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YouTube’s Algorithm Incentivizes the Wrong Behavior

203 points by furcyd 7y ago

0815test 7y ago
Quite true, but let's not pretend that Twittr, Tumbler and Fakebook aren't also "incenting" all sorts of distorted behaviors of their own! These sites are "algorithms" all the same, even if the workings of these algorithms are in some ways more transparent. We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  > We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case. This always sounds good, but decentralized is nearly impossible to commoditize or make appealing to the general public. Outside of evangelism and word-of-mouth, how are people going to escape the Youtube advertising budget and instead choose - en masse - the product that is better for their privacy? There's just so much money and inertia to fight.
  - swiley 7y ago
    YouTube removing harmless content over copyright etc is one way.
- phreeza 7y ago
  If the ranking algorithm is open for all to see, won't that encourage even worse gaming of the system? I am trying to think of comparable situations in existing open systems, but none come to mind.
- tqi 7y ago
  I think the author's issue is not that her recommendations are bad, but that other people are getting recommendations for things she disagrees with (ie conspiracy theory videos, child-unsafe content, etc). So I don't think she would view decentralization as a win.
- thephyber 7y ago
  > We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another We already have them, yet FB, IG, Twitter, YT are the social media behemoths. Are you making a plea for the average internet person to care about the values of the platforms they use over the platform content? You are likely preaching to the choir here on HN, but I would guess that the audience here is only 1% of 1% of the audience you need to message. Corps make good use of psychological experiments to optimize their utility function. "Evil is efficient." The problem is that companies optimize for money without taking into account any other factor in any significant way. > In 1970, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman published an essay in The New York Times Magazine titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” [1] Arguably this quote incentivized the destruction of "good corporate citizenship" (although I admit it's possible that concept never existed in a broad sense). [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/14/harvard-business-school-financial-crisis-economics-578378.html https://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/14/harvard-business-school-...
kauffj 7y ago
http://archive.is/6lbCR http://archive.is/6lbCR (Archive link for those who prefer non-broken web experiences)
umvi 7y ago
Does the algorithm incentivize bad behavior or simply reflect the desires of the viewers? Someone watching lots of DIY home repair videos will start seeing more. In that case it seems like it's incentivizing good behavior. Likewise, someone watching lots of soft porn on YouTube will be recommended more soft porn. The algorithm isn't responsible for helping you make good life choices. The algorithm is responsible for recommending videos that you would like, and it seems like it does a good job of that, generally. Unfortunately, some people like bad things and that's an age old problem that is hard to fix. That said, it would be nice if users could CTOA (choose their own algorithm) instead of letting Google be the sole gatekeeper.
- posterboy 7y ago
  It is not the case that someone watching a certain topic will see videos exclusively tailored to their taste. More over it is rarely the case that someone watches something specifically definable to the exclusion of anything less specific, because that desire will ideally be quickly saturated. And if it isn't then the recommendations are still rubbish.
  - typenil 7y ago
    It sounds like you're saying that if a person has an interest in a topic, then any content within that topic that doesn't make them lose interest in said topic is bad content.
- IanDrake 7y ago
  Haha, that's what you get for saying people are responsible for themselves. This is why I don't HN very much these days. The comments are a wasteland of far leftist ideology.
- detaro 7y ago
  In my experience, some ~20 % of recommendations almost always go towards noticably more clickbaity/low-quality content (with rest often fitting quite well, or at least being of a similar level, just on topics that happen to not interest me right now), and as soon as you make the mistake to click one of them it shoots up dramatically. I've taken to open videos I'm not sure about in a private tab to avoid 2 weeks of crap recommendations.
rosterface 7y ago
Ah, the classic “think of the children!” argument. It is no one’s responsibility other than the parent to ensure their child isn’t watching inappropriate content (which will be different for every family and individual). This article suggests that machine learning and collaborative filtering are incapable of producing healthy recommendations. I beg to differ, the New York Times may not like the result but they work for the vast majority of users on any service with too much content to manually curate.
- rspeer 7y ago
  There are healthy recommender systems, like Spotify. YouTube is a _disastrously_ unhealthy recommender system, and they've let it go completely out of control.
  - ariwilson 7y ago
    Spotify has 40M tracks total. On YouTube, more than 5B videos are watched by users every day. Different scales of problem demand different solutions.
    - amphibian87 7y ago
      I don't know what the comment you are replying to meant, I interpreted it to mean the algo takes you down a rabbit hole to darker content, however for me I miss the days when it actually recommended relevant videos, similar to the one I was watching. My entire sidebar is now just a random assortment of irrelevant interests. For instance I wanted to learn to play a denser piano chord, I learned it ages ago but I still get like 20 videos that explain how to add extensions to a 7 chord, even if I'm watching a video on the F-35 fighter pilot.
  - ihuman 7y ago
    How is Spotify's different from Youtube?
    - anticensor 7y ago
strikelaserclaw 7y ago
"If YouTube won’t remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make significant changes, and have greater human involvement in the recommendation process.", man does this person know how many videos and how many users YouTube has? They cannot use anything except an algorithm to recommend videos. They cannot use anything except an algorithm to detect videos inappropriate for children. It seems YouTube is working on this, and this opinion seems like a ill thought out fluff piece to enrage readers and sell this persons book.
- andrewvc 7y ago
  Maybe they can't make editorial recommendations for the long tail but they absokutely could do so for the top few thousand videos each week. Would that yield an improvement? I don't know, but it would have an impact.
  - scj 7y ago
    I'm kind of wondering if a "Ned Flanders" user-detector is possible. Search for users who stop videos at "offensive" moments, then evaluate their habits. It wouldn't be foolproof, but the "Flanders rating" of a video might be a starting metric. Before putting something on YouTube for kids, run it by Flanders users first. If Flanders users en masse watch it the whole way through, it's probably safe. If they stop it at random points, it may be safe (this is where manual filtering might be desirable, even if it is just to evaluate Flanders Users rather than the video). But if they stop videos at about the same time, that should be treated as a red flag. Of course, people have contextual viewing habits that aren't captured (I hope). Most relevantly, they probably watch different things depending on who is in the room. This is likely the highest vector for false positives. The big negative is showing people content they obviously don't want for the sake of collecting imperfect data.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      The problem is that just a few examples of the algorithm getting it wrong is enough to cause an adpocalypse. If millions of videos are uploaded every month then you can imagine how low the error rate has to be.
restingrobot 7y ago
I don't think this is incentivizing bad behavior. It's merely showing the viewer more of what they are already watching with a gradual introduction to broader material. The example of a youtube serving content to "pedophiles" is borderline asinine. The neural network is just making suggestions on viewing, it's not telling people to watch. In regards to the complaint that "adult" content is being served to adolescents, there is an option to filter out sensitive content all together. Also, as a parent to 4 children myself, the idea of letting my kids loose on the internet completely devoid of any supervision is ridiculous. When did it become youtube's responsibility to parent the children in its audience? Should we also ban HBO, Amazon, and Netflix from providing recommendations because it might be a child in front of the screen? This is just another pointed attempt to censor free speech via the abuse of technology companies. The idea being that the platform will be restrictive if they are constantly badgered about it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- masklinn 7y ago
