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We blame algorithms and optimization a lot here but that analysis always glosses over the fact that people pick their own sources and form their own bubbles. E

We blame algorithms and optimization a lot here but that analysis always glosses over the fact that people pick their own sources and form their own bubbles. Everyone’s Youtube subscriptions are an echo chamber of views they mostly agree with because people only click subscribe on such channels. A recommendation engine working perfectly is going to show you lateral channels that might be more or less extreme of the last one. But that’s not the root of the problem.

zepto 6y ago
This really isn’t true. My (logged out) YouTube feed has mostly cooking shows, programming videos, stuff about crafts and watchmaking etc, because those are mostly what I like to watch. I’m also interested in guns. The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos etc. And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely political. They are exclusively about sports and history, and don’t even talk about gun politics, let alone politics in general.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  I watch lots of videos on guns, cars, metalworking and history with the former two mostly geared toward history and manufacturing. I never see (amateur) political talking heads recommended. It's all trash pop-history talking heads, semi-trash documentaries and low brow entertainment related to cars and guns (e.g. demo ranch and whistlin diesel). I recently (like yesterday) watched a semi-political talking head discuss the economics of OnlyFans after a friend linked to that particular person's analysis so it'll be interesting to see if the algo tries to drag my content toward more talking heads.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Interesting. I imagine there is more to it than just the videos. E.g. if you live in a generally pro-gun area I think they be algorithm would probably be less likely to assume that it’s worth showing you political content.
- ggreer 6y ago
  > The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos etc. I know recommendations are based on many factors that differ between us (such as location), but I can't reproduce that behavior. If I watch hickok45 or Paul Harrell in an incognito window, I get recommendations for more of their videos along with a few from Demolition Ranch, Forgotten Weapons, and other gun channels. I see no political videos in the recommendations.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Interesting - well those are are the kinds of people I watch. I’m using AppleTV, but not logged in. It’s possible that it takes some time for that to happen. Also, I watched a Jerry Miculek Video yesterday, and got no political stuff, so it’s also possible that the algorithm has been improved or they have specifically acted to break this association.
- dx87 6y ago
  I've had mostly the same experience with youtube. I wanted to get into woodworking during COVID lockdowns, so I was watching a lot of popular woodworking channels that had nothing to do with politics, and was frequently shown Trump ads. Then once I realised how expensive woodworking would be, I started watching videos about game development. After ~1 week, all the Trump ads disappeared, and I started getting Biden ads.
- xienze 6y ago
  > And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely political. Sure, but to assume that you _probably_ hold conservative beliefs due to having an interest in guns is way more often the case than not. Same is true in an opposite way if you watched some video on abortion rights.
  - zepto 6y ago
    “to assume that you _probably_ hold conservative beliefs due to having an interest in guns is way more often the case than not“ Only in the crudest statistical sense. For example the fastest growing demographic of gun owners is black women, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. And that’s exactly what the complaint about these algorithms is.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      That these algorithms are crude statistical approximators of hidden latent biases in the training data? That's their entire method of functioning! That's the entire process of a neural network. It seems you're wanting something that can predict the future, which is currently outside of our matrix multiplication skills.
      - zepto 6y ago
        I’m not ‘wanting’ something. I’m simply pointing out that the algorithms do in fact steer people towards polarizing content, that is not what they would have otherwise chosen.
- intended 6y ago
  I guess its obvious that the algo must work for a large enough number of people and for its optimization function. You may simply be that % of the false positive/false negative that is a cost of doing business. I mean - the alternative to this is having Google employ all the out of work journalists and editors and manually curate lists for people. I think the cost of losing a few people is vastly lower than hiring that many people, in each culture and country around the world.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I’m not sure I’m saying anything about whether the algo works or not.
hertzrat 6y ago
During elections, before I stopped using facebook, I used to try to follow everybody I could from every side of the political spectrum to try to get a more balanced feed. My goodness, my feed was immediately full of insane conspiracy theories, white nationalist group posts, communist posts, nothing but stories of subjugation and oppression of everybody from every side. The choice I made was to try to broaden my bubble, but what I got was insane
Jochim 6y ago
I think algorithms have more of an effect than you give them credit. Anecdotally on the occasion I've been linked to or suggested a Jordan Peterson/Moon Landing conspiracy videos on Youtube, after watching just one my feed is absolutely packed with that type of content for up to a week. It's fairly easy to see how this can lead people who did not already hold those viewpoints down a rabbit hole where they end up far more radicalised than they would have otherwise been, especially since I've not once seen Youtube put any sort of "rebuttal" videos in amongst the "illuminati aliens are controlling your government" ones.
sn41 6y ago
You are being naive. I wanted to see what the impact of a 50 caliber looks like on iron plates. This is just a childish curiosity for things that go bang. Immediately I was bombarded with recommendations of barely concealed white supremacists, and bizarre conspiracy theorists. I know that if I clicked on even one of them, then my recommendations will be full of that crap. Similarly, watch one motivational video, and Youtube decides "oh! I see!! so that's what you really want. Here's a deluge of 'similar' crap." What I want to know about is more coherent explanations of abstract math and some scientific experiments which I never got to see in school, in addition to comedy. That I watch something else once in a while is not really an indication of my identity or my Jungian shadow self.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Just because you share more things in common with those you hate doesn't mean the recommendation is broken. If a large percentage of people who watch gun blowing up videos also are interested in the videos you mention than why wouldn't they show it (I assume if it were breaking guidelines it would be removed)
  - sn41 6y ago
    The recommendation should be based on what a large fraction of my time is spent on (average over the timeline of my history), rather than a large of fraction of people who watch the last watched video is based on. Why does one video entirely screw up my historical record? I can't remember being recommended one 3Blue1Brown video in the last year, despite being subscribed to him. It's bizarre.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      The ones in the sidebar are based on global patterns to that specific video. The homepage ones should show you subscriptions videos but also based on the last keywords/videos watched. I don't see the value in using 2012-2019 videos watched when your recent ones speak more to what you currently are interested in.
    - 8note 6y ago

