6 ms·

Meh. Pretty lame. Feels like someone is generally not happy with a large share of videos on YouTube. There is also not solution proposed. Censorship is one that

by baxtr 7y ago

Meh. Pretty lame. Feels like someone is generally not happy with a large share of videos on YouTube. There is also not solution proposed. Censorship is one that comes to mind, and which of course won’t work well. I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies.

mooman219 7y ago
I agree. People have shown that the content that gets watch time and appeals to the widest demographic is "low quality". The author of this appears to have allowed their child to freely browse the collection of videos, regrets it, and is now passing blame. In the case of his father, the author is blaming YouTube for not curating proper content. Why didn't the author curate content for his father or spend more time with them to see what they were watching? It sounds like the premise of these points is that the author didn't appreciate the bubbles their family members fell into, and instead wanted them to be in different bubbles.
charlesism 7y ago
> YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. Youtube hasn’t affected the world? That seems like an extraordinary claim to me.
jxramos 7y ago
I agree about the mirror facet to this. Sometimes I'm even meta-aware of being sucked in to a new demographic when I start charting new video territory. I often pause and think to myself, "Wow, here's a whole batch of content targeting demographic XYZ, no thank you." I've often detected video suggestions going off my mental road barriers and I put a stop to it early before it pollutes my feed. The trouble is when you give in to temptation and let curiosity get the best of you.
fortran77 7y ago
That's exactly what they want! I expected to scroll down and see a new alternative YouTube being launched. I was puzzled when I didn't see it. What's their point? That they don't like one of their competitor's products?
- rasz 7y ago
  I expected someone at Mozilla discovering a tracker blocking trick making YT not notice you watched particular video.
omegaworks 7y ago
>I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. YouTube, and all for-profit social media construct experiences that take advantage of our human fallibility in order to drive eyeballs and clicks. You're writing something very explicitly crafted to drive potentially self-destructive behavior off as merely "a mirror of our societies." The closest parallel is the gambling industry. There's a reason it's highly regulated.
spion 7y ago
Social media has introduced profound changes to the way our society functions. Its not a bad or a good change: there are both good and bad aspects to it. Democratization of media means that suppressed voices and talent can still rise and break through, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, it also means that the worst of humanity (even if a minority) can also break through - traditional media's filters were not always a bad thing. The main problem are that recommendation systems are a black box. They should have interfaces for interaction. They should allow user chosen curators (e.g. parental filter companies) to tweak their parameters, add filters or over-ride recommendation choices. As I mentioned somewhere downstream, we can't have black boxes shoving things we don't want into our screens anymore. We need something better.
tinus_hn 7y ago
YouTube is a version of our society where you can pay or use tricks to get your message pushed very strongly to a lot of unsuspecting people. In real life I don’t typically get people taking to me about products without telling me they were paid to recommend these products and the billboards on the street don’t show ads based on my profile (yet).
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > YouTube is a version of our society where you can pay or use tricks to get your message pushed very strongly to a lot of unsuspecting people. Yes it's called marketing/propaganda. It wasn't invented by YouTube. Now that whole "YouTube Regrets" stunt by Mozilla here is obviously about the following question: "who should YouTube allow to have an audience", nothing more.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    Marketing can’t for instance force you to read an ad before you read an article in the newspaper. They can’t force you to sit through a video before you drive into town. They can’t swap out one newspaper article for another for money and they can’t completely change the focus of a newspaper by using SEO.
jerry1979 7y ago
"I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies." Why would youtube be a mere reflection of society? If culture gets reproduced through action, wouldn't youtube's actions amplify certain cultural messages? Do mere reflections amplify things?
_nalply 7y ago
Respectfully, I disagree. Youtube is not a mirror of society. Youtube is a tool to maximize people's attention to advertisement. To achieve this goal psychological and other tricks are employed. I think that these tricks distort what you would call "mirror of our societies".

by baxtr 7y ago

mooman219 7y ago

I agree. People have shown that the content that gets watch time and appeals to the widest demographic is "low quality". The author of this appears to have allowed their child to freely browse the collection of videos, regrets it, and is now passing blame. In the case of his father, the author is blaming YouTube for not curating proper content. Why didn't the author curate content for his father or spend more time with them to see what they were watching? It sounds like the premise of these points is that the author didn't appreciate the bubbles their family members fell into, and instead wanted them to be in different bubbles.

charlesism 7y ago

> YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. Youtube hasn’t affected the world? That seems like an extraordinary claim to me.

jxramos 7y ago

I agree about the mirror facet to this. Sometimes I'm even meta-aware of being sucked in to a new demographic when I start charting new video territory. I often pause and think to myself, "Wow, here's a whole batch of content targeting demographic XYZ, no thank you." I've often detected video suggestions going off my mental road barriers and I put a stop to it early before it pollutes my feed. The trouble is when you give in to temptation and let curiosity get the best of you.

fortran77 7y ago

That's exactly what they want! I expected to scroll down and see a new alternative YouTube being launched. I was puzzled when I didn't see it. What's their point? That they don't like one of their competitor's products?

rasz 7y ago
I expected someone at Mozilla discovering a tracker blocking trick making YT not notice you watched particular video.

omegaworks 7y ago

>I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. YouTube, and all for-profit social media construct experiences that take advantage of our human fallibility in order to drive eyeballs and clicks. You're writing something very explicitly crafted to drive potentially self-destructive behavior off as merely "a mirror of our societies." The closest parallel is the gambling industry. There's a reason it's highly regulated.

spion 7y ago

Social media has introduced profound changes to the way our society functions. Its not a bad or a good change: there are both good and bad aspects to it. Democratization of media means that suppressed voices and talent can still rise and break through, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, it also means that the worst of humanity (even if a minority) can also break through - traditional media's filters were not always a bad thing. The main problem are that recommendation systems are a black box. They should have interfaces for interaction. They should allow user chosen curators (e.g. parental filter companies) to tweak their parameters, add filters or over-ride recommendation choices. As I mentioned somewhere downstream, we can't have black boxes shoving things we don't want into our screens anymore. We need something better.

tinus_hn 7y ago

YouTube is a version of our society where you can pay or use tricks to get your message pushed very strongly to a lot of unsuspecting people. In real life I don’t typically get people taking to me about products without telling me they were paid to recommend these products and the billboards on the street don’t show ads based on my profile (yet).

throw_m239339 7y ago
> YouTube is a version of our society where you can pay or use tricks to get your message pushed very strongly to a lot of unsuspecting people. Yes it's called marketing/propaganda. It wasn't invented by YouTube. Now that whole "YouTube Regrets" stunt by Mozilla here is obviously about the following question: "who should YouTube allow to have an audience", nothing more.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Marketing can’t for instance force you to read an ad before you read an article in the newspaper. They can’t force you to sit through a video before you drive into town. They can’t swap out one newspaper article for another for money and they can’t completely change the focus of a newspaper by using SEO.

jerry1979 7y ago

"I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies." Why would youtube be a mere reflection of society? If culture gets reproduced through action, wouldn't youtube's actions amplify certain cultural messages? Do mere reflections amplify things?

_nalply 7y ago

Respectfully, I disagree. Youtube is not a mirror of society. Youtube is a tool to maximize people's attention to advertisement. To achieve this goal psychological and other tricks are employed. I think that these tricks distort what you would call "mirror of our societies".