tell which content is an isn't violating the rules, so I guess this rule might be to curb people trying to go out and find supposedly prohibited content on their own.

boomlinde 8y ago
> Why should videos that do not violate site policies be removed from recommended? The recommendation system seems out of control and I keep getting recommendations that I have not only never shown an interest in, but have actively expressed disinterest in when removing it. If they can't fix that, I'll welcome potentially biased human curators to clean it up from the vile crap that occasionally pops up there.
- manfredo 8y ago
  This is recommendations working as intended. If all people got was recommendations to what they already watch them they're no chance for new creators to get recommended. Also, I wrote a note quick program to use selenium to traverse YouTube recommendations. I didn't find any weird rabbit holes or anything. I can release the source code if you want, though I'm pretty sure similar tools already exist.
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    Speaking as someone who has scraped Google properties for a living in the past: your test was not reliable. Google is very good at detecting inhuman traffic, and they frequently silently degrade results rather than throw up a CAPTCHA, to give competitors bad information and not tip them off that their scraping is being detected (which would prompt the scrapers to better conceal themselves)
    - manfredo 8y ago
      I don't think so. It opened an incognito window over VPN. It then watched 50-100% of the video (randomly determined) before clicking a recommendation. I repeated the tests manually and got generally similar patterns of recommendations. I guess I could improve randomization of mouse movements, but I don't think they's much incentive for YouTube to detect automated browsers to control recommendations. Is your line of thinking that they say "hey, if we detect an automated browser we'll recommended a bunch of family friendly videos but when it's real users we'll recommended the creepy stuff?" That's pretty moustache-twirlingly conniving and I don't see a big incentive for YouTube to do this.
  - boomlinde 8y ago
    > This is recommendations working as intended. If all people got was recommendations to what they already watch them they're no chance for new creators to get recommended. The problem wasn't that I got recommendations for videos that I hadn't watched, it's that I got recommendations for videos on topics that I had shown no interest at all in, and even worse, expressly denied interest in. Maybe after I've told the system that I'm not interested in watching a feminist getting rekt by Jordan Peterson for the tenth time the recommendation system can figure out that I don't care for the topic at all instead of just continuing to recommend Jordan Peterson videos from the seemingly thousands of other channels that post them.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - repolfx 8y ago

boomlinde 8y ago

> Why should videos that do not violate site policies be removed from recommended? The recommendation system seems out of control and I keep getting recommendations that I have not only never shown an interest in, but have actively expressed disinterest in when removing it. If they can't fix that, I'll welcome potentially biased human curators to clean it up from the vile crap that occasionally pops up there.

manfredo 8y ago
This is recommendations working as intended. If all people got was recommendations to what they already watch them they're no chance for new creators to get recommended. Also, I wrote a note quick program to use selenium to traverse YouTube recommendations. I didn't find any weird rabbit holes or anything. I can release the source code if you want, though I'm pretty sure similar tools already exist.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  Speaking as someone who has scraped Google properties for a living in the past: your test was not reliable. Google is very good at detecting inhuman traffic, and they frequently silently degrade results rather than throw up a CAPTCHA, to give competitors bad information and not tip them off that their scraping is being detected (which would prompt the scrapers to better conceal themselves)
  - manfredo 8y ago
    I don't think so. It opened an incognito window over VPN. It then watched 50-100% of the video (randomly determined) before clicking a recommendation. I repeated the tests manually and got generally similar patterns of recommendations. I guess I could improve randomization of mouse movements, but I don't think they's much incentive for YouTube to detect automated browsers to control recommendations. Is your line of thinking that they say "hey, if we detect an automated browser we'll recommended a bunch of family friendly videos but when it's real users we'll recommended the creepy stuff?" That's pretty moustache-twirlingly conniving and I don't see a big incentive for YouTube to do this.
- boomlinde 8y ago
  > This is recommendations working as intended. If all people got was recommendations to what they already watch them they're no chance for new creators to get recommended. The problem wasn't that I got recommendations for videos that I hadn't watched, it's that I got recommendations for videos on topics that I had shown no interest at all in, and even worse, expressly denied interest in. Maybe after I've told the system that I'm not interested in watching a feminist getting rekt by Jordan Peterson for the tenth time the recommendation system can figure out that I don't care for the topic at all instead of just continuing to recommend Jordan Peterson videos from the seemingly thousands of other channels that post them.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - repolfx 8y ago