  > with a gradual introduction to broader material. It doesn't gradually introduce broader material, it gradually introduces more "engaging" material.
  - restingrobot 7y ago
    I would argue that your point is semantics, but even so you still have a choice of whether or not to watch the recommended more "engaging" material. It doesn't change the overall point of my statement.
    - tvanantwerp 7y ago
      I'd say it's quite a different point. My own experience has been that the recommended "engaging" material is something in the same genre as whatever I just saw, but with a clickbaitier title, flashier thumbnail, and overall poorer informational quality. It's the different between saying "I see you enjoy sandwiches, maybe you would also enjoy salads or a plate of sushi" and "I see you enjoy sandwiches--here's a candy bar, an off-brand soda made with high-fructose corn syrup, and a carton of cheap grocery store ice cream."
sneakernets 7y ago
In addition to this, seeing content creators being slaves to the algorithm is an eye-opening experience. Especially when it comes to the children's videos. It's all computer generated garbage powered by responses to changes in algorithms. If kids suddenly watch more content with alligators, prepare for that being the only thing created, recommended or playing. It's wild.
Analemma_ 7y ago
I don't know if YouTube's problems are so bad that the argument applies in this case, but in general, "We can't comply with this regulation, it would be too difficult at our scale" is not considered a valid defense. Just as banks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that they can't fail without wreaking havoc on the economy, if algorithmic recommendation and moderation can't work, then maybe social networks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that human moderation is not possible.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  Agree with you. If you can't do your job then maybe you'll have to be shut down.
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    Since when did it become YouTube's responsibility to police speech?!
    - tomgp 7y ago
      When they started making editorial decisions about which videos to promote and to whom -albeit via an automated process.
    - yoz-y 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I work for YouTube, my personal view on the situation is this: Bear in mind that YouTube does not operate only in the US with unhinged free speech laws. Many countries have stricter laws and YouTube definitely needs to comply with them. Other than that, adpocalypse happened because of bad videos being surfaced by the algorithm so another responsibility is to the creators. (And shareholders) There is nothing to be gained by having crap in your backyard.
    - aaomidi 7y ago
      It did when people started demanding it. A company doesn't exist in a vacuum.
- 7y ago
wyoh 7y ago
insert unrelated rant about Crowder despite having nothing to do with the crux of her article NYT ladies and gent.
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
everyoneisbias 7y ago
It's all about advertising money. TV and newspapers are dying and they need someone to blame.
- restingrobot 7y ago
  I personally think this has deeper political motives as well, but yes I completely agree with you!
- jaydz 7y ago
  I'm sure Google and Facebook understand this, hopefully they won't cower any further. Big Media wants its "fair share" and they will keep attacking until they do.
eganist 7y ago
This seems like it takes some notes from Veritasium's theory on YouTube's recommendation algorithm which he posted after his initial reservoir shade balls video went viral. (edited for clarity) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 for his theory.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
Google absolutely can do all of those things without an algorithm. What they can't do is accomplish that without impacting profit margins (or at the minimum, executive bonuses). "If it impacts business as usual, then it is impossible" is a naive/flawed/libertarian stance.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I’m usually a proponent of the “wall garden” when it comes to applications and strict sandboxing for most users, since software can harm your computer. But in the case of YouTube, there is absolutely no way that they can curate it and it still being as open as it is.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    There is no need to curate every video, only the ones qualified enough to be recommended/showcased to the public who is not explicily looking for them.
    - patorjk 7y ago
      Say I watch a video on a topic like "nes video game speed running". Right now I'd see other nes video game speed running videos, it's very useful. In a curated world, what would be recommended? It's probably too much of a niche topic to yield results that would be very useful.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > But in the case of YouTube, there is absolutely no way that they can curate it and it still being as open as it is. So? If YouTube exits the space and allows oxygen back into the video sharing market, we might actually get some different video sharing services that do different things (a la NicoNicoDouga).
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Video streaming, processing, and storage at scale still costs a lot of money. I don’t think even Google is doing it profitably.
jiveturkey 7y ago
Wow, I'm conflicted. First, an obvious idiot statement, which helps us ground our analysis: > Human intuition can recognize motives in people’s viewing decisions, and can step in to discourage that — which most likely would have happened if videos were being recommended by humans, and not a computer. But to YouTube’s nuance-blind algorithm — trained to think with simple logic — serving up more videos to sate a sadist’s appetite is a job well done. So this person is advocating that a human (ie, another human besides oneself, an employee at youtube), have access to the click stream of individual users? This proposal, in 2019??? Of course this would have to be compulsory to be effective. Why would I want a megacorp to be making moral decisions for me? I'm ok with them making amoral algorithmic decisions. The author is generalizing the problem of YT Kids, which should be human curated, to all of youtube. OTOH, yeah feeding our worst impulses is kind of a problem. But, tweaking the algorithm isn't the solution. The machine itself is designed to thrive on attention.
kodz4 7y ago
It's not complicated. They need to stop showing people the upvote and view COUNTS. Behind the scenes they can still use it to make recommendations. Those numbers are pseudo signals of quality to people who encounter content they have never encountered before. Even when they have doubts that are watching something unhealthy the mind goes "well if the rest of the world thinks this dumbass is important I better pay attention..." If a dumbass hurting people on video gets 10 million views other dumbasses worldwide automatically get triggered looking at the count. "hey I can do this maybe I should run for President..." Remove the counts and you remove the pseudo signal of quality.
- jakear 7y ago
  Fully agree. Instagram is removing like counts (or at least looking into it). I think this a great path forward for the industry. Too often people see “popular” as “correct and not needing question”. Edit: the Instagram motivation is admittedly a bit different, but a good path regardless
- verall 7y ago
  It is complicated. I think thats a bad solution. I want to see the counts. I feel it is far more transparent to see the counts than for things to just be surfaced or not opaquely. Youtube is not a discussion site and it does not work as one. How popular things are is a part of the context of pop culture, and most youtube content is pop culture.
  - smt88 7y ago
    > How popular things are is a part of the context of pop culture, and most youtube content is pop culture. I can't think of any traditional medium that tells you the popularity of something before you consume it. Movie theaters, TV stations, radio stations, etc. have no concept of "view counts" telling you whether or not to consume something.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      > I can't think of any Well, information IS available, beforehand in nielson ratings and films' grossing numbers, but you're essentially right. That's the problem: opaqueness leaves us vulnerable to being misled. Some PR company calls it "the hottest ticket of the season," and we have no way of corroborating this claim.
module0000 7y ago
