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I'd love to see the meat behind those algorithms. Are the algorithms intentionally biased to prefer serving that type of content for some ideological reason? Or

I'd love to see the meat behind those algorithms. Are the algorithms intentionally biased to prefer serving that type of content for some ideological reason? Or are we now just so far gone as a society that a significant number of users actually search for / consume that type of content, and the algorithm recommending it is actually natural/unbiased?

nerdponx 3y ago
I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page. So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting. Then if you're just looking at the viewer metrics, it looks like the step sibling stuff is really popular. So the algorithm prioritizes it further, so people watch it more, etc. This is all speculation of course, but it's a cautionary tale about why statistical and causal reasoning is useful even if you're in industry, as long as you actually care about delivering a good data product.
- tivert 3y ago
  > I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page. I recall reading something years ago that said some porn site that started to do data-driven analytics and found that even though "step-sibling/parent fantasy" stuff wasn't generally popular, but it was particularly good at attracting paying subscribers. I kinda wonder if that effect was overstated, but all the porn sites started cargo-culting that finding as "conventional wisdom" and made the genre a thing. > So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting. I think of lot of that particular genre isn't normal-looking, for instance by casting size differences to creepily create the impression of an illegal age difference: https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is-scrawny-young-men-who-look-like-pre-teens https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is...

nerdponx 3y ago

I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page. So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting. Then if you're just looking at the viewer metrics, it looks like the step sibling stuff is really popular. So the algorithm prioritizes it further, so people watch it more, etc. This is all speculation of course, but it's a cautionary tale about why statistical and causal reasoning is useful even if you're in industry, as long as you actually care about delivering a good data product.

tivert 3y ago
> I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page. I recall reading something years ago that said some porn site that started to do data-driven analytics and found that even though "step-sibling/parent fantasy" stuff wasn't generally popular, but it was particularly good at attracting paying subscribers. I kinda wonder if that effect was overstated, but all the porn sites started cargo-culting that finding as "conventional wisdom" and made the genre a thing. > So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting. I think of lot of that particular genre isn't normal-looking, for instance by casting size differences to creepily create the impression of an illegal age difference: https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is-scrawny-young-men-who-look-like-pre-teens https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is...