6 ms·

Google is evil. Sorry. It is driving people mad via the YouTube algorithms. And it is destroying democracy.

by _hcuq 2y ago

FredPret 2y ago
Which democracies have descended into dictatorships because of Google? All Youtube does is feed me engineering and astronomy videos. It's actually improving my life. Your algorithm is a reflection of you.
- Alupis 2y ago
  > Your algorithm is a reflection of you. This is objectively false. "The" algorithm is designed to maximize engagement - so you will be shown content you are most likely to watch, click, listen to the most. As it turns out, "Outrage Porn" is highly engaging... Scroll through enough YouTube Shorts, and just like TikTok, your "algorithm" slowly but surely reduces to outrage porn. All paths lead to outrage porn. All of them...
  - supriyo-biswas 2y ago
    n=1, but I've watch a fair bit of Youtube shorts and this has never happened. The algorithm rewards what you watch, and someone addicted to politics and the culture of outrage around it, will get what they ask for.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      It usually starts off with just content you're overtly interested in. Then, they'll sprinkle in random clips every so many scrolls to guard against overfitting the model and getting stale for the user. Some of those random clips are Outrage Porn designed to get a reaction out of you... You scroll past, then scroll back because "wtf did I just see?" - and now you're in. The frequency starts to increase and pretty soon you're shouting at clouds feeling like you're the only one that realizes how crazy everything is... It's hard to keep your feed "clean" and dialed into just things that bring you intellectual stimulation or enjoyment. It's not impossible, but it's quit difficult. You constantly have to realign your algorithm lest it goes off into the weeds.
      - marcosdumay 2y ago
        > It's hard to keep your feed "clean" and dialed into just things that bring you intellectual stimulation or enjoyment. The confusion happens because this can be very easy. All it takes is rarely watching youtube. If you only watch a random video here and there, Google won't push all the bullshit at all. So the people watching many videos, getting the shitty recommendations, and complaining that the internet is crazy end-up sounding insane to everybody else.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    I was watching exercises for shoulder tendonitis and it escalated to surgeries of shoulder replacement - it seems to be good at upping the intensity (for lack of a better word) of whatever you're watching regardless of the subject.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    The algo will only push outrage on you if you secretly like it enough to spend hours watching that shit. I have consumed more than my fair share of content on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook videos, and TikTok. My timeline is all engineering, spaceships, jumping puppies, and comedians (and not the negative kind). It's an algorithm, it wants you to watch more and click on all the ads. It doesn't care if the world burns, but it also isn't going to push you that way. My statement will only be "objectively false" if the algorithm is somehow programmed for political extremism. In reality, each of us is in the driver's seat. People have been spouting crap since time immemorial - doesn't mean you have to watch it. I would suggest a heavy and sustained dose of puppy videos.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      How do you use these short video services? Are you searching for content then watching, or just "doom scrolling" while on the toilet? Searching then watching is effectively realigning the feed to your latest and most engaged preferences. Doom scrolling will get worse and worse as time goes on - it appears entirely unavoidable. They pick up on "positive" interaction signals such as slowing down while scrolling past a video, scrolling back to a video, letting it play more than once, even downvoting can be a sign of engagement and a catalyst for more of the same... You are right - the algorithm doesn't care if the world burns... it just wants to maximize engagement. That, for most of the human population, means stuff that gets immediate reactions. Unfortunately that often means outrageous material.
  - animuchan 2y ago
    This actually reads like a much better user experience than what I'm having: for me, the start page of YouTube, as well as half its search results, are just filled with nonsense. Not even slightly relevant, e.g. when looking for a gameplay video the other day, I got a Eurovision clip at the top of the search. (As much as I'd love to play a videogame where I get to shoot these monsters for ruining the pop music...)
- AnnoyedComment 2y ago
  [dead]
- legulere 2y ago
  One example of meta instead of google: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
- SkyBelow 2y ago
  It ends up being a reflection in the flaws built into humans. We have many vices. Individuals overcome it, but as a group we are susceptible. We have a long history of deciding where to draw the line between exploiting a vice to control someone and where it becomes letting others live while minding ones own business. We might allow alcohol starting around 18-21, but we ban food companies putting certain addicting drugs in their recipes (but yet allowing others, not fully consistent). Where this algorithm's exploit falls is a new area we haven't really decided upon as a society. Is it like adding cocaine to soda or like adding caffeine to soda?
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > Your algorithm is a reflection of you. Yes and no, you're correct in that it feeds you more of the stuff you engage with, but that's not what it should be going if YouTube cared about the mental well being of it's users. The YouTube algorithm is notorious for not responding to deliberate user input. Say I know that the content I engage with is harmful to my mental health, first step in dealing with the issue. You CANNOT tell YouTube to stop enabling you, even if you try. There are things the algorithm isn't smart enough to understand, or if YouTube is evil, understand that it SHOULD NOT respond to. Example: I wasted a lot of time on Shorts, and videos less than 2 minutes, junk content. So I start hitting "Not interested", the algorithm WILL NOT pick up on the thing these videos have in common, that they are short. You can block channels, that works, except that there are thousands of similar channels which YouTube will then just push instead. What I would like to see is YouTube have settings for: What kind of person do you want to be? And then just push the hell out of relevant content, ignoring any level of engagement. I think everyone knows why YouTube won't be doing that. YouTube is a company, they do what's good for the stock price / profit margin. If it hurts the users, they don't care. It's not that they are evil, they just don't give a crap.