> If YouTube won’t remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make significant changes It must? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing. It's a product from a publicly traded company, therefore it "must" return value for stockholders. That means more behavior that increases ad revenue. The author is out of touch with reality. Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. It's a private service(youtube), not a public park.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  Incentivizing value for stockholders above all else is a good way to ensure incredibly anti-consumer practices grow in popularity. Something you might only begin to notice when your kids start getting recommended games from their friends that require you to gamble with IAP to get a new dance or something.
- drewbug01 7y ago
  > It must? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing. Subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which it operates, of course. We could - if we so wanted - pass laws to regulate this behavior. That is perhaps the best option, in my own opinion. > It's a product from a publicly traded company, therefore it "must" return value for stockholders. The dogma that it "must" return value for shareholders is not an absolute rule[1]; rather it's a set of market expectations and some decisions from Delaware (which have an outsize impact on business law) that encourage it. But it's not required. In fact, many states allow a type of corporation that specifically and directly allows directors to pursue non-shareholder-value goals - the benefit corporation[2]. > The author is out of touch with reality. Please re-read the HN guidelines[3]. > Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. It's a private service(youtube), not a public park. This is the doctrine of "caveat emptor," essentially - that a consumer is ultimately responsible for all behavior. However, a wealth of regulation exists because that's unworkable in practice. The FDA and the EPA come to mind, but we also regulate concepts like "false advertising." Your stance here ignores the realities of life in service of ideological purism. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/businesses-focus-on-maximizing-shareholder-value-has-numerous-costs/2013/09/05/bcdc664e-045f-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?utm_term=.4c2fd1a74b58 http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
annadane 7y ago
It's pretty interesting to see the increase lately of comments defending various companies. Not saying there's a conspiracy but it's a bit weird
- wtracy 7y ago
  Hacker News has always been like this. The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital-funded startups. A very large percentage of those people are former FAANG employees, employees of companies trying to get acquired by FAANG, or employees of companies doing exactly the same things that FAANG are getting criticized for. (Some are all three!) I doubt any of them are getting paid to AstroTurf, but they know what side their bread is getting buttered on.
  - dang 7y ago
    > The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital-funded startups. Quite un-so! HN is targeted at one group only: the intellectually curious. So curiosity—keeping HN interesting—is the only thing we care about and optimize for. As for VC-funded startups, since only about 10% of HN users are located in Silicon Valley, the number working for such startups is certainly far less than that. 50% of HN users are outside the US. This community is orders of magnitude more diverse than your image of it here. People work for many different employers. Are their views impacted by their work experience? Of course they are—for every user here. There's nothing sinister about that. If someone posts a view that's wrong, others will correct it. As long as they do so thoughtfully, that's great. The cycle of life on HN.
    - dlivingston 7y ago
      20% of Americans on HN are localized to the Valley? That seems insanely high. Can you cite references?
      - wtracy 7y ago
        I would imagine that dang has access to HN's internal metrics which probably aren't public. Also, when dang contradicts me about HN, that means I'm wrong, lol.
la_barba 7y ago
I think YouTube has just exposed the kind of content people were already interested in, and possibly consuming outside of the public eye. We find it frightening that people readily click on abhorrent content. When they probably were doing it over other platforms earlier. The internet had gore videos for the longest time. I remember a shotgun suicide video that kids in my school used to shock each other with. If Google as a private company chooses to ban content, than that is their right, but an apriori expectation that an entertainment platform should control peoples social behavior and enforce morality is harmful in a free society IMHO.
- zanny 7y ago
  People were fueling industries of creatively bankrupt content well before the Internet came around, just look at the long term existence of tabloids. Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    I think the analogy to junk food is instructive. Both fast food and YouTube maximise revenue while minimising costs by exploiting human flaws and foibles, and do so much more effectively than was possible 100 years ago. It is creating an environment that is radically different than the one we evolved in. Watching hours of YouTube - obesity of the mind. Kind of.
  - la_barba 7y ago
    >Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote. Well, YouTube (or any advertising platform) also wants people clicking on ads and actually buying things, not just graze. AFAIK they already demonetize content that is not advertiser friendly, and thus de-prioritize it. Busy professionals with limited free time are your best bet for people with a lot of disposable income. If anything YouTube optimizes for content that is safe-for-work, and will quickly lead to you opening your wallet. But yes, I think this is a large scale multi-variate problem, and individual simple metrics don't cut it.
raz32dust 7y ago
YouTube's incentives are the best among such platforms IMO. They allow a simple profit sharing model where a part of the ad-revenue goes to the content creator. This is unlike instagram, for example, where the content creators have to peddle products in their ads to make money. Take a fitness channel for example - on YouTube, the content creator can just be honest, and the views alone will guarantee income. On the other hand, on instagram, they have to resort to selling snake oil. I love YouTube for this, and I am constantly amazed by how YouTube has become a livelihood earner for so many.
vgetr 7y ago
I feel like things were mostly fine until the 2016 election, after which journalists became _very_ concerned. If I had a nickel for each, “The algorithms are coming! The algorithms are coming!”, I’d be rich. I mean, I didn’t like the outcome either, but these types of articles seem to motivated by a) finding a scapegoat and b) wanting to use “algorithm” in a sentence.
edoo 7y ago
We know we have to keep kids sheltered from people which may have unscrupulous neural networks at play looking for a way to further their own goals at the expense of a child's well being and overall health. Engagement on the internet is also being driven by neural networks that are learning to adapt to the users brain chemistry to statistically modify behavior for maximum engagement/profit. Perhaps it is time to realize that these services are going to be analogous to a random stranger offering your kid candy for their own twisted goals that are unlikely compatible with a child's well being. If you consider a service like YouTube as an untrusted source of interaction perhaps you'll be as likely to block or monitor it the same as random chat rooms.
tunesmith 7y ago
Still looking for recommendations that are influenced by people's best-self intentions of who they want to be, rather than influenced by their worst-self behaviors.
bjt2n3904 7y ago
What a pleasant way of stating that humans are basically good. We just keep passing the buck. "We'd be fine if it weren't for this algorithm!" We believe that man is essentially good. It’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society. Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society. If you ask me, "YouTube's algorithm" is simply exposing the way humanity is. And trying to get an algorithm to "shepherd" humanity to be better is simply Orwellian.
jerrac 7y ago
Two ideas come to mind. First, make the engine recommend a few videos that it thinks you probably won't watch. That could help break up the echo chamber effect. Second, allow users to blacklist, or whitelist, different kinds of content. If someone is struggling with sexual attraction to minors, let them blacklist content with minors in it. If I don't want to see the latest anti(or pro)-<insert political figure here> videos, I should be able to filter them out. I have no interest in Minecraft, so why should I have to keep scrolling past Minecraft videos just because I watch a lot of game related videos? That said, all the calls for regulation or censorship concern me. I haven't seen the video, but Steven Crowder saying mean things isn't exactly something that should be censored. Any more than all the videos calling President Trump names. What I'm seeing signs of is a society that silences any speech that doesn't fit in a specific, politically correct, box. And that box is being defined by advertising companies who don't want to be associated with topics that their potential customers find uncomfortable. That's not a direction any of us should support...
