5 ms·

The YouTube Rabbit Hole Is Nuanced

33 points by lxm 5y ago

nojito 5y ago
Very interesting study if anyone's curious. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2293/files/2022/04/YouTube.pdf https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/229...
mt_ 5y ago
https://archive.ph/84gnw https://archive.ph/84gnw
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
akira2501 5y ago
Is there an established "kittens to terrorist" pipeline? Did I miss a news story earlier this week? It seems very brash to assume that activity you simply don't approve of is instantaneously harmful. I'm also suspicious of any study that uses YouGov, and in particular, derives it's data from a volunteer panel. This smacks of looking for a conclusion and then building a study to find it.
- OrangeMonkey 5y ago
  If your idea can win in the marketplace of ideas, then free speech is the answer. If your idea loses in the marketplace of ideas, you ban the speech you dislike until your idea wins in the *marketplace of ideas. If any group is busy saying - out loud - that they need to ban what you can see and hear, maybe we should start asking some critical questions.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    If by win, you mean paid SEO of propaganda with brigading by fake accounts. But wait, you used the word free? How is paid propaganda free? The way astroturf is grass? Are corporations canceling me by not sufficiently promoting my political agenda on their ad supported site, because my content makes people not want to buy anything associated with it? Just asking questions.
  - chowells 5y ago
    A marketplace of ideas only works if every single idea every person has is actively chosen based on analysis of alternatives. Given that applies to about 0% of beliefs for most people, I'd say the idea has some flaws. If you immediately reject that, you're not very open to external ideas, are you? If you don't immediately reject it, you see how a market can be subverted to serve purposes that it was never intended to or constructed to resist. Either way, the idea of a marketplace of ideas is paradoxical in the extremes. And once you acknowledge the idea needs to be softened to avoid self-contradiction, you end up back at the question of what constitutes abuse. That's the exact same question people are wrestling with now. And because it's inherently an expression of a power struggle, you need to be aware of whose power you're supporting. I recommend siding against authoritarians and fascists, but that's just my idea.
    - freedomben 5y ago
      I think your premise is flawed: > A marketplace of ideas only works if every single idea every person has is actively chosen based on analysis of alternatives. What is required is exposure to alternatives. It's not a perfect nor an instantaneous process, but it absolutely works. I've changed my position many times based on rational argumentation. If they are never exposed to the alternatives, the majority of people will just continue believing in what they already believe, of which the bulk comes from upbringing.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        The marketplace of ideas can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
      - jacobolus 5y ago
        What is required is people arguing in good faith and telling the truth. Systematic omnipresent bad-faith argument appealing to strong emotions and flat-out lying about basic facts can easily overwhelm people’s reasoning, empathy, and capacity for independent fact checking.
        5y ago
  - pixl97 5y ago
    Paradox of intolerance alarms are going off in my head for some reason.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    First off, ideas are not a marketplace. Every useful idea has some call to action as part of it. That call to action may be a call to raise or lower taxes, a call to install bike lanes, a call to write more books about race car driving. These actions are frequently incompatible, and so they must be communally chosen. This is in contrast to a free market, where each individual can choose between available options. Second, even if ideas are treated as a market, movements can have disproportionate power compared to their "market share". The level of group support required to implement a policy depends on the specific policy. If 5% of people support defecating in the local lake, and 95% of people support the idea of swimming in the lake and using indoor plumbing, the result is not a swimmable lake. In the same way, a violent movement with very low popular support is unlikely to win any elections, but can still make it entirely unsafe for that movement's targets. Third, personal anecdote time. A few years ago after watching the "Alt-Right Playbook" [0], a YouTube series about recruitment and radicalization tactics used by the alt-right, YouTube recommended that I watch Nazi propaganda. I do not say that in any exaggeration. The video title had the phrase "The Jewish Question", and I was expecting a history on how that phrase had been used in racist fearmongering. It was instead exactly that same racist fearmongering. Even if I were to hold that all speech is permissible without repercussion, there is still a world of difference between allowing Nazi propaganda to exist, and active promotion of propaganda of that same propaganda. TL;DR: Ideas are not a marketplace, and lack of promotion is not the same as silencing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...
  - atoav 5y ago
    Who decides the architectonic layout of that marketplace and could it not have some sort of influence on the success or failure of said idea? Or lets ask differently: how could there ever be a neutral layout to said market place, which is without influence of the powers at play in any given situation?
- kurthr 5y ago
