7 ms·

Google-related, but I'd submit that YouTube is one of the prime culprits. Kids like stuff like video games. Video game recommendations devolve into chud territo

Google-related, but I'd submit that YouTube is one of the prime culprits. Kids like stuff like video games. Video game recommendations devolve into chud territory in two hops - fascist in three or four.

opportune 8y ago
I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to get better recommendation placements?
- eropple 8y ago
  Dunno why you're downvoted; to me it's a reasonable question. What I don't know--and why I am profoundly concerned about such recommendation algorithms--is if there's any way for non-Googlers to ever check that.
  - tropo 8y ago
    I didn't know either, until I saw educationdata's comment. It's subtle, but I think opportune is implying that PragerU is fascist.
    - opportune 8y ago
      I'm not. I am implying that it is conservative and advertises a lot. If you can get from videogames to PragerU in a couple clicks I wouldn't be surprised if you could get from PragerU to facist stuff in a couple clicks. And if it's possible to get from almost anywhere in youtube into conservative propaganda territory in 1-2 clicks, then from there I think the recommendation system can (without ads) probably get you to the fascist stuff, since the recommendation system wants to give you more right wing politics and maybe can't differentiate very well within that space
      - tropo 8y ago
        OK, but fascism also isn't conservative or right-wing. Benito Mussolini: “If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.” Benito Mussolini: “Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.” Benito Mussolini: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Benito Mussolini: "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity." That sort of government-oriented thinking sure isn't conservative or right-wing.
        eropple 8y ago
        While deification of the government is not conservative, deification of the state most definitely is conservative. We've been dealing with this for decades. Have you noticed the way that conservatives drape themselves in the flag to assert some kind of innate kinship with the state? Do you remember conservatives' "America: love it or leave it", aimed at anti-war (i.e., generally left or left-leaning) Vietnam protestors? Fascism arises from racial supremacism and a desire to re-acquire a period of purported historical greatness. This is definitionally "of the right wing" and it is incidentally why it is in many ways very compatible with conservatism; it uses their language. They have shellcodes into conservatives' brains. Frankly, assertions of "non-right-wing fascism" to the otherwise are mostly seeded by bad actors to muddy the waters and to whatabout about leftists. (EDIT: and this is really dumb--the left in the United States, the UK, etc. are happy to give you actual sticks to beat them about the head with, why is there a need for these fake ones?)
- educationdata 8y ago
  How is PragerU fascist?
  - opportune 8y ago
    I don't think PragerU is fascist. I was thinking you can get from video games to PragerU in two hops like the parent comment mentioned. Maybe two hops from there you can get to fascist stuff Keep in mind a lot of fascist stuff tries to brand itself as " a search for "inconvenient truths" and usually doesn't outright say "yes I want to support a white ethnostate and murder minorities by doing X/Y/Z".
    - eropple 8y ago
      PragerU is exactly what I was thinking of, yes; it's firmly chud stuff. Everybody's favorite cool skull, Shaun, has a pretty good breakdown of the nonsense they throw out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7BgrddY18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7BgrddY18 From there, you definitely can get to actual fascists, whose channels I won't shout out here. And, because YouTube fits to a very small set of data points, one misclick onto PragerU may very well fit you for a whole lot of shit.
      - vxNsr 8y ago
        I watched that whole thing... and honestly, he's just as guilty of the straw-man arguments and fallacies he's accusing pragerU of. He's also removed what little context those videos had and thus they make even less sense then if you saw the full context.
        mercer 8y ago
        Could you elaborate on that? I found the video (and other similar ones I've seen) pretty convincing.
        zimpenfish 8y ago
        > He's also removed what little context those videos had He does specifically say at the beginning of his videos that you should go and watch the ones he's quoting to make sure he's not taking them unfairly out of context.
api 8y ago
Targeting gamers is neo-fascism's bread and butter strategy since they proved the concept with "GamerGate." I remember seeing all that stupid GG nonsense and having no idea I was watching the beginning of a massively successful propaganda offensive.
- orf 8y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's completely correct. Andrew Auernheimer (weev) says: > the man is talking down to gamergate which is by far the single biggest siren bringing people into the folds of white nationalism. More people have been converted in the past year by things like images of Anita Sarkeesian being rendered as a happy merchant than were in the three before it. https://archive.is/fOprk#selection-3605.0-3605.511 https://archive.is/fOprk#selection-3605.0-3605.511
- jml7c5 8y ago
  "Targeting" and "strategy" imply that there's some Grand Alt-Right Congress directing some organized movement. That doesn't need to exist: it's worth recalling that the people who follow the whole GamerGate thing are, themselves, generally interested in video games. It's not unexpected for overlap and recommendations to go both ways.
  - api 8y ago
    There was no Grand Congress but there was a loose confederation of ideologues who saw GG and saw a major opportunity to radicalize young people. I don't know how organic GG itself was. It didn't look organic but then again it's hard to tell.
educationdata 8y ago
Really? I haven't seen any fascist video on YouTube. Yes, there are lots of right-wing videos. Fascist? I don't believe there are that many on YouTube, unless you define fascist as anything anti-left.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  > I haven't seen any fascist video on YouTube The Recommendation Algorithm Gods have been kind to you, then. Not all of us are so fortunate.
  - educationdata 8y ago
    OK. I believe that. But does this mean you watched fascist video by yourself, otherwise YouTube wouldn't recommend those videos to you, right?
    - dx87 8y ago
      No, that's not how their algorithm works. I can't find the link now, but a former employee said that their algorithm is designed to keep you engaged with the site, and that typically involves directing you to more and more extreme versions of the previous videos. For example, if you were to watch a video about mainstream rock and continually follow YouTube's recommendations at the end of the videos, you'd end up at videos about death metal, or other niche genres. It does the same thing with politics; you can start out watching a Bernie Sanders video and end up at videos promoting full on socialism, or watch a video about increasing border security and end up at videos about immigrants ruining the country.
      - educationdata 8y ago
        If what you said is true, I would definitely have seen fascist videos, but I haven't. I really doubt your theory.
    - eropple 8y ago
      It's a correlative algorithm. If a lot of people into video games and history watch X, it will recommend X to you. And it turns out that the community of active, engaged video games folk have a lot of chuds who are all over alt-right-to-fascist video content.