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
The NYTimes uses a very human "algorithm" to determine what to report on and if you look at the comparison of causes of death to what's reported it's wildly off: Data: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... This isn't a knock against the NYTimes so much as it is of humanity, we're all fascinated by the lurid and sensational (note that the Google searches are similarly off) and this permeates all levels of life.
CountHackulus 7y ago
To quote Jim Sterling, YouTube has a YouTube problem.
KoenDG 7y ago
I doubt this person does not care about the subject they wrote about. And if the algorithm is producing negative side effects, then, of course, it should be looked at and changed. I'm no expert myself, but to my understanding: any algorithm is limited by its data set. Based on its data set, an algorithm comes to conclusions. But one can then, of course, ask: what's the basis for these conclusions? I recall reading that a certain AI had been fooled into thinking a picture of a banana was showing a toaster or a helicopter, after a few part of the image were changed to contain tiny bits of those items. It turned out that the AI used the apparent texture on places in the image to determine what was on the image, rather than doing a shape comparison. Which sounds like a time-saving measure. Though it may very well have been the method that most consistently produced correct results, for the given dataset. Frankly, the attitude of "we don't know how it works and we don't care" cannot possibly end well. Neither the attitude "oh well make a better dataset then". I get that we're all excited about the amazing abilities we're seeing here, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look where we're going. I recall a story of an AI researcher who didn't want to define anything because he was afraid of introducing bias. Upon hearing this, his colleague covered up his eyes. When asked why he did this, he replied: "The world no longer exists". And the other understood. Because of course the world still exists. And just the same way: it's impossible get rid of bias. Some human intervention is needed. Just like constant checks and comparison against human results.
- dbt00 7y ago
  The problem of the dataset is not just that AI will pick shortcuts and naive heuristics, because humans will too. The problem of the dataset is that you're not in control of who populates the dataset and what their intentions are. There's no understanding of an adversarial model and threat handling.
diogenescynic 7y ago
I mostly watch movie reviews on YouTube and I'm constantly being recommended either weird Joe Rogan, alt-right content, or makeup videos. I don't get it. I've never clicked or watched anything remotely associated with it. I suspect a lot of the popular YouTube channel's are gaming the algorithms or SEO their videos to get more recommendations.
- restingrobot 7y ago
  The neural network takes into account videos that other people who watched the same one you did watched. It's quite possible that the movie trailer you watched was popular among demographics that also watched those recommendations. If you don't have a lot of data for yourself, you will see a heavier bias towards other people's videos.
toss1 7y ago
YouTube can be a source of astonishingly great education and entertainment that will help grow society, as well as astonishingly horrid corruptions of nearly anything that will corrode society at it's roots. Most of these discussion posts seem to miss the point that 'engagement' or 'upvotes' does NOT equal value. Also missing is the concept that a company with a massive platform has any social responsibility to at least not poison the well of society. And claiming "it's the parent's responsibility" may have some truth value, but it does not and should not be an excuse to absolve the platform owner of responsibility. The key to longer term success of the platforms is to abandon the low-hanging-fruit of "engagement" as a measure value and develop more substantitive metrics that actually relate to value delivered, both to the individual watcher and society as a whole. As one audience member, I find their recommendations to be basically crap, nearly never leading me to something more valuable than what I just watched (sure, they'll occasionally put up a recommendation that has enough entertainment value to watch, but much of the time I want my 5min back). To find any real value, I need to search again. That already tells us that their "engagement"-based algos are insufficient to serve the needs.
not_that_noob 7y ago
YouTube also leads you down radical rabbit holes as that keeps the algorithm happy. How many of the recent terror attacks (ISIS or New Zealand type incidents) were fostered by YouTube watching?
- techsin101 7y ago
  Oh look Nazis used medical science to do terrible experiments let's ban textbooks
- bubblewrap 7y ago
  My guess would be zero.
Proven 7y ago
Another nonsense article by the leftist busybodies from the NYT. 1) YouTube has the right to incentivize whatever they want. It's their property and they can do as they please. Get over it. 2) Parents, not YouTube, are responsible for what their underage children do. If I incentivize you to eat dirt, is it my fault if you eat dirt? Or your own, because you decided to do it? This is the same idiotic line of reasoning that tries to blame YouTube for "radicalizing" terrorist-wannabies. Stop minding other people's business, busybodies!
gersh 7y ago
I think there is an inherent in optimizing for retention time. Ideally, the recommendation should help find stuff which improve people's health, make them happier, or more informed about the world. However, it doesn't seem like YouTube has metrics on those things. Furthermore, things like that probably can't be determined very quickly on new content.
Buge 7y ago
> PewDiePie, a skinny, fast-talking Swede Is he really fast-talking? He seems kind of slow talking to me, when I watch his videos I use 2x speed.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  "Fast talker" is not merely descriptive but idiomatic: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/46/Argument-by-Fast-Talking https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... Cf: fast and loose: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+with https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+wit...
methodiosmel 7y ago
I'll assume by "Wrong Behavior" the writer means "Illegal Behavior" like watching child porn, and not "non-crimes" like developing unfashionable political opinions. I'm very skeptical of all these articles attacking YouTubes's algorithm. Sounds to be like a power grab to control and bias the information presented to users. If the algorithm is presenting illegal material, then call the cops. Otherwise, mind your own fascistic business.
bubblewrap 7y ago
There seem to be some extreme cases where the algorithm fails. That doesn't imply in general it doesn't work well. Sounds again like hyperbole from the NYT. I find it more interesting to consider what would actually be a good outcome for the viewers. I suppose originally all those recommender algorithms simply optimized for viewer engagement. Obviously that may not be the best outcome for consumers. Perhaps enraging content makes people stick on a platform longer, for example. But it would be "better" for a viewer to see more educational content and even to disconnect after a certain while. But how would you even quantify that, for the algorithm to be able to train for it? The son of a friend of mine taught himself programming from YouTube videos, which YouTube had recommended to him. I wouldn't complain about a result like that.
alt_f4 7y ago
yet another NYT anti-tech hit piece
emilfihlman 7y ago
I mean PewDiePie's info is rather public but what's with the need to "dox" him right in the beginning?
cyrksoft 7y ago
Big Media is dying and they are desperate to shut down competition. This is a political article and nothing more.
JDiculous 7y ago
The "wrong behavior" that Youtube incentives is promoting and encouraging clickbait garbage content (just look at the default homepage). The holy metric now is "watch time", the result being that creators stretch out their content to 10 minutes because then Youtube is more likely to promote it (and midroll add = twice the revenue). Yesterday Youtube recommended me a 10 minute video of some guy explaining how he made this simple drone shot that could've been condensed down to a single sentence - "Turn sensors off". What a waste of time. But hey they're a corporation and thus have no accountability to the public good.