zepto 6y ago

This really isn’t true. My (logged out) YouTube feed has mostly cooking shows, programming videos, stuff about crafts and watchmaking etc, because those are mostly what I like to watch. I’m also interested in guns. The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos etc. And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely political. They are exclusively about sports and history, and don’t even talk about gun politics, let alone politics in general.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I watch lots of videos on guns, cars, metalworking and history with the former two mostly geared toward history and manufacturing. I never see (amateur) political talking heads recommended. It's all trash pop-history talking heads, semi-trash documentaries and low brow entertainment related to cars and guns (e.g. demo ranch and whistlin diesel). I recently (like yesterday) watched a semi-political talking head discuss the economics of OnlyFans after a friend linked to that particular person's analysis so it'll be interesting to see if the algo tries to drag my content toward more talking heads.
- zepto 6y ago
  Interesting. I imagine there is more to it than just the videos. E.g. if you live in a generally pro-gun area I think they be algorithm would probably be less likely to assume that it’s worth showing you political content.
ggreer 6y ago
> The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos etc. I know recommendations are based on many factors that differ between us (such as location), but I can't reproduce that behavior. If I watch hickok45 or Paul Harrell in an incognito window, I get recommendations for more of their videos along with a few from Demolition Ranch, Forgotten Weapons, and other gun channels. I see no political videos in the recommendations.
- zepto 6y ago
  Interesting - well those are are the kinds of people I watch. I’m using AppleTV, but not logged in. It’s possible that it takes some time for that to happen. Also, I watched a Jerry Miculek Video yesterday, and got no political stuff, so it’s also possible that the algorithm has been improved or they have specifically acted to break this association.
dx87 6y ago
I've had mostly the same experience with youtube. I wanted to get into woodworking during COVID lockdowns, so I was watching a lot of popular woodworking channels that had nothing to do with politics, and was frequently shown Trump ads. Then once I realised how expensive woodworking would be, I started watching videos about game development. After ~1 week, all the Trump ads disappeared, and I started getting Biden ads.
xienze 6y ago
> And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely political. Sure, but to assume that you _probably_ hold conservative beliefs due to having an interest in guns is way more often the case than not. Same is true in an opposite way if you watched some video on abortion rights.
- zepto 6y ago
  “to assume that you _probably_ hold conservative beliefs due to having an interest in guns is way more often the case than not“ Only in the crudest statistical sense. For example the fastest growing demographic of gun owners is black women, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. And that’s exactly what the complaint about these algorithms is.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    That these algorithms are crude statistical approximators of hidden latent biases in the training data? That's their entire method of functioning! That's the entire process of a neural network. It seems you're wanting something that can predict the future, which is currently outside of our matrix multiplication skills.
    - zepto 6y ago
      I’m not ‘wanting’ something. I’m simply pointing out that the algorithms do in fact steer people towards polarizing content, that is not what they would have otherwise chosen.
intended 6y ago
I guess its obvious that the algo must work for a large enough number of people and for its optimization function. You may simply be that % of the false positive/false negative that is a cost of doing business. I mean - the alternative to this is having Google employ all the out of work journalists and editors and manually curate lists for people. I think the cost of losing a few people is vastly lower than hiring that many people, in each culture and country around the world.
- zepto 6y ago
  I’m not sure I’m saying anything about whether the algo works or not.

