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At the core of YouTube's censorship is the idea that people aren't intelligent or wise enough to know what kinds of videos they should watch. They don't know wh

At the core of YouTube's censorship is the idea that people aren't intelligent or wise enough to know what kinds of videos they should watch. They don't know what's good for them. Whatever you may think of that idea, surely the idea that YouTube, which reduces down to a bunch of people sitting behind desks, should get to decide what others watch is questionable. That is, they think a small group of people are wiser and more intelligent than everyone and should get to curate and censor content for the majority at will.

Syonyk 5y ago
> At the core of YouTube's censorship is the idea that people aren't intelligent or wise enough to know what kinds of videos they should watch. They don't know what's good for them. I'm not sure I'd agree. I think that's putting far too much faith in them. YouTube's goal, roughly stated, is "More Hours Watched." This, in whatever form is appropriate, is pretty much the end goal of any social media sharing handwave etc platform. More eyeball-hours to sell ads to. For a while, YouTube's algorithms (which I think are almost certainly too dumb to have any idea what a video is about) pushed conspiracy theory content for the simple reason that if you can get someone watching conspiracy theory content on YouTube, they're very likely to continue watching conspiracy theory content on YouTube. Of the people who watch video 1234, 30% of them then watch dramatically more YouTube afterwards, so the more people you can show video 1234 to, the more hours will be watched - think "paperclip maximizer," not "Muahaha, we will drive people down conspiracy rabbit holes!" Of course, do this long enough, and eventually you have a problem - bad press coverage about how you're driving people down conspiracy rabbit holes. Whoops. But the problem here, from YouTube's perspective, isn't that you're driving people down conspiracy theory rabbit holes - it's the standard tech industry problem that you're getting bad press for it. Bad press is bad for hours viewed. So you fix the problem, and issue the standard tech industry appy polly loggy - "We are so, so sorry you caught us doing this and we will do the work to ensure that you don't catch us doing it in the future." I don't think YouTube particularly cares about Covid misinformation or [whatever]. They care about the bad press from being seen hosting it, which might impact people's opinion of them and reduce hours watched. To claim that the algorithms understand anything beyond the title or such is to claim a capability that has no evidence for existing.
- concordDance 5y ago
  > Bad press is bad for hours viewed I don't think this is true really. People aren't going to stop watching YouTube because it pulls others down conspiracy rabbit holes. I think the real reason is that bad press is unhappy employees and less potential recruits.
shadowgovt 5y ago
> surely the idea that YouTube, which reduces down to a bunch of people sitting behind desks, should get to decide what others watch is questionable That's been the value-add of YouTube since the day they implemented preference-learning and recommendations, and it continues to be one of their distinguishing factors in the marketplace of alternatives.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
It's fairly clear from a century of (a) marketing (b) psychology that people aren't really even remotely close to as intelligent or wise as they like to think they are, and almost certainly do not know what's good for them (let alone actually managing to act upon it). Humans are almost trivially manipulable (ask any advertising agency) thanks to a set of cognitive biases (and even defects) that are easily exploited (intentionally or otherwise) by all kinds of information and presentations. You don't have to think that you're wiser or more intelligent than other people to recognize this, and to understand the danger posed by certain kinds of presentations (which includes ads, something I wish was easier to regulate without violating free speech)

Syonyk 5y ago

> At the core of YouTube's censorship is the idea that people aren't intelligent or wise enough to know what kinds of videos they should watch. They don't know what's good for them. I'm not sure I'd agree. I think that's putting far too much faith in them. YouTube's goal, roughly stated, is "More Hours Watched." This, in whatever form is appropriate, is pretty much the end goal of any social media sharing handwave etc platform. More eyeball-hours to sell ads to. For a while, YouTube's algorithms (which I think are almost certainly too dumb to have any idea what a video is about) pushed conspiracy theory content for the simple reason that if you can get someone watching conspiracy theory content on YouTube, they're very likely to continue watching conspiracy theory content on YouTube. Of the people who watch video 1234, 30% of them then watch dramatically more YouTube afterwards, so the more people you can show video 1234 to, the more hours will be watched - think "paperclip maximizer," not "Muahaha, we will drive people down conspiracy rabbit holes!" Of course, do this long enough, and eventually you have a problem - bad press coverage about how you're driving people down conspiracy rabbit holes. Whoops. But the problem here, from YouTube's perspective, isn't that you're driving people down conspiracy theory rabbit holes - it's the standard tech industry problem that you're getting bad press for it. Bad press is bad for hours viewed. So you fix the problem, and issue the standard tech industry appy polly loggy - "We are so, so sorry you caught us doing this and we will do the work to ensure that you don't catch us doing it in the future." I don't think YouTube particularly cares about Covid misinformation or [whatever]. They care about the bad press from being seen hosting it, which might impact people's opinion of them and reduce hours watched. To claim that the algorithms understand anything beyond the title or such is to claim a capability that has no evidence for existing.

concordDance 5y ago
> Bad press is bad for hours viewed I don't think this is true really. People aren't going to stop watching YouTube because it pulls others down conspiracy rabbit holes. I think the real reason is that bad press is unhappy employees and less potential recruits.

shadowgovt 5y ago

> surely the idea that YouTube, which reduces down to a bunch of people sitting behind desks, should get to decide what others watch is questionable That's been the value-add of YouTube since the day they implemented preference-learning and recommendations, and it continues to be one of their distinguishing factors in the marketplace of alternatives.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

It's fairly clear from a century of (a) marketing (b) psychology that people aren't really even remotely close to as intelligent or wise as they like to think they are, and almost certainly do not know what's good for them (let alone actually managing to act upon it). Humans are almost trivially manipulable (ask any advertising agency) thanks to a set of cognitive biases (and even defects) that are easily exploited (intentionally or otherwise) by all kinds of information and presentations. You don't have to think that you're wiser or more intelligent than other people to recognize this, and to understand the danger posed by certain kinds of presentations (which includes ads, something I wish was easier to regulate without violating free speech)