203 points by furcyd 7y ago

Quite true, but let's not pretend that Twittr, Tumbler and Fakebook aren't also "incenting" all sorts of distorted behaviors of their own! These sites are "algorithms" all the same, even if the workings of these algorithms are in some ways more transparent. We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case.

nkozyra 7y ago
> We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case. This always sounds good, but decentralized is nearly impossible to commoditize or make appealing to the general public. Outside of evangelism and word-of-mouth, how are people going to escape the Youtube advertising budget and instead choose - en masse - the product that is better for their privacy? There's just so much money and inertia to fight.
- swiley 7y ago
  YouTube removing harmless content over copyright etc is one way.
phreeza 7y ago
If the ranking algorithm is open for all to see, won't that encourage even worse gaming of the system? I am trying to think of comparable situations in existing open systems, but none come to mind.
tqi 7y ago
I think the author's issue is not that her recommendations are bad, but that other people are getting recommendations for things she disagrees with (ie conspiracy theory videos, child-unsafe content, etc). So I don't think she would view decentralization as a win.
thephyber 7y ago
> We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another We already have them, yet FB, IG, Twitter, YT are the social media behemoths. Are you making a plea for the average internet person to care about the values of the platforms they use over the platform content? You are likely preaching to the choir here on HN, but I would guess that the audience here is only 1% of 1% of the audience you need to message. Corps make good use of psychological experiments to optimize their utility function. "Evil is efficient." The problem is that companies optimize for money without taking into account any other factor in any significant way. > In 1970, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman published an essay in The New York Times Magazine titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” [1] Arguably this quote incentivized the destruction of "good corporate citizenship" (although I admit it's possible that concept never existed in a broad sense). [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/14/harvard-business-school-financial-crisis-economics-578378.html https://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/14/harvard-business-school-...

kauffj 7y ago

http://archive.is/6lbCR http://archive.is/6lbCR (Archive link for those who prefer non-broken web experiences)

umvi 7y ago

Does the algorithm incentivize bad behavior or simply reflect the desires of the viewers? Someone watching lots of DIY home repair videos will start seeing more. In that case it seems like it's incentivizing good behavior. Likewise, someone watching lots of soft porn on YouTube will be recommended more soft porn. The algorithm isn't responsible for helping you make good life choices. The algorithm is responsible for recommending videos that you would like, and it seems like it does a good job of that, generally. Unfortunately, some people like bad things and that's an age old problem that is hard to fix. That said, it would be nice if users could CTOA (choose their own algorithm) instead of letting Google be the sole gatekeeper.

posterboy 7y ago
It is not the case that someone watching a certain topic will see videos exclusively tailored to their taste. More over it is rarely the case that someone watches something specifically definable to the exclusion of anything less specific, because that desire will ideally be quickly saturated. And if it isn't then the recommendations are still rubbish.
- typenil 7y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that if a person has an interest in a topic, then any content within that topic that doesn't make them lose interest in said topic is bad content.
IanDrake 7y ago
Haha, that's what you get for saying people are responsible for themselves. This is why I don't HN very much these days. The comments are a wasteland of far leftist ideology.
detaro 7y ago
In my experience, some ~20 % of recommendations almost always go towards noticably more clickbaity/low-quality content (with rest often fitting quite well, or at least being of a similar level, just on topics that happen to not interest me right now), and as soon as you make the mistake to click one of them it shoots up dramatically. I've taken to open videos I'm not sure about in a private tab to avoid 2 weeks of crap recommendations.

rosterface 7y ago

Ah, the classic “think of the children!” argument. It is no one’s responsibility other than the parent to ensure their child isn’t watching inappropriate content (which will be different for every family and individual). This article suggests that machine learning and collaborative filtering are incapable of producing healthy recommendations. I beg to differ, the New York Times may not like the result but they work for the vast majority of users on any service with too much content to manually curate.

rspeer 7y ago
There are healthy recommender systems, like Spotify. YouTube is a _disastrously_ unhealthy recommender system, and they've let it go completely out of control.
- ariwilson 7y ago
  Spotify has 40M tracks total. On YouTube, more than 5B videos are watched by users every day. Different scales of problem demand different solutions.
  - amphibian87 7y ago
    I don't know what the comment you are replying to meant, I interpreted it to mean the algo takes you down a rabbit hole to darker content, however for me I miss the days when it actually recommended relevant videos, similar to the one I was watching. My entire sidebar is now just a random assortment of irrelevant interests. For instance I wanted to learn to play a denser piano chord, I learned it ages ago but I still get like 20 videos that explain how to add extensions to a 7 chord, even if I'm watching a video on the F-35 fighter pilot.
- ihuman 7y ago
  How is Spotify's different from Youtube?
  - anticensor 7y ago

strikelaserclaw 7y ago

"If YouTube won’t remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make significant changes, and have greater human involvement in the recommendation process.", man does this person know how many videos and how many users YouTube has? They cannot use anything except an algorithm to recommend videos. They cannot use anything except an algorithm to detect videos inappropriate for children. It seems YouTube is working on this, and this opinion seems like a ill thought out fluff piece to enrage readers and sell this persons book.

andrewvc 7y ago
Maybe they can't make editorial recommendations for the long tail but they absokutely could do so for the top few thousand videos each week. Would that yield an improvement? I don't know, but it would have an impact.
- scj 7y ago
  I'm kind of wondering if a "Ned Flanders" user-detector is possible. Search for users who stop videos at "offensive" moments, then evaluate their habits. It wouldn't be foolproof, but the "Flanders rating" of a video might be a starting metric. Before putting something on YouTube for kids, run it by Flanders users first. If Flanders users en masse watch it the whole way through, it's probably safe. If they stop it at random points, it may be safe (this is where manual filtering might be desirable, even if it is just to evaluate Flanders Users rather than the video). But if they stop videos at about the same time, that should be treated as a red flag. Of course, people have contextual viewing habits that aren't captured (I hope). Most relevantly, they probably watch different things depending on who is in the room. This is likely the highest vector for false positives. The big negative is showing people content they obviously don't want for the sake of collecting imperfect data.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    The problem is that just a few examples of the algorithm getting it wrong is enough to cause an adpocalypse. If millions of videos are uploaded every month then you can imagine how low the error rate has to be.

