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Wouldn't that also make it incredibly difficult for a new startup to invent a better and less harmful recommendation system?

by eli 4y ago

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
I'm not sure. If the incumbents were barred from doing a thing they currently have invested a lot of time and money and effort into or such thing was made legally riskier I think that would open the door to competition.
causi 4y ago
Sure. The fact you can't knowingly do business with known criminals and stolen money also makes it harder to start a new bank.
- eli 4y ago
  Google knowingly promoted extremist videos? Or did they take them down when made aware?
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Knowingly: https://www.propublica.org/article/youtube-promised-to-label-state-sponsored-videos-but-doesnt-always-do-so https://www.propublica.org/article/youtube-promised-to-label... > YouTube decided against labeling 22 channels identified by ProPublica, but it's not entirely clear why. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-uses-youtube-and-twitter-to-spread-its-propaganda-version-of-life-for-uyghurs-in-xinjiang https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-uses-youtube-an... > YouTube said the clips did not violate its community guidelines. > The warehouse accounts on YouTube have attracted more than 480,000 views in total. People on YouTube, TikTok and other platforms have cited the testimonials to argue that all is well in Xinjiang — and received hundreds of thousands of additional views. https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/08/google-youtube-hate-videos-ad-keywords-blocklist-failures https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/08/google-you... > [YouTube] even suggested videos for campaigns with terms that it clearly finds problematic, such as “great replacement.” YouTube slaps Wikipedia boxes on videos about the “the great replacement,” noting that it’s “a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory.” > Some of the hundreds of millions of videos that the company suggested for ad placements related to these hate terms contained overt racism and bigotry, including multiple videos featuring re-posted content from the neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Shoah, whose official channel was suspended by YouTube in 2019 for hate speech. Google’s top video suggestions for these hate terms returned many news videos and some anti-hate content—but also dozens of videos from channels that researchers labeled as espousing hate or White nationalist views. > Even after [Google spokesperson Christopher Lawton] made that statement, 14 of the hate terms on our list—about one in six of them—remained available to search for videos for ad placements on Google Ads, including the anti-Black meme “we wuz kangz”; the neo-Nazi appropriated symbol “black sun”; “red ice tv,” a White nationalist media outlet that YouTube banned from its platform in 2019; and the White nationalist slogans “you will not replace us” and “diversity is a code word for anti-white.”
ericmay 4y ago
What would a non-harmful or less harmful (than what?) recommendation system look like? What's the end goal of a recommendation system?
- eli 4y ago
  Pick any definition you like. If recommendation systems come with existential legal risks for a small company, then only the biggest companies can afford to run them. Or think of it this way: How is Mastodon supposed to take on larger social networks without recommending people to follow? Should every Mastodon server operator be legally liable for recommending someone harmful?
  - ericmay 4y ago
    My definition would be that they're all bad and there is no good use for them because the end results are harmful - more spend/engagements I view in the same way I would "more smoking". Any algorithm or curation excluding perhaps based on latest or "most views" or something similar would be a recommendation as far as I'm concerned. But I'm just not sure how or why online platforms get to have their cake and eat it too. If the NYTs publishes a story that eating Tidepods is healthy and encourages kids and parents to do so, they get sued. If Facebook creates an algorithm that causes the same or similar to happen they get a free pass. They either have to be a public speech platform where anyone can say anything as long as it isn't literally breaking the law, or they have to follow the same rules as other entities that curate content. If you want to say "why not both?" then that's fine but you have to apply that to all entities, not just online content.
    - eli 4y ago
      You don't use the algorithmically generated and ranked HN homepage? You scroll through pages and pages of every new submission? If you said something libelous about me on HN, I can sue HN for publishing and promoting the comment? A platform that "allows everything that isn't breaking the law" is a platform that is 99% spam.

Wouldn't that also make it incredibly difficult for a new startup to invent a better and less harmful recommendation system?

by eli 4y ago

Wouldn't that also make it incredibly difficult for a new startup to invent a better and less harmful recommendation system?

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

I'm not sure. If the incumbents were barred from doing a thing they currently have invested a lot of time and money and effort into or such thing was made legally riskier I think that would open the door to competition.

causi 4y ago

Sure. The fact you can't knowingly do business with known criminals and stolen money also makes it harder to start a new bank.

eli 4y ago
Google knowingly promoted extremist videos? Or did they take them down when made aware?
- burkaman 4y ago
  Knowingly: https://www.propublica.org/article/youtube-promised-to-label-state-sponsored-videos-but-doesnt-always-do-so https://www.propublica.org/article/youtube-promised-to-label... > YouTube decided against labeling 22 channels identified by ProPublica, but it's not entirely clear why. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-uses-youtube-and-twitter-to-spread-its-propaganda-version-of-life-for-uyghurs-in-xinjiang https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-uses-youtube-an... > YouTube said the clips did not violate its community guidelines. > The warehouse accounts on YouTube have attracted more than 480,000 views in total. People on YouTube, TikTok and other platforms have cited the testimonials to argue that all is well in Xinjiang — and received hundreds of thousands of additional views. https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/08/google-youtube-hate-videos-ad-keywords-blocklist-failures https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/08/google-you... > [YouTube] even suggested videos for campaigns with terms that it clearly finds problematic, such as “great replacement.” YouTube slaps Wikipedia boxes on videos about the “the great replacement,” noting that it’s “a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory.” > Some of the hundreds of millions of videos that the company suggested for ad placements related to these hate terms contained overt racism and bigotry, including multiple videos featuring re-posted content from the neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Shoah, whose official channel was suspended by YouTube in 2019 for hate speech. Google’s top video suggestions for these hate terms returned many news videos and some anti-hate content—but also dozens of videos from channels that researchers labeled as espousing hate or White nationalist views. > Even after [Google spokesperson Christopher Lawton] made that statement, 14 of the hate terms on our list—about one in six of them—remained available to search for videos for ad placements on Google Ads, including the anti-Black meme “we wuz kangz”; the neo-Nazi appropriated symbol “black sun”; “red ice tv,” a White nationalist media outlet that YouTube banned from its platform in 2019; and the White nationalist slogans “you will not replace us” and “diversity is a code word for anti-white.”

ericmay 4y ago

What would a non-harmful or less harmful (than what?) recommendation system look like? What's the end goal of a recommendation system?

eli 4y ago
Pick any definition you like. If recommendation systems come with existential legal risks for a small company, then only the biggest companies can afford to run them. Or think of it this way: How is Mastodon supposed to take on larger social networks without recommending people to follow? Should every Mastodon server operator be legally liable for recommending someone harmful?
- ericmay 4y ago
  My definition would be that they're all bad and there is no good use for them because the end results are harmful - more spend/engagements I view in the same way I would "more smoking". Any algorithm or curation excluding perhaps based on latest or "most views" or something similar would be a recommendation as far as I'm concerned. But I'm just not sure how or why online platforms get to have their cake and eat it too. If the NYTs publishes a story that eating Tidepods is healthy and encourages kids and parents to do so, they get sued. If Facebook creates an algorithm that causes the same or similar to happen they get a free pass. They either have to be a public speech platform where anyone can say anything as long as it isn't literally breaking the law, or they have to follow the same rules as other entities that curate content. If you want to say "why not both?" then that's fine but you have to apply that to all entities, not just online content.
  - eli 4y ago
    You don't use the algorithmically generated and ranked HN homepage? You scroll through pages and pages of every new submission? If you said something libelous about me on HN, I can sue HN for publishing and promoting the comment? A platform that "allows everything that isn't breaking the law" is a platform that is 99% spam.