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I wish there was a way to turn the recommendation algorithms to their inverse setting. Watch a right wing video? Get recommended something from the left. Watch

by api 6y ago

I wish there was a way to turn the recommendation algorithms to their inverse setting. Watch a right wing video? Get recommended something from the left. Watch a debunking video? Get recommendations on topics in the paranormal and the fringe. This strikes me more as actual "red pilling."

IAmEveryone 6y ago
There really is no “other side” to many of these. You won’t find a community of lunatics making 340min-videos about “round earth”, except maybe NASA. And the opposite of a far-right racist isn’t a far-left anything, but a regular person that just happens not to be racist.
- michaelbuckbee 6y ago
  Yeah that's the issue with "do your own research" that's often brought out by the QAnon groups, etc. except I don't know how you possibly deal with one side having pages of pages saying XYZ politician smells like sulfur and is literal demon. What's that person supposed to do put up a page on their website about not smelling like a demon?
- bickeringyokel 6y ago
  Great point, I guess the opposite of a prepper video is just an hour long video about someone showing you their regular pantry with average amounts of food and explaining where they want to go on vacation for the next several years.
- floor2 6y ago
  In America today, the concept of "a regular person that just happens not to be racist" is a right-wing stance. The current dominant cultural/political/academic stance would suggest that all people are inherently racist and that living in the US is participating in a racist society. The opposite of a "far-right racist" is seen constantly online and in real life as the "anti-racist" or "racial equity advocate" who, rather than supporting non-racist policies (eg, blind auditions for an orchestra where only the sound of playing is heard) they support actively "anti-racist" policies (eg, specifically including race as a consideration for who to include in an orchestra, to achieve a racially diverse outcome from auditions). Of course, just drawing these lines is itself politically challenging. The far-left anti-racist is likely to believe that anyone saying they're not a racist is just in denial or lying. The non-racist might see contemporary policies to treat people differently on the basis of race as itself racist rather than anti-racist.
derefr 6y ago
Sadly, the true mathematical opposite of a good, politically-slanted video in recommendation feature-space, probably isn’t one that is good and politically-slanted in the other direction; but rather, one that’s both apolitical and very bad. To a recommender model, the clusters for “left-wing” and “right-wing” content aren’t on opposite ends of the feature cloud; they’re likely very close neighbours. A recommender algorithm would have to be a lot smarter to realize that some particular neighbouring cluster has an adversarial (i.e. “watching X makes you less likely to watch Y, without that just meaning that X and Y are redundant”) relationship with the one it’s looking at.
KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago
Yeah but if you get contradictory messages it'll make like watching both videos feel like a waste of time. Which it is. :( sad for profits.
yifanl 6y ago
That sounds like a non-trivial technical problem. What someone doesn't want to watch is far too broad, from one of the videos on the liberal profile here, you'd be as likely to be "unrecommended" a right-winger's vlog as the Baby Shark song, unless they're keeping track of far more metrics than I think would be practical even at Google scale.

by api 6y ago

IAmEveryone 6y ago

There really is no “other side” to many of these. You won’t find a community of lunatics making 340min-videos about “round earth”, except maybe NASA. And the opposite of a far-right racist isn’t a far-left anything, but a regular person that just happens not to be racist.

michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Yeah that's the issue with "do your own research" that's often brought out by the QAnon groups, etc. except I don't know how you possibly deal with one side having pages of pages saying XYZ politician smells like sulfur and is literal demon. What's that person supposed to do put up a page on their website about not smelling like a demon?
bickeringyokel 6y ago
Great point, I guess the opposite of a prepper video is just an hour long video about someone showing you their regular pantry with average amounts of food and explaining where they want to go on vacation for the next several years.
floor2 6y ago
In America today, the concept of "a regular person that just happens not to be racist" is a right-wing stance. The current dominant cultural/political/academic stance would suggest that all people are inherently racist and that living in the US is participating in a racist society. The opposite of a "far-right racist" is seen constantly online and in real life as the "anti-racist" or "racial equity advocate" who, rather than supporting non-racist policies (eg, blind auditions for an orchestra where only the sound of playing is heard) they support actively "anti-racist" policies (eg, specifically including race as a consideration for who to include in an orchestra, to achieve a racially diverse outcome from auditions). Of course, just drawing these lines is itself politically challenging. The far-left anti-racist is likely to believe that anyone saying they're not a racist is just in denial or lying. The non-racist might see contemporary policies to treat people differently on the basis of race as itself racist rather than anti-racist.

derefr 6y ago

Sadly, the true mathematical opposite of a good, politically-slanted video in recommendation feature-space, probably isn’t one that is good and politically-slanted in the other direction; but rather, one that’s both apolitical and very bad. To a recommender model, the clusters for “left-wing” and “right-wing” content aren’t on opposite ends of the feature cloud; they’re likely very close neighbours. A recommender algorithm would have to be a lot smarter to realize that some particular neighbouring cluster has an adversarial (i.e. “watching X makes you less likely to watch Y, without that just meaning that X and Y are redundant”) relationship with the one it’s looking at.

KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago

Yeah but if you get contradictory messages it'll make like watching both videos feel like a waste of time. Which it is. :( sad for profits.

yifanl 6y ago

That sounds like a non-trivial technical problem. What someone doesn't want to watch is far too broad, from one of the videos on the liberal profile here, you'd be as likely to be "unrecommended" a right-winger's vlog as the Baby Shark song, unless they're keeping track of far more metrics than I think would be practical even at Google scale.