restingrobot 7y ago

I don't think this is incentivizing bad behavior. It's merely showing the viewer more of what they are already watching with a gradual introduction to broader material. The example of a youtube serving content to "pedophiles" is borderline asinine. The neural network is just making suggestions on viewing, it's not telling people to watch. In regards to the complaint that "adult" content is being served to adolescents, there is an option to filter out sensitive content all together. Also, as a parent to 4 children myself, the idea of letting my kids loose on the internet completely devoid of any supervision is ridiculous. When did it become youtube's responsibility to parent the children in its audience? Should we also ban HBO, Amazon, and Netflix from providing recommendations because it might be a child in front of the screen? This is just another pointed attempt to censor free speech via the abuse of technology companies. The idea being that the platform will be restrictive if they are constantly badgered about it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
masklinn 7y ago
> with a gradual introduction to broader material. It doesn't gradually introduce broader material, it gradually introduces more "engaging" material.
- restingrobot 7y ago
  I would argue that your point is semantics, but even so you still have a choice of whether or not to watch the recommended more "engaging" material. It doesn't change the overall point of my statement.
  - tvanantwerp 7y ago
    I'd say it's quite a different point. My own experience has been that the recommended "engaging" material is something in the same genre as whatever I just saw, but with a clickbaitier title, flashier thumbnail, and overall poorer informational quality. It's the different between saying "I see you enjoy sandwiches, maybe you would also enjoy salads or a plate of sushi" and "I see you enjoy sandwiches--here's a candy bar, an off-brand soda made with high-fructose corn syrup, and a carton of cheap grocery store ice cream."

sneakernets 7y ago

In addition to this, seeing content creators being slaves to the algorithm is an eye-opening experience. Especially when it comes to the children's videos. It's all computer generated garbage powered by responses to changes in algorithms. If kids suddenly watch more content with alligators, prepare for that being the only thing created, recommended or playing. It's wild.

Analemma_ 7y ago

I don't know if YouTube's problems are so bad that the argument applies in this case, but in general, "We can't comply with this regulation, it would be too difficult at our scale" is not considered a valid defense. Just as banks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that they can't fail without wreaking havoc on the economy, if algorithmic recommendation and moderation can't work, then maybe social networks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that human moderation is not possible.

aaomidi 7y ago
Agree with you. If you can't do your job then maybe you'll have to be shut down.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  Since when did it become YouTube's responsibility to police speech?!
  - tomgp 7y ago
    When they started making editorial decisions about which videos to promote and to whom -albeit via an automated process.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I work for YouTube, my personal view on the situation is this: Bear in mind that YouTube does not operate only in the US with unhinged free speech laws. Many countries have stricter laws and YouTube definitely needs to comply with them. Other than that, adpocalypse happened because of bad videos being surfaced by the algorithm so another responsibility is to the creators. (And shareholders) There is nothing to be gained by having crap in your backyard.
  - aaomidi 7y ago
    It did when people started demanding it. A company doesn't exist in a vacuum.
7y ago

wyoh 7y ago

insert unrelated rant about Crowder despite having nothing to do with the crux of her article NYT ladies and gent.

dang 7y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

everyoneisbias 7y ago

It's all about advertising money. TV and newspapers are dying and they need someone to blame.

restingrobot 7y ago
I personally think this has deeper political motives as well, but yes I completely agree with you!
jaydz 7y ago
I'm sure Google and Facebook understand this, hopefully they won't cower any further. Big Media wants its "fair share" and they will keep attacking until they do.

eganist 7y ago

This seems like it takes some notes from Veritasium's theory on YouTube's recommendation algorithm which he posted after his initial reservoir shade balls video went viral. (edited for clarity) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 for his theory.

ilikehurdles 7y ago

Google absolutely can do all of those things without an algorithm. What they can't do is accomplish that without impacting profit margins (or at the minimum, executive bonuses). "If it impacts business as usual, then it is impossible" is a naive/flawed/libertarian stance.

scarface74 7y ago
I’m usually a proponent of the “wall garden” when it comes to applications and strict sandboxing for most users, since software can harm your computer. But in the case of YouTube, there is absolutely no way that they can curate it and it still being as open as it is.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  There is no need to curate every video, only the ones qualified enough to be recommended/showcased to the public who is not explicily looking for them.
  - patorjk 7y ago
    Say I watch a video on a topic like "nes video game speed running". Right now I'd see other nes video game speed running videos, it's very useful. In a curated world, what would be recommended? It's probably too much of a niche topic to yield results that would be very useful.
- bsder 7y ago
  > But in the case of YouTube, there is absolutely no way that they can curate it and it still being as open as it is. So? If YouTube exits the space and allows oxygen back into the video sharing market, we might actually get some different video sharing services that do different things (a la NicoNicoDouga).
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Video streaming, processing, and storage at scale still costs a lot of money. I don’t think even Google is doing it profitably.

jiveturkey 7y ago

Wow, I'm conflicted. First, an obvious idiot statement, which helps us ground our analysis: > Human intuition can recognize motives in people’s viewing decisions, and can step in to discourage that — which most likely would have happened if videos were being recommended by humans, and not a computer. But to YouTube’s nuance-blind algorithm — trained to think with simple logic — serving up more videos to sate a sadist’s appetite is a job well done. So this person is advocating that a human (ie, another human besides oneself, an employee at youtube), have access to the click stream of individual users? This proposal, in 2019??? Of course this would have to be compulsory to be effective. Why would I want a megacorp to be making moral decisions for me? I'm ok with them making amoral algorithmic decisions. The author is generalizing the problem of YT Kids, which should be human curated, to all of youtube. OTOH, yeah feeding our worst impulses is kind of a problem. But, tweaking the algorithm isn't the solution. The machine itself is designed to thrive on attention.

kodz4 7y ago

It's not complicated. They need to stop showing people the upvote and view COUNTS. Behind the scenes they can still use it to make recommendations. Those numbers are pseudo signals of quality to people who encounter content they have never encountered before. Even when they have doubts that are watching something unhealthy the mind goes "well if the rest of the world thinks this dumbass is important I better pay attention..." If a dumbass hurting people on video gets 10 million views other dumbasses worldwide automatically get triggered looking at the count. "hey I can do this maybe I should run for President..." Remove the counts and you remove the pseudo signal of quality.

jakear 7y ago
Fully agree. Instagram is removing like counts (or at least looking into it). I think this a great path forward for the industry. Too often people see “popular” as “correct and not needing question”. Edit: the Instagram motivation is admittedly a bit different, but a good path regardless
verall 7y ago
It is complicated. I think thats a bad solution. I want to see the counts. I feel it is far more transparent to see the counts than for things to just be surfaced or not opaquely. Youtube is not a discussion site and it does not work as one. How popular things are is a part of the context of pop culture, and most youtube content is pop culture.
- smt88 7y ago
  > How popular things are is a part of the context of pop culture, and most youtube content is pop culture. I can't think of any traditional medium that tells you the popularity of something before you consume it. Movie theaters, TV stations, radio stations, etc. have no concept of "view counts" telling you whether or not to consume something.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    > I can't think of any Well, information IS available, beforehand in nielson ratings and films' grossing numbers, but you're essentially right. That's the problem: opaqueness leaves us vulnerable to being misled. Some PR company calls it "the hottest ticket of the season," and we have no way of corroborating this claim.

module0000 7y ago

> If YouTube won’t remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make significant changes It must? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing. It's a product from a publicly traded company, therefore it "must" return value for stockholders. That means more behavior that increases ad revenue. The author is out of touch with reality. Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. It's a private service(youtube), not a public park.

