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Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of au

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely: "Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “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?” (The “rabbit hole effect” is when the recommendation system gradually recommends videos that are more and more extreme). In response, Mohan blamed users and still failed to give a straightforward answer."

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
"Blamed users and failed to give a straightforward answer" sounds like more of a framing issue than a specific false claim Mohan made.
- tropdrop 7y ago
  One could argue that Bill Clinton's response to whether he had "sexual relations with that woman" is also a "framing issue." (How do you define relations? If you define sexual relations a certain way, Clinton's response of "no" is fine) This kind of "framing" is equivocation (aka Orwellian double-speak) and the author is correct in calling it out.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    One could argue that, but one could also say what the specific lie they think Clinton spread is. He did indeed have relations with her, and tried to trick the public into thinking he didn't. That second part is what I don't see here. From the author's perspective, which specific facts is Mohan trying to trick the audience into disbelieving? It doesn't sound like he denied that there's extremist content attracting views on Youtube.
rthrowayay 7y ago
I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.
- mthoms 7y ago
  The claim is that conspiracy content is more sticky than other content, and since the algorithm is optimized for stickiness, it's naturally inclined to skew in that direction. In other words, starting from any random keyword... the algorithm is naturally inclined to skew towards conspiracy videos in its recommendations. At least that's what the article (and the sources it cites) are alleging.
- ergl 7y ago
  The article mentions that the "up next" experiments were done while logged out and with a clean watch history. Still, the algorithm eventually arrived at conspiracy videos.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

"Blamed users and failed to give a straightforward answer" sounds like more of a framing issue than a specific false claim Mohan made.

tropdrop 7y ago
One could argue that Bill Clinton's response to whether he had "sexual relations with that woman" is also a "framing issue." (How do you define relations? If you define sexual relations a certain way, Clinton's response of "no" is fine) This kind of "framing" is equivocation (aka Orwellian double-speak) and the author is correct in calling it out.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  One could argue that, but one could also say what the specific lie they think Clinton spread is. He did indeed have relations with her, and tried to trick the public into thinking he didn't. That second part is what I don't see here. From the author's perspective, which specific facts is Mohan trying to trick the audience into disbelieving? It doesn't sound like he denied that there's extremist content attracting views on Youtube.

rthrowayay 7y ago

I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.

mthoms 7y ago
The claim is that conspiracy content is more sticky than other content, and since the algorithm is optimized for stickiness, it's naturally inclined to skew in that direction. In other words, starting from any random keyword... the algorithm is naturally inclined to skew towards conspiracy videos in its recommendations. At least that's what the article (and the sources it cites) are alleging.
ergl 7y ago
The article mentions that the "up next" experiments were done while logged out and with a clean watch history. Still, the algorithm eventually arrived at conspiracy videos.