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Oh come now. I constantly hear this concern from my friends (almost exclusively left-of-center). And they aren't totally wrong? I have a qanon-er in my family;

Oh come now. I constantly hear this concern from my friends (almost exclusively left-of-center). And they aren't totally wrong? I have a qanon-er in my family; she's carefully curated her media sources to guarantee a pure, steady stream of nutjob garbage. The thing is, censoring twitter/facebook/youtube makes no difference - these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look. At least on youtube there's a chance the algorithm will show some non-bullshit. I don't know what "the answer" to any of this is, but I suspect we all need to be a bit more tolerant of online stupidity. Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. It's incredibly easy to like/dislike/hide-like-this content. My feeds are fantastic. I suspect the people complaining about their feeds actually like garbage and even more so like to complain.

twoWhlsGud 4y ago
Old joke: "If you owe the bank $1M it's your problem, if you owe the bank $1B it's theirs". New joke: "If a few citizens become radicalized/crazy in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society it's their problem ... "
- pessimizer 4y ago
  ...but if the majority of citizens act in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society, you may live in a monarchy or oligarchy.
  - toofy 4y ago
    i’m not sure why this would be the only option you come to. it’s much more likely that folks are concerned because the populism wishes to destroy pluralism.
ska 4y ago
> Oh come now. I constantly hear Path dependence, it's a funny thing.
viraptor 4y ago
I think there's some nuance here though, where people do make a distinction between opposing views and harmful content. (likely not everyone, but still) What I mean is, I don't care if someone reads a politician I hate. I care if they read a politician who enables the next pizzagate or worse. Or if they read state sponsored misinformation while thinking it's genuine opinions. And yeah, I do acknowledge there's some overlapping grey area.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read.
  - kannanvijayan 4y ago
    > The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read. As do I, and you. I was pretty happy when all of those ISIS accounts that were spewing violence and hate got shut down. I'm sure you have your boundaries on what you'd want society to allow and restrict on public mediums. The specific details of what those boundaries are will depend on your personal notion of what constitutes communication which can be considered abusive. As it will for any other person. Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. I guarantee you if we have a back and forth discussion we will discover where your boundaries lie across the myriad issues where people typically want to control public discourse.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. If I want to press the ban/blacklist button on tag, account, group, or whatever social unit to not see it again that's my decision. Sure, some of them should be default (probably don't want people to get porn the second they sign up), but user should be in power to moderate and filter their own stream. > Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. 3/4 of what you mentioned is illegal in most places in the first place so it isn't point of contention. And that isn't really a problem. Site deciding this or that political view is now bad is. You try to put removing the illegal/disturbing content in same category as worldview manipulation. The first is way more black and white than the second and should not be considered together, even if similar systems are used for them.
shadowgovt 4y ago
> these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look This is likely true. Most of the discussion around "the algorithm" is mainly centered around whether there's something about the way the major online sharing channels are selecting what to present that acts as a funnel towards QAnon and other radical theories, not whether people already dedicated to finding such information can find it.
- pixl97 4y ago
  YT: "you searched WWII", recommended video is "how to become a nazi in 2022" I had to click do not recommend this content on a ton of videos.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Precisely. If I had to hazard a guess, I think their algorithm is hyper-optimizing for linkages, and when linkages are broad but tenuous, it hyper-optimizes for the ones with only the slightest dominance. Hypothetically: all sorts of people are interested in the history of World War II... it's a big war, it defined politics for over half a century, and it's taught every year in the history classes of at least a hundred nations. So you're looking at a topic with hundreds of "also likes" connections but no strong winner. Perhaps there is a 0.000001% chance that if you watch a WWII video, your next video will be one on modern Nazism (including recruitment videos). I wonder if YouTube's algorithm boosts that small fluctuation in a sea of noise into a single recommendation result (or even grabs the top 5, but the signal is so noisy that this one still shows up in that top 5)?
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. Yes and no. Youtube radicalisation / algorithmic extremism is a thing, because the engagement-maximising algorithm has a strong bias for rabbit-holes, kooks, con-artists and incendiary nonsense. The "funnel towards QAnon" that the sibling comment mentioned. Unless you lean hard against it - which first requires awareness of the problem and the skills or knowledge to spot it - it will be in your feed. "you are to blame" is to an extent blaming the victims.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The sentiment I've heard a lot is "I'm not clicking on that, it'll take weeks to undo the damage to my recommendations".
  - rchaud 4y ago
    How many average users are even aware of this? It took until 2021 for people to figure out that quote-tweeting politician hot takes to dunk on them, actually helped politicians' reach because Twitter counted it as engagement.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
      > How many average users are even aware of this? An increasing number, but still very low. And awareness in itself won't solve the issue entirely. This is why the "you are to blame" sentiment is to an extent blaming the victims.
ilyt 4y ago
> Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. It's incredibly easy to like/dislike/hide-like-this content. My feeds are fantastic. I suspect the people complaining about their feeds actually like garbage and even more so like to complain. I'd imagine most people have reasonable assumption than YT will only show you more stuff that you like (as in press the like button), not that any engagement, even downvotes, will continue to put more shit into your stream. Ever wondered why YTbers ask for comments and don't shy from saying "if you didn't like it, downvote and tell me in the comments"? That still drives engagement and that is all to algorithm. Once you get it, it's easy to keep the shit you don't want in the stream, but not everyone is well versed in algorithmical ways so it's not that hard to get into algorithmics hole
unsupp0rted 4y ago
Please teach me how I can get YouTube to stop showing me videos about cars and food reactions. And American local news channels. Dislike button does nothing. Hide because I don’t like this video option does nothing. It hides that video and keeps recommending competing channels on the same topic. Don’t recommend channel button blocks the channel so that three more competing channels on the same topic take its place
- joshka 4y ago
  See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en&co=G...