fzeroracer 7y ago
Incentivizing value for stockholders above all else is a good way to ensure incredibly anti-consumer practices grow in popularity. Something you might only begin to notice when your kids start getting recommended games from their friends that require you to gamble with IAP to get a new dance or something.
drewbug01 7y ago
> It must? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing. Subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which it operates, of course. We could - if we so wanted - pass laws to regulate this behavior. That is perhaps the best option, in my own opinion. > It's a product from a publicly traded company, therefore it "must" return value for stockholders. The dogma that it "must" return value for shareholders is not an absolute rule[1]; rather it's a set of market expectations and some decisions from Delaware (which have an outsize impact on business law) that encourage it. But it's not required. In fact, many states allow a type of corporation that specifically and directly allows directors to pursue non-shareholder-value goals - the benefit corporation[2]. > The author is out of touch with reality. Please re-read the HN guidelines[3]. > Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. It's a private service(youtube), not a public park. This is the doctrine of "caveat emptor," essentially - that a consumer is ultimately responsible for all behavior. However, a wealth of regulation exists because that's unworkable in practice. The FDA and the EPA come to mind, but we also regulate concepts like "false advertising." Your stance here ignores the realities of life in service of ideological purism. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/businesses-focus-on-maximizing-shareholder-value-has-numerous-costs/2013/09/05/bcdc664e-045f-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?utm_term=.4c2fd1a74b58 http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

annadane 7y ago

It's pretty interesting to see the increase lately of comments defending various companies. Not saying there's a conspiracy but it's a bit weird

wtracy 7y ago
Hacker News has always been like this. The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital-funded startups. A very large percentage of those people are former FAANG employees, employees of companies trying to get acquired by FAANG, or employees of companies doing exactly the same things that FAANG are getting criticized for. (Some are all three!) I doubt any of them are getting paid to AstroTurf, but they know what side their bread is getting buttered on.
- dang 7y ago
  > The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital-funded startups. Quite un-so! HN is targeted at one group only: the intellectually curious. So curiosity—keeping HN interesting—is the only thing we care about and optimize for. As for VC-funded startups, since only about 10% of HN users are located in Silicon Valley, the number working for such startups is certainly far less than that. 50% of HN users are outside the US. This community is orders of magnitude more diverse than your image of it here. People work for many different employers. Are their views impacted by their work experience? Of course they are—for every user here. There's nothing sinister about that. If someone posts a view that's wrong, others will correct it. As long as they do so thoughtfully, that's great. The cycle of life on HN.
  - dlivingston 7y ago
    20% of Americans on HN are localized to the Valley? That seems insanely high. Can you cite references?
    - wtracy 7y ago
      I would imagine that dang has access to HN's internal metrics which probably aren't public. Also, when dang contradicts me about HN, that means I'm wrong, lol.

la_barba 7y ago

I think YouTube has just exposed the kind of content people were already interested in, and possibly consuming outside of the public eye. We find it frightening that people readily click on abhorrent content. When they probably were doing it over other platforms earlier. The internet had gore videos for the longest time. I remember a shotgun suicide video that kids in my school used to shock each other with. If Google as a private company chooses to ban content, than that is their right, but an apriori expectation that an entertainment platform should control peoples social behavior and enforce morality is harmful in a free society IMHO.

zanny 7y ago
People were fueling industries of creatively bankrupt content well before the Internet came around, just look at the long term existence of tabloids. Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote.
- FabHK 7y ago
  I think the analogy to junk food is instructive. Both fast food and YouTube maximise revenue while minimising costs by exploiting human flaws and foibles, and do so much more effectively than was possible 100 years ago. It is creating an environment that is radically different than the one we evolved in. Watching hours of YouTube - obesity of the mind. Kind of.
- la_barba 7y ago
  >Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote. Well, YouTube (or any advertising platform) also wants people clicking on ads and actually buying things, not just graze. AFAIK they already demonetize content that is not advertiser friendly, and thus de-prioritize it. Busy professionals with limited free time are your best bet for people with a lot of disposable income. If anything YouTube optimizes for content that is safe-for-work, and will quickly lead to you opening your wallet. But yes, I think this is a large scale multi-variate problem, and individual simple metrics don't cut it.

raz32dust 7y ago

YouTube's incentives are the best among such platforms IMO. They allow a simple profit sharing model where a part of the ad-revenue goes to the content creator. This is unlike instagram, for example, where the content creators have to peddle products in their ads to make money. Take a fitness channel for example - on YouTube, the content creator can just be honest, and the views alone will guarantee income. On the other hand, on instagram, they have to resort to selling snake oil. I love YouTube for this, and I am constantly amazed by how YouTube has become a livelihood earner for so many.

vgetr 7y ago

I feel like things were mostly fine until the 2016 election, after which journalists became _very_ concerned. If I had a nickel for each, “The algorithms are coming! The algorithms are coming!”, I’d be rich. I mean, I didn’t like the outcome either, but these types of articles seem to motivated by a) finding a scapegoat and b) wanting to use “algorithm” in a sentence.

edoo 7y ago

We know we have to keep kids sheltered from people which may have unscrupulous neural networks at play looking for a way to further their own goals at the expense of a child's well being and overall health. Engagement on the internet is also being driven by neural networks that are learning to adapt to the users brain chemistry to statistically modify behavior for maximum engagement/profit. Perhaps it is time to realize that these services are going to be analogous to a random stranger offering your kid candy for their own twisted goals that are unlikely compatible with a child's well being. If you consider a service like YouTube as an untrusted source of interaction perhaps you'll be as likely to block or monitor it the same as random chat rooms.

tunesmith 7y ago

Still looking for recommendations that are influenced by people's best-self intentions of who they want to be, rather than influenced by their worst-self behaviors.

bjt2n3904 7y ago

What a pleasant way of stating that humans are basically good. We just keep passing the buck. "We'd be fine if it weren't for this algorithm!" We believe that man is essentially good. It’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society. Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society. If you ask me, "YouTube's algorithm" is simply exposing the way humanity is. And trying to get an algorithm to "shepherd" humanity to be better is simply Orwellian.

jerrac 7y ago

Two ideas come to mind. First, make the engine recommend a few videos that it thinks you probably won't watch. That could help break up the echo chamber effect. Second, allow users to blacklist, or whitelist, different kinds of content. If someone is struggling with sexual attraction to minors, let them blacklist content with minors in it. If I don't want to see the latest anti(or pro)-<insert political figure here> videos, I should be able to filter them out. I have no interest in Minecraft, so why should I have to keep scrolling past Minecraft videos just because I watch a lot of game related videos? That said, all the calls for regulation or censorship concern me. I haven't seen the video, but Steven Crowder saying mean things isn't exactly something that should be censored. Any more than all the videos calling President Trump names. What I'm seeing signs of is a society that silences any speech that doesn't fit in a specific, politically correct, box. And that box is being defined by advertising companies who don't want to be associated with topics that their potential customers find uncomfortable. That's not a direction any of us should support...