  I just got served this "patriotic" wonder on YouTube kids. https://youtu.be/NUklrt_4Mio https://youtu.be/NUklrt_4Mio Check out the translation, if you're into that.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Z-Nazi nuns and nurses. More or less, just not fixated on jews. My empathy for Russians declines daily, it seems - they had decades to work things out but seem to have decided that klepocratic autarchy was good enough, or was someone else's problem. Want to be more like North Korea? Do as Russians do. Megalomaniacs shouldn't be involved in potential nuclear war. The US has proposed structured human-in-the-loop treaties to require that nuclear weapons not be automated, but China and Russia have both refused. A few bad cosmic bit flips and unintended nuclear war is possible. Putin's swan dive into Ukraine should underline the need for change. Humanity is toast if we're going to play stupid nuclear brinksmanship games every couple decades.
    - kurthr 5y ago
      What's disturbing is that the poster requested it be on _YouTube_Kids_, they obliged, and due to that any state-sponsored "warning" notation is removed.
      - robbedpeter 5y ago
        Elsa-gate and other nastiness shuttle have been a big wake-up call for YouTube to get their shit together on the kids area of the platform. Nice, wholesome, patriotic Russian propaganda like that shouldn't be possible to post. Mandatory human review with a checklist and log should be one of many hurdles needed to post content for the kids-only content area. It should be the best guarded, most highly curated segment, but all sorts of inappropriate garbage gets through, and sticks around for weeks or months even after being reported.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  >Is there an established "kittens to terrorist" pipeline? Yes, its what Eli Pariser described as a Filter Bubble, first identified in Google Search results. I wonder if there has been some code sharing going on between Google and Youtube, or if team members have jumped ship? https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/08/eli-pariser-activist-whose-filter-bubble-warnings-presaged-trump-and-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/08/eli-pariser-ac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Some youtube holes can be good but considering the untapped potential of Youtube for DJ mixes as background music for coders, I find the youtube hole incredibly frustrating. I mean I've only just found this DJ and its pretty decent mix and her previous work is quite good as well, but considering she is Ukrainian, I wonder if this is Youtube's pro Ukrainian political policy in effect? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYC8KkNIkZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYC8KkNIkZk I found this decent mix (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vHRUsP20dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vHRUsP20dQ) only after listening to a couple of 145bpm German Underground techno mixes. I mean what were the algorithms thinking? The only link I can see is its from the Boiler Room in Berlin and Berlin is where you can find some decent German underground techno, plus the time of day is a factor, ie trying to slow down someone's Dopamine stimulation at 4am in the morning? But if you listen to some of the more established DJ's like Boris Brecha, Carl Cox, David Guetta, Adam Beyer or brands like Creamfields, Global Underground, Tomorrowland, Resistance, Transmission, Hooj Tunes, Essential Mix, you'll get stuck in youtube holes left right and centre and the quality tends to get worse the longer you listen. I mean their algorithms dont know how to curate DJ mixes, just like most people cant take people on a journey of aural delights when DJ'ing. One other thing I have noticed with Youtube is bank holidays in the UK, they tend to promote borderline illegal car activities, things like cruises where people lose it leaving the cruise or speeding videos, more so on August bank holiday and the last May bank holiday. I'm left with the impression Youtube is trying to incite illegal car activities, so maybe the NY Times and the Guardian do have a point!?!
tomatowurst 5y ago
I increasingly distrust nytimes after Ryan Breslow outed them. https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1514664887045091328 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1514664887045091328 How can you trust a media outlet with conflict of interests? This naturally makes me question it's journalists now too. One might associate NY Times with the city New York, the bastion of a free speech and democractic superpower. But after the facts, how can you not read NY times article without raising questions?
- willnonya 5y ago
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  It used to be normal in the news paper industry to have a hard dividing line between the "news" and "advertising" departments for this very reason. There was always a conflict of interest possible when newspapers reported on the companies placing ads with them. I'm not sure how true this is any more.
- yackback 5y ago
  Another criticism of NYTs coverage about something, this time San Francisco: https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1494090713482633217 https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1494090713482633217
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tonguez 5y ago
  “One might associate NY Times with the city New York, the bastion of a free speech and democractic superpower.” if you say all lives matter in nyc you will be beaten to a bloody pulp
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  NYT is like the Democratic party of newspapers. They're vaguely respectable centrists in a slightly Fascist nation. The scary part is how many of the American population think both of them are terrifying bastions of Communist Woke Terrorism, in striking contrast to objective reality.
midislack 5y ago
When I hear 'nuanced' it usually shuts off my brain.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This feels like a big straw man. My YouTube journey didn't start with watching 90 minute videos of some guy solving a soduku with no given digits and a knight move constraint. I got there step by step.
Dwedit 5y ago
One potential problem with this article is that your LOCATION can also determine which videos are suggested to you. So if you're in New York City, you're not going to see the same suggestions as someone in Arkansas.