twoWhlsGud 4y ago

Old joke: "If you owe the bank $1M it's your problem, if you owe the bank $1B it's theirs". New joke: "If a few citizens become radicalized/crazy in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society it's their problem ... "

pessimizer 4y ago
...but if the majority of citizens act in ways that threaten the very functioning of your society, you may live in a monarchy or oligarchy.
- toofy 4y ago
  i’m not sure why this would be the only option you come to. it’s much more likely that folks are concerned because the populism wishes to destroy pluralism.

ska 4y ago

> Oh come now. I constantly hear Path dependence, it's a funny thing.

viraptor 4y ago

I think there's some nuance here though, where people do make a distinction between opposing views and harmful content. (likely not everyone, but still) What I mean is, I don't care if someone reads a politician I hate. I care if they read a politician who enables the next pizzagate or worse. Or if they read state sponsored misinformation while thinking it's genuine opinions. And yeah, I do acknowledge there's some overlapping grey area.

pessimizer 4y ago
The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read.
- kannanvijayan 4y ago
  > The main takeaway is that you care what other people read, not about what people are making you read. As do I, and you. I was pretty happy when all of those ISIS accounts that were spewing violence and hate got shut down. I'm sure you have your boundaries on what you'd want society to allow and restrict on public mediums. The specific details of what those boundaries are will depend on your personal notion of what constitutes communication which can be considered abusive. As it will for any other person. Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. I guarantee you if we have a back and forth discussion we will discover where your boundaries lie across the myriad issues where people typically want to control public discourse.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Right but I don't want some wanker at Twitter or Facebook office decide that. If I want to press the ban/blacklist button on tag, account, group, or whatever social unit to not see it again that's my decision. Sure, some of them should be default (probably don't want people to get porn the second they sign up), but user should be in power to moderate and filter their own stream. > Copyright violations. Beheading videos. "Pornography" or pseudo-"pornography" involving minors. Direct threats of violence towards individuals or groups. Deepfakes generated without consent. Etc. Etc. 3/4 of what you mentioned is illegal in most places in the first place so it isn't point of contention. And that isn't really a problem. Site deciding this or that political view is now bad is. You try to put removing the illegal/disturbing content in same category as worldview manipulation. The first is way more black and white than the second and should not be considered together, even if similar systems are used for them.

shadowgovt 4y ago

> these people will find their fringe no matter how hard they have to look This is likely true. Most of the discussion around "the algorithm" is mainly centered around whether there's something about the way the major online sharing channels are selecting what to present that acts as a funnel towards QAnon and other radical theories, not whether people already dedicated to finding such information can find it.

pixl97 4y ago
YT: "you searched WWII", recommended video is "how to become a nazi in 2022" I had to click do not recommend this content on a ton of videos.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Precisely. If I had to hazard a guess, I think their algorithm is hyper-optimizing for linkages, and when linkages are broad but tenuous, it hyper-optimizes for the ones with only the slightest dominance. Hypothetically: all sorts of people are interested in the history of World War II... it's a big war, it defined politics for over half a century, and it's taught every year in the history classes of at least a hundred nations. So you're looking at a topic with hundreds of "also likes" connections but no strong winner. Perhaps there is a 0.000001% chance that if you watch a WWII video, your next video will be one on modern Nazism (including recruitment videos). I wonder if YouTube's algorithm boosts that small fluctuation in a sea of noise into a single recommendation result (or even grabs the top 5, but the signal is so noisy that this one still shows up in that top 5)?

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. Yes and no. Youtube radicalisation / algorithmic extremism is a thing, because the engagement-maximising algorithm has a strong bias for rabbit-holes, kooks, con-artists and incendiary nonsense. The "funnel towards QAnon" that the sibling comment mentioned. Unless you lean hard against it - which first requires awareness of the problem and the skills or knowledge to spot it - it will be in your feed. "you are to blame" is to an extent blaming the victims.

XorNot 4y ago
The sentiment I've heard a lot is "I'm not clicking on that, it'll take weeks to undo the damage to my recommendations".
- rchaud 4y ago
  How many average users are even aware of this? It took until 2021 for people to figure out that quote-tweeting politician hot takes to dunk on them, actually helped politicians' reach because Twitter counted it as engagement.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    > How many average users are even aware of this? An increasing number, but still very low. And awareness in itself won't solve the issue entirely. This is why the "you are to blame" sentiment is to an extent blaming the victims.

ilyt 4y ago

> Also: If your social media feeds are showing you crappy content, you are to blame. It's incredibly easy to like/dislike/hide-like-this content. My feeds are fantastic. I suspect the people complaining about their feeds actually like garbage and even more so like to complain. I'd imagine most people have reasonable assumption than YT will only show you more stuff that you like (as in press the like button), not that any engagement, even downvotes, will continue to put more shit into your stream. Ever wondered why YTbers ask for comments and don't shy from saying "if you didn't like it, downvote and tell me in the comments"? That still drives engagement and that is all to algorithm. Once you get it, it's easy to keep the shit you don't want in the stream, but not everyone is well versed in algorithmical ways so it's not that hard to get into algorithmics hole

unsupp0rted 4y ago

Please teach me how I can get YouTube to stop showing me videos about cars and food reactions. And American local news channels. Dislike button does nothing. Hide because I don’t like this video option does nothing. It hides that video and keeps recommending competing channels on the same topic. Don’t recommend channel button blocks the channel so that three more competing channels on the same topic take its place

joshka 4y ago
See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en&co=G...