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

The NYTimes uses a very human "algorithm" to determine what to report on and if you look at the comparison of causes of death to what's reported it's wildly off: Data: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... This isn't a knock against the NYTimes so much as it is of humanity, we're all fascinated by the lurid and sensational (note that the Google searches are similarly off) and this permeates all levels of life.

CountHackulus 7y ago

To quote Jim Sterling, YouTube has a YouTube problem.

KoenDG 7y ago

I doubt this person does not care about the subject they wrote about. And if the algorithm is producing negative side effects, then, of course, it should be looked at and changed. I'm no expert myself, but to my understanding: any algorithm is limited by its data set. Based on its data set, an algorithm comes to conclusions. But one can then, of course, ask: what's the basis for these conclusions? I recall reading that a certain AI had been fooled into thinking a picture of a banana was showing a toaster or a helicopter, after a few part of the image were changed to contain tiny bits of those items. It turned out that the AI used the apparent texture on places in the image to determine what was on the image, rather than doing a shape comparison. Which sounds like a time-saving measure. Though it may very well have been the method that most consistently produced correct results, for the given dataset. Frankly, the attitude of "we don't know how it works and we don't care" cannot possibly end well. Neither the attitude "oh well make a better dataset then". I get that we're all excited about the amazing abilities we're seeing here, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look where we're going. I recall a story of an AI researcher who didn't want to define anything because he was afraid of introducing bias. Upon hearing this, his colleague covered up his eyes. When asked why he did this, he replied: "The world no longer exists". And the other understood. Because of course the world still exists. And just the same way: it's impossible get rid of bias. Some human intervention is needed. Just like constant checks and comparison against human results.

dbt00 7y ago
The problem of the dataset is not just that AI will pick shortcuts and naive heuristics, because humans will too. The problem of the dataset is that you're not in control of who populates the dataset and what their intentions are. There's no understanding of an adversarial model and threat handling.

diogenescynic 7y ago

I mostly watch movie reviews on YouTube and I'm constantly being recommended either weird Joe Rogan, alt-right content, or makeup videos. I don't get it. I've never clicked or watched anything remotely associated with it. I suspect a lot of the popular YouTube channel's are gaming the algorithms or SEO their videos to get more recommendations.

restingrobot 7y ago
The neural network takes into account videos that other people who watched the same one you did watched. It's quite possible that the movie trailer you watched was popular among demographics that also watched those recommendations. If you don't have a lot of data for yourself, you will see a heavier bias towards other people's videos.

toss1 7y ago

YouTube can be a source of astonishingly great education and entertainment that will help grow society, as well as astonishingly horrid corruptions of nearly anything that will corrode society at it's roots. Most of these discussion posts seem to miss the point that 'engagement' or 'upvotes' does NOT equal value. Also missing is the concept that a company with a massive platform has any social responsibility to at least not poison the well of society. And claiming "it's the parent's responsibility" may have some truth value, but it does not and should not be an excuse to absolve the platform owner of responsibility. The key to longer term success of the platforms is to abandon the low-hanging-fruit of "engagement" as a measure value and develop more substantitive metrics that actually relate to value delivered, both to the individual watcher and society as a whole. As one audience member, I find their recommendations to be basically crap, nearly never leading me to something more valuable than what I just watched (sure, they'll occasionally put up a recommendation that has enough entertainment value to watch, but much of the time I want my 5min back). To find any real value, I need to search again. That already tells us that their "engagement"-based algos are insufficient to serve the needs.

not_that_noob 7y ago

YouTube also leads you down radical rabbit holes as that keeps the algorithm happy. How many of the recent terror attacks (ISIS or New Zealand type incidents) were fostered by YouTube watching?

techsin101 7y ago
Oh look Nazis used medical science to do terrible experiments let's ban textbooks
bubblewrap 7y ago
My guess would be zero.

Proven 7y ago

Another nonsense article by the leftist busybodies from the NYT. 1) YouTube has the right to incentivize whatever they want. It's their property and they can do as they please. Get over it. 2) Parents, not YouTube, are responsible for what their underage children do. If I incentivize you to eat dirt, is it my fault if you eat dirt? Or your own, because you decided to do it? This is the same idiotic line of reasoning that tries to blame YouTube for "radicalizing" terrorist-wannabies. Stop minding other people's business, busybodies!

gersh 7y ago

I think there is an inherent in optimizing for retention time. Ideally, the recommendation should help find stuff which improve people's health, make them happier, or more informed about the world. However, it doesn't seem like YouTube has metrics on those things. Furthermore, things like that probably can't be determined very quickly on new content.

Buge 7y ago

> PewDiePie, a skinny, fast-talking Swede Is he really fast-talking? He seems kind of slow talking to me, when I watch his videos I use 2x speed.

dredmorbius 7y ago
"Fast talker" is not merely descriptive but idiomatic: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/46/Argument-by-Fast-Talking https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla... Cf: fast and loose: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+with https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+wit...

methodiosmel 7y ago

I'll assume by "Wrong Behavior" the writer means "Illegal Behavior" like watching child porn, and not "non-crimes" like developing unfashionable political opinions. I'm very skeptical of all these articles attacking YouTubes's algorithm. Sounds to be like a power grab to control and bias the information presented to users. If the algorithm is presenting illegal material, then call the cops. Otherwise, mind your own fascistic business.

bubblewrap 7y ago

There seem to be some extreme cases where the algorithm fails. That doesn't imply in general it doesn't work well. Sounds again like hyperbole from the NYT. I find it more interesting to consider what would actually be a good outcome for the viewers. I suppose originally all those recommender algorithms simply optimized for viewer engagement. Obviously that may not be the best outcome for consumers. Perhaps enraging content makes people stick on a platform longer, for example. But it would be "better" for a viewer to see more educational content and even to disconnect after a certain while. But how would you even quantify that, for the algorithm to be able to train for it? The son of a friend of mine taught himself programming from YouTube videos, which YouTube had recommended to him. I wouldn't complain about a result like that.

alt_f4 7y ago

yet another NYT anti-tech hit piece

emilfihlman 7y ago

I mean PewDiePie's info is rather public but what's with the need to "dox" him right in the beginning?

cyrksoft 7y ago

Big Media is dying and they are desperate to shut down competition. This is a political article and nothing more.

JDiculous 7y ago

The "wrong behavior" that Youtube incentives is promoting and encouraging clickbait garbage content (just look at the default homepage). The holy metric now is "watch time", the result being that creators stretch out their content to 10 minutes because then Youtube is more likely to promote it (and midroll add = twice the revenue). Yesterday Youtube recommended me a 10 minute video of some guy explaining how he made this simple drone shot that could've been condensed down to a single sentence - "Turn sensors off". What a waste of time. But hey they're a corporation and thus have no accountability to the public good.