33 points by lxm 5y ago

Very interesting study if anyone's curious. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2293/files/2022/04/YouTube.pdf https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/229...

mt_ 5y ago

https://archive.ph/84gnw https://archive.ph/84gnw

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

akira2501 5y ago

Is there an established "kittens to terrorist" pipeline? Did I miss a news story earlier this week? It seems very brash to assume that activity you simply don't approve of is instantaneously harmful. I'm also suspicious of any study that uses YouGov, and in particular, derives it's data from a volunteer panel. This smacks of looking for a conclusion and then building a study to find it.

OrangeMonkey 5y ago
If your idea can win in the marketplace of ideas, then free speech is the answer. If your idea loses in the marketplace of ideas, you ban the speech you dislike until your idea wins in the *marketplace of ideas. If any group is busy saying - out loud - that they need to ban what you can see and hear, maybe we should start asking some critical questions.
- kurthr 5y ago
  If by win, you mean paid SEO of propaganda with brigading by fake accounts. But wait, you used the word free? How is paid propaganda free? The way astroturf is grass? Are corporations canceling me by not sufficiently promoting my political agenda on their ad supported site, because my content makes people not want to buy anything associated with it? Just asking questions.
- chowells 5y ago
  A marketplace of ideas only works if every single idea every person has is actively chosen based on analysis of alternatives. Given that applies to about 0% of beliefs for most people, I'd say the idea has some flaws. If you immediately reject that, you're not very open to external ideas, are you? If you don't immediately reject it, you see how a market can be subverted to serve purposes that it was never intended to or constructed to resist. Either way, the idea of a marketplace of ideas is paradoxical in the extremes. And once you acknowledge the idea needs to be softened to avoid self-contradiction, you end up back at the question of what constitutes abuse. That's the exact same question people are wrestling with now. And because it's inherently an expression of a power struggle, you need to be aware of whose power you're supporting. I recommend siding against authoritarians and fascists, but that's just my idea.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    I think your premise is flawed: > A marketplace of ideas only works if every single idea every person has is actively chosen based on analysis of alternatives. What is required is exposure to alternatives. It's not a perfect nor an instantaneous process, but it absolutely works. I've changed my position many times based on rational argumentation. If they are never exposed to the alternatives, the majority of people will just continue believing in what they already believe, of which the bulk comes from upbringing.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      The marketplace of ideas can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      What is required is people arguing in good faith and telling the truth. Systematic omnipresent bad-faith argument appealing to strong emotions and flat-out lying about basic facts can easily overwhelm people’s reasoning, empathy, and capacity for independent fact checking.
      - 5y ago
- pixl97 5y ago
  Paradox of intolerance alarms are going off in my head for some reason.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  First off, ideas are not a marketplace. Every useful idea has some call to action as part of it. That call to action may be a call to raise or lower taxes, a call to install bike lanes, a call to write more books about race car driving. These actions are frequently incompatible, and so they must be communally chosen. This is in contrast to a free market, where each individual can choose between available options. Second, even if ideas are treated as a market, movements can have disproportionate power compared to their "market share". The level of group support required to implement a policy depends on the specific policy. If 5% of people support defecating in the local lake, and 95% of people support the idea of swimming in the lake and using indoor plumbing, the result is not a swimmable lake. In the same way, a violent movement with very low popular support is unlikely to win any elections, but can still make it entirely unsafe for that movement's targets. Third, personal anecdote time. A few years ago after watching the "Alt-Right Playbook" [0], a YouTube series about recruitment and radicalization tactics used by the alt-right, YouTube recommended that I watch Nazi propaganda. I do not say that in any exaggeration. The video title had the phrase "The Jewish Question", and I was expecting a history on how that phrase had been used in racist fearmongering. It was instead exactly that same racist fearmongering. Even if I were to hold that all speech is permissible without repercussion, there is still a world of difference between allowing Nazi propaganda to exist, and active promotion of propaganda of that same propaganda. TL;DR: Ideas are not a marketplace, and lack of promotion is not the same as silencing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...
- atoav 5y ago
  Who decides the architectonic layout of that marketplace and could it not have some sort of influence on the success or failure of said idea? Or lets ask differently: how could there ever be a neutral layout to said market place, which is without influence of the powers at play in any given situation?
kurthr 5y ago
I just got served this "patriotic" wonder on YouTube kids. https://youtu.be/NUklrt_4Mio https://youtu.be/NUklrt_4Mio Check out the translation, if you're into that.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Z-Nazi nuns and nurses. More or less, just not fixated on jews. My empathy for Russians declines daily, it seems - they had decades to work things out but seem to have decided that klepocratic autarchy was good enough, or was someone else's problem. Want to be more like North Korea? Do as Russians do. Megalomaniacs shouldn't be involved in potential nuclear war. The US has proposed structured human-in-the-loop treaties to require that nuclear weapons not be automated, but China and Russia have both refused. A few bad cosmic bit flips and unintended nuclear war is possible. Putin's swan dive into Ukraine should underline the need for change. Humanity is toast if we're going to play stupid nuclear brinksmanship games every couple decades.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    What's disturbing is that the poster requested it be on _YouTube_Kids_, they obliged, and due to that any state-sponsored "warning" notation is removed.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Elsa-gate and other nastiness shuttle have been a big wake-up call for YouTube to get their shit together on the kids area of the platform. Nice, wholesome, patriotic Russian propaganda like that shouldn't be possible to post. Mandatory human review with a checklist and log should be one of many hurdles needed to post content for the kids-only content area. It should be the best guarded, most highly curated segment, but all sorts of inappropriate garbage gets through, and sticks around for weeks or months even after being reported.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Terry_Roll 5y ago
>Is there an established "kittens to terrorist" pipeline? Yes, its what Eli Pariser described as a Filter Bubble, first identified in Google Search results. I wonder if there has been some code sharing going on between Google and Youtube, or if team members have jumped ship? https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/08/eli-pariser-activist-whose-filter-bubble-warnings-presaged-trump-and-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/08/eli-pariser-ac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Some youtube holes can be good but considering the untapped potential of Youtube for DJ mixes as background music for coders, I find the youtube hole incredibly frustrating. I mean I've only just found this DJ and its pretty decent mix and her previous work is quite good as well, but considering she is Ukrainian, I wonder if this is Youtube's pro Ukrainian political policy in effect? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYC8KkNIkZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYC8KkNIkZk I found this decent mix (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vHRUsP20dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vHRUsP20dQ) only after listening to a couple of 145bpm German Underground techno mixes. I mean what were the algorithms thinking? The only link I can see is its from the Boiler Room in Berlin and Berlin is where you can find some decent German underground techno, plus the time of day is a factor, ie trying to slow down someone's Dopamine stimulation at 4am in the morning? But if you listen to some of the more established DJ's like Boris Brecha, Carl Cox, David Guetta, Adam Beyer or brands like Creamfields, Global Underground, Tomorrowland, Resistance, Transmission, Hooj Tunes, Essential Mix, you'll get stuck in youtube holes left right and centre and the quality tends to get worse the longer you listen. I mean their algorithms dont know how to curate DJ mixes, just like most people cant take people on a journey of aural delights when DJ'ing. One other thing I have noticed with Youtube is bank holidays in the UK, they tend to promote borderline illegal car activities, things like cruises where people lose it leaving the cruise or speeding videos, more so on August bank holiday and the last May bank holiday. I'm left with the impression Youtube is trying to incite illegal car activities, so maybe the NY Times and the Guardian do have a point!?!