- gspencley 2y ago
  I'm starting to consider creating different accounts / profiles for my different interests. The problem that I have with YouTube is that it can't know what I'm in the mood for at any given moment and it thinks that if I click on one single video about a sensitive topic that suddenly I want my entire home page to be overrun with recommendations about that. To give a specific example, something that honestly kind of baffles and bothers me is the amount of firearms related videos in my recommendations despite the fact that I never watch them, I don't own any firearms and I keep clicking "Don't Recommend Channel" and they never seem to go away. It has to be because the topic is tangentially related somehow to something I've watched, or maybe people who are into firearms overlap with some of the content I watch. But it's the volume and the non-responsiveness to my feedback that annoys me. Another example: my wife and I enjoy watching the Eurovision Song Contest every year. So naturally we've watched a lot of that content in the days and weeks leading up to it. Obviously the algorithm is going to recommend content related to Eurovision, but my home page is completely flooded with these recommendations to the seeming exclusion of most other stuff that I want to watch. And I keep clicking "Don't Recommend Channel" on the various "reaction" videos that are just feeder content featuring people reacting to the songs and performances ... because I CAN'T STAND reaction videos in general and NEVER watch them. But they keep appearing in the recommendations nonetheless. Recommendation algorithms are a hard problem to solve, for sure. I'm not trying to be unfair to YouTube because I know these recommendations are somehow related to what I do watch. I just know that it feels like 90% of those recommendations miss the mark regardless. YouTube is starting to feel like cable TV these days ("200 channels and nothing to watch") where my wife and I often find ourselves just doom scrolling and refreshing the home page (we watch on our TV) hoping that something we're interested in watching at that moment will appear. Often times nothing does and we go do something else.
  - gspencley 2y ago
    Replying to myself because I just thought of a 3rd example that is extremely common for me: news channels. I don't watch news on YouTube, ever. If I see a video from a news outlet I automatically click "Don't Recommend Channel." And I've done that with all of the big major news channels like CNN, Fox News, MSNBC etc. But that doesn't stop videos from local affiliates showing up in a never ending game of whack-a-mole. To be fair these do not tend to "flood" my recommendations. But I want them to go away all together and I can't seem to make that happen.
- borgdefense 2y ago
  [flagged]
bee_rider 2y ago
Do you have a specific example for Google? The fact that it has been reported by groups like Amnesty International that Facebook helped to enable the ethnic violence in Myanmar makes arguing this sort of point much easier. People want to treat complaints about attention economy companies like they are coming from whiners who just don’t like ad profiles. It is useful to have specific information to remind people of the actual stakes of uncontrolled, personalized propaganda and social manipulation that these companies can enable. So if you have one for Google I’d definitely be interested in adding it to my collection. (I’ll admit some bias, I think they are a little better than Facebook, but that bar is so low, let’s be careful not to trip over it).
- holonsphere 2y ago
  Some of the best examples are too sensitive to share on this forum. Other things get flagged and reported. Some new topics/sources that squeeze by invite the bots. The best arguments for Google's algorithms making people crazy for lay people would be Aaron Swartz like individuals who just go unknown. I can think of atleast 4 individuals new to me the last 6mo ive discovered who used to cover court cases, ran NGOs, or worked as journalists that have been seemingly swept up in what looks like delusions. Lots of typos, egegious oversights, etc#. Its hard to personify these individuals as theyre hard to reach and anyone w ptsd or whom knows people w ptsd know how hard it is to provide support to someone locked in a fight-or-flight reflex. After a terror/fear/paranoia becomes familiar anything else feels foreign. Human connection becomes scary. Read up on bateson-esque schizomogenisis and reflect on the CIAs relation with the "unabomber".
  - kridsdale3 2y ago
    What you’re describing sounds uncannily like the effects of Snow Crash.
southernplaces7 2y ago
Holy shit folks, use a bit of your innate agency, and let others do likewise. Yes, Google, sorry, "Alphabet", is a dirt shitty company that engages in all kinds of ugly corporate and legal practices, but no, the YT algorithm isn't destroying democracy or ruining human thinking. The vast majority of us are cognitive beings with the ability to choose what kind of content we consume, or not. In most cases, people who watch a whole pile of garbage on YT are people who would find some other source of it anyhow and always would have throughout history. Those who can separate wheat from chaff will do so regardless of what the algorithm pushes at them. In fact, they'll generally find their own algo-generated suggestions to be in line with the higher quality they steadily pursue. And quite frankly, there is a great deal of excellent content on YouTube to be found. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many of the comments here exaggerating the evil of the algo and claiming that it ruins people's minds unless they're "shown better" reek of elitism and an implicit desire to control other's belief/feedback choices for their own good. Aside from this being a morally weak viewpoint, it's also bullshit in a practical sense. The majority of such people with an intellectual superiority complex are little better at avoiding intellectual bias than the average person, they just sometimes learn to disguise it with more sophisticated looking justifications.