opportune 8y ago

I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to get better recommendation placements?

eropple 8y ago
Dunno why you're downvoted; to me it's a reasonable question. What I don't know--and why I am profoundly concerned about such recommendation algorithms--is if there's any way for non-Googlers to ever check that.
- tropo 8y ago
  I didn't know either, until I saw educationdata's comment. It's subtle, but I think opportune is implying that PragerU is fascist.
  - opportune 8y ago
    I'm not. I am implying that it is conservative and advertises a lot. If you can get from videogames to PragerU in a couple clicks I wouldn't be surprised if you could get from PragerU to facist stuff in a couple clicks. And if it's possible to get from almost anywhere in youtube into conservative propaganda territory in 1-2 clicks, then from there I think the recommendation system can (without ads) probably get you to the fascist stuff, since the recommendation system wants to give you more right wing politics and maybe can't differentiate very well within that space
    - tropo 8y ago
      OK, but fascism also isn't conservative or right-wing. Benito Mussolini: “If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.” Benito Mussolini: “Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.” Benito Mussolini: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Benito Mussolini: "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity." That sort of government-oriented thinking sure isn't conservative or right-wing.
      - eropple 8y ago
        While deification of the government is not conservative, deification of the state most definitely is conservative. We've been dealing with this for decades. Have you noticed the way that conservatives drape themselves in the flag to assert some kind of innate kinship with the state? Do you remember conservatives' "America: love it or leave it", aimed at anti-war (i.e., generally left or left-leaning) Vietnam protestors? Fascism arises from racial supremacism and a desire to re-acquire a period of purported historical greatness. This is definitionally "of the right wing" and it is incidentally why it is in many ways very compatible with conservatism; it uses their language. They have shellcodes into conservatives' brains. Frankly, assertions of "non-right-wing fascism" to the otherwise are mostly seeded by bad actors to muddy the waters and to whatabout about leftists. (EDIT: and this is really dumb--the left in the United States, the UK, etc. are happy to give you actual sticks to beat them about the head with, why is there a need for these fake ones?)
educationdata 8y ago
How is PragerU fascist?
- opportune 8y ago
  I don't think PragerU is fascist. I was thinking you can get from video games to PragerU in two hops like the parent comment mentioned. Maybe two hops from there you can get to fascist stuff Keep in mind a lot of fascist stuff tries to brand itself as " a search for "inconvenient truths" and usually doesn't outright say "yes I want to support a white ethnostate and murder minorities by doing X/Y/Z".
  - eropple 8y ago
    PragerU is exactly what I was thinking of, yes; it's firmly chud stuff. Everybody's favorite cool skull, Shaun, has a pretty good breakdown of the nonsense they throw out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7BgrddY18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7BgrddY18 From there, you definitely can get to actual fascists, whose channels I won't shout out here. And, because YouTube fits to a very small set of data points, one misclick onto PragerU may very well fit you for a whole lot of shit.
    - vxNsr 8y ago
      I watched that whole thing... and honestly, he's just as guilty of the straw-man arguments and fallacies he's accusing pragerU of. He's also removed what little context those videos had and thus they make even less sense then if you saw the full context.
      - mercer 8y ago
        Could you elaborate on that? I found the video (and other similar ones I've seen) pretty convincing.
      - zimpenfish 8y ago
        > He's also removed what little context those videos had He does specifically say at the beginning of his videos that you should go and watch the ones he's quoting to make sure he's not taking them unfairly out of context.