tomatowurst 5y ago

I increasingly distrust nytimes after Ryan Breslow outed them. https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1514664887045091328 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1514664887045091328 How can you trust a media outlet with conflict of interests? This naturally makes me question it's journalists now too. One might associate NY Times with the city New York, the bastion of a free speech and democractic superpower. But after the facts, how can you not read NY times article without raising questions?

willnonya 5y ago
AlexandrB 5y ago
It used to be normal in the news paper industry to have a hard dividing line between the "news" and "advertising" departments for this very reason. There was always a conflict of interest possible when newspapers reported on the companies placing ads with them. I'm not sure how true this is any more.
yackback 5y ago
Another criticism of NYTs coverage about something, this time San Francisco: https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1494090713482633217 https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1494090713482633217
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tonguez 5y ago
“One might associate NY Times with the city New York, the bastion of a free speech and democractic superpower.” if you say all lives matter in nyc you will be beaten to a bloody pulp
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
NYT is like the Democratic party of newspapers. They're vaguely respectable centrists in a slightly Fascist nation. The scary part is how many of the American population think both of them are terrifying bastions of Communist Woke Terrorism, in striking contrast to objective reality.

midislack 5y ago

When I hear 'nuanced' it usually shuts off my brain.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

This feels like a big straw man. My YouTube journey didn't start with watching 90 minute videos of some guy solving a soduku with no given digits and a knight move constraint. I got there step by step.

Dwedit 5y ago

One potential problem with this article is that your LOCATION can also determine which videos are suggested to you. So if you're in New York City, you're not going to see the same suggestions as someone in Arkansas.