hertzrat 6y ago

During elections, before I stopped using facebook, I used to try to follow everybody I could from every side of the political spectrum to try to get a more balanced feed. My goodness, my feed was immediately full of insane conspiracy theories, white nationalist group posts, communist posts, nothing but stories of subjugation and oppression of everybody from every side. The choice I made was to try to broaden my bubble, but what I got was insane

Jochim 6y ago

I think algorithms have more of an effect than you give them credit. Anecdotally on the occasion I've been linked to or suggested a Jordan Peterson/Moon Landing conspiracy videos on Youtube, after watching just one my feed is absolutely packed with that type of content for up to a week. It's fairly easy to see how this can lead people who did not already hold those viewpoints down a rabbit hole where they end up far more radicalised than they would have otherwise been, especially since I've not once seen Youtube put any sort of "rebuttal" videos in amongst the "illuminati aliens are controlling your government" ones.

sn41 6y ago

You are being naive. I wanted to see what the impact of a 50 caliber looks like on iron plates. This is just a childish curiosity for things that go bang. Immediately I was bombarded with recommendations of barely concealed white supremacists, and bizarre conspiracy theorists. I know that if I clicked on even one of them, then my recommendations will be full of that crap. Similarly, watch one motivational video, and Youtube decides "oh! I see!! so that's what you really want. Here's a deluge of 'similar' crap." What I want to know about is more coherent explanations of abstract math and some scientific experiments which I never got to see in school, in addition to comedy. That I watch something else once in a while is not really an indication of my identity or my Jungian shadow self.

wolco2 6y ago
Just because you share more things in common with those you hate doesn't mean the recommendation is broken. If a large percentage of people who watch gun blowing up videos also are interested in the videos you mention than why wouldn't they show it (I assume if it were breaking guidelines it would be removed)
- sn41 6y ago
  The recommendation should be based on what a large fraction of my time is spent on (average over the timeline of my history), rather than a large of fraction of people who watch the last watched video is based on. Why does one video entirely screw up my historical record? I can't remember being recommended one 3Blue1Brown video in the last year, despite being subscribed to him. It's bizarre.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    The ones in the sidebar are based on global patterns to that specific video. The homepage ones should show you subscriptions videos but also based on the last keywords/videos watched. I don't see the value in using 2012-2019 videos watched when your recent ones speak more to what you currently are interested in.
  - 8note 6y ago