api 8y ago

Targeting gamers is neo-fascism's bread and butter strategy since they proved the concept with "GamerGate." I remember seeing all that stupid GG nonsense and having no idea I was watching the beginning of a massively successful propaganda offensive.

orf 8y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's completely correct. Andrew Auernheimer (weev) says: > the man is talking down to gamergate which is by far the single biggest siren bringing people into the folds of white nationalism. More people have been converted in the past year by things like images of Anita Sarkeesian being rendered as a happy merchant than were in the three before it. https://archive.is/fOprk#selection-3605.0-3605.511 https://archive.is/fOprk#selection-3605.0-3605.511
jml7c5 8y ago
"Targeting" and "strategy" imply that there's some Grand Alt-Right Congress directing some organized movement. That doesn't need to exist: it's worth recalling that the people who follow the whole GamerGate thing are, themselves, generally interested in video games. It's not unexpected for overlap and recommendations to go both ways.
- api 8y ago
  There was no Grand Congress but there was a loose confederation of ideologues who saw GG and saw a major opportunity to radicalize young people. I don't know how organic GG itself was. It didn't look organic but then again it's hard to tell.

educationdata 8y ago

Really? I haven't seen any fascist video on YouTube. Yes, there are lots of right-wing videos. Fascist? I don't believe there are that many on YouTube, unless you define fascist as anything anti-left.

yellowapple 8y ago
> I haven't seen any fascist video on YouTube The Recommendation Algorithm Gods have been kind to you, then. Not all of us are so fortunate.
- educationdata 8y ago
  OK. I believe that. But does this mean you watched fascist video by yourself, otherwise YouTube wouldn't recommend those videos to you, right?
  - dx87 8y ago
    No, that's not how their algorithm works. I can't find the link now, but a former employee said that their algorithm is designed to keep you engaged with the site, and that typically involves directing you to more and more extreme versions of the previous videos. For example, if you were to watch a video about mainstream rock and continually follow YouTube's recommendations at the end of the videos, you'd end up at videos about death metal, or other niche genres. It does the same thing with politics; you can start out watching a Bernie Sanders video and end up at videos promoting full on socialism, or watch a video about increasing border security and end up at videos about immigrants ruining the country.
    - educationdata 8y ago
      If what you said is true, I would definitely have seen fascist videos, but I haven't. I really doubt your theory.
  - eropple 8y ago
    It's a correlative algorithm. If a lot of people into video games and history watch X, it will recommend X to you. And it turns out that the community of active, engaged video games folk have a lot of chuds who are all over alt-right-to-fascist video content.