3 ms·

Youtube is a bad joke these days, and in particular the search algorithm is hilariously biased towards corporate/state propaganda, and if you're not searching,

Youtube is a bad joke these days, and in particular the search algorithm is hilariously biased towards corporate/state propaganda, and if you're not searching, towards brain-dead Tik-Tok like content. China, amusingly enough, bans such content in its own country but is happy to promote it abroad. I see this as proof of my general conjecture that dumbing down the American population is something the global elites continue to pursue as a means of retaining their grasp on power. As far as myself, I was shadow banned on Youtube well over a year ago, most likely for making cynical comments about the ratio of ads to content on several popular channels, and perhaps for making a habit of reporting to content creators when their content had been age-restricted for no apparent reason, and as a result I will never buy or purchase anything I see recommended to me in a Youtube ad, which I mostly avoid via ublock origin and youtube_dl, and I have nothing but contempt for the Alphabet/Google brand and all who ride with it. We can do better than this, Europe's data privacy laws should be ported to the USA and all the creepy data merchants should be forced out of business post haste. P.S. stop calling them FAANG, they're nothing but MAMAA... as in the undue influence of Big MAMAA in the tech sector, which also ties into their ancestor, Ma Bell.

infinitifall 4y ago
I've noticed that unless you spell out channel names, you will only be shown videos from verified/checkmark accounts, no matter how far down you scroll. The only way to see videos made by "the people" is restricting search to last week or shorter time periods. Controversy-adjacent search terms are sanitized and rendered useless. Channels and videos are shadow banned so that even if you remember exact video titles you will never be able to find them. If despite these measures you somehow end up on an interesting video, the recommendations sidebar is scrubbed clean and shows global popular videos instead of the usual similar videos watched by other people. Clearly optimizing for total watchtime and avoiding controversy is not aligned with creating a great search and recommendation algorithm.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  >I've noticed that unless you spell out channel names, you will only be shown videos from verified/checkmark accounts, no matter how far down you scroll. Searching "lego stop motion" I get a non-checkmark channel in the 4th result: https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png >If despite these measures you somehow end up on an interesting video, the recommendations sidebar is scrubbed clean and shows global popular videos instead of the usual similar videos watched by other people. Are you talking about all videos, or just controversy-adjacent videos? I know I've seen people online complaining in the past that YouTube sometimes leads to people going down a rabbit hole of crazy videos with the recommendations. If you're just referring to controversial videos, what you say sounds like YouTube fixed the rabbit hole problem. If you're referring to all videos, I haven't experienced that. I get mostly good recommendations. Disclosure, I work at Google but not YouTube.
  - concinds 4y ago
    > Searching "lego stop motion" I get a non-checkmark channel in the 4th result: https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png I believe he was referring to politics-linked searched on YouTube. > Are you talking about all videos, or just controversy-adjacent videos? I know I've seen people online complaining in the past that YouTube sometimes leads to people going down a rabbit hole of crazy videos with the recommendations. If you're just referring to controversial videos, what you say sounds like YouTube fixed the rabbit hole problem. If you're referring to all videos, I haven't experienced that. I get mostly good recommendations. YouTube's solution consists of two things: upranking an entire class of videos/channels (mainstream media channels) and additionally deranking other channels/videos (I've had the experience of looking up a politician by full name and never finding his high-views Youtube channel unless I click Filters -> Channel). All of that, with zero transparency (giving us the lists of all artificially-reranked channels, and the new rank weights) nor government or at least independent oversight. At Google's scale, when they promote certain views over others, that poses problems of interference with elections and with the public mind (see Manufacturing Consent). The political-interference problem existed before (when the rabbit-hole effect ended up promoting Stefan Molyneux), but has simply been inverted in the other direction, basically promoting US ideological interests. What YouTube is doing violates Popper's 'open society' principles.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
concinds 4y ago
I tried so hard to find a YouTube video I found in 2020 (here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amUMV6xDqbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amUMV6xDqbo ) using YouTube search and Google search and couldn't. Using Bing, I find that video in minutes. Whether people ascribe it to incompetence or sinister motives, the end result is the same. I don't understand why there isn't public and democratic oversight over these algorithms. YouTube can literally sway elections by promoting some sources over others; and they demonstrably and blatantly promote mainstream media channels over independent and first-hand channels.

infinitifall 4y ago

I've noticed that unless you spell out channel names, you will only be shown videos from verified/checkmark accounts, no matter how far down you scroll. The only way to see videos made by "the people" is restricting search to last week or shorter time periods. Controversy-adjacent search terms are sanitized and rendered useless. Channels and videos are shadow banned so that even if you remember exact video titles you will never be able to find them. If despite these measures you somehow end up on an interesting video, the recommendations sidebar is scrubbed clean and shows global popular videos instead of the usual similar videos watched by other people. Clearly optimizing for total watchtime and avoiding controversy is not aligned with creating a great search and recommendation algorithm.

Thorrez 4y ago
>I've noticed that unless you spell out channel names, you will only be shown videos from verified/checkmark accounts, no matter how far down you scroll. Searching "lego stop motion" I get a non-checkmark channel in the 4th result: https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png >If despite these measures you somehow end up on an interesting video, the recommendations sidebar is scrubbed clean and shows global popular videos instead of the usual similar videos watched by other people. Are you talking about all videos, or just controversy-adjacent videos? I know I've seen people online complaining in the past that YouTube sometimes leads to people going down a rabbit hole of crazy videos with the recommendations. If you're just referring to controversial videos, what you say sounds like YouTube fixed the rabbit hole problem. If you're referring to all videos, I haven't experienced that. I get mostly good recommendations. Disclosure, I work at Google but not YouTube.
- concinds 4y ago
  > Searching "lego stop motion" I get a non-checkmark channel in the 4th result: https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png https://i.imgur.com/Dvds7ib.png I believe he was referring to politics-linked searched on YouTube. > Are you talking about all videos, or just controversy-adjacent videos? I know I've seen people online complaining in the past that YouTube sometimes leads to people going down a rabbit hole of crazy videos with the recommendations. If you're just referring to controversial videos, what you say sounds like YouTube fixed the rabbit hole problem. If you're referring to all videos, I haven't experienced that. I get mostly good recommendations. YouTube's solution consists of two things: upranking an entire class of videos/channels (mainstream media channels) and additionally deranking other channels/videos (I've had the experience of looking up a politician by full name and never finding his high-views Youtube channel unless I click Filters -> Channel). All of that, with zero transparency (giving us the lists of all artificially-reranked channels, and the new rank weights) nor government or at least independent oversight. At Google's scale, when they promote certain views over others, that poses problems of interference with elections and with the public mind (see Manufacturing Consent). The political-interference problem existed before (when the rabbit-hole effect ended up promoting Stefan Molyneux), but has simply been inverted in the other direction, basically promoting US ideological interests. What YouTube is doing violates Popper's 'open society' principles.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

concinds 4y ago

I tried so hard to find a YouTube video I found in 2020 (here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amUMV6xDqbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amUMV6xDqbo ) using YouTube search and Google search and couldn't. Using Bing, I find that video in minutes. Whether people ascribe it to incompetence or sinister motives, the end result is the same. I don't understand why there isn't public and democratic oversight over these algorithms. YouTube can literally sway elections by promoting some sources over others; and they demonstrably and blatantly promote mainstream media channels over independent and first-hand channels.