Google is evil. Sorry. It is driving people mad via the YouTube algorithms. And it is destroying democracy.

by _hcuq 2y ago

Google is evil. Sorry. It is driving people mad via the YouTube algorithms. And it is destroying democracy.

Which democracies have descended into dictatorships because of Google? All Youtube does is feed me engineering and astronomy videos. It's actually improving my life. Your algorithm is a reflection of you.

Alupis 2y ago
> Your algorithm is a reflection of you. This is objectively false. "The" algorithm is designed to maximize engagement - so you will be shown content you are most likely to watch, click, listen to the most. As it turns out, "Outrage Porn" is highly engaging... Scroll through enough YouTube Shorts, and just like TikTok, your "algorithm" slowly but surely reduces to outrage porn. All paths lead to outrage porn. All of them...
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  n=1, but I've watch a fair bit of Youtube shorts and this has never happened. The algorithm rewards what you watch, and someone addicted to politics and the culture of outrage around it, will get what they ask for.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    It usually starts off with just content you're overtly interested in. Then, they'll sprinkle in random clips every so many scrolls to guard against overfitting the model and getting stale for the user. Some of those random clips are Outrage Porn designed to get a reaction out of you... You scroll past, then scroll back because "wtf did I just see?" - and now you're in. The frequency starts to increase and pretty soon you're shouting at clouds feeling like you're the only one that realizes how crazy everything is... It's hard to keep your feed "clean" and dialed into just things that bring you intellectual stimulation or enjoyment. It's not impossible, but it's quit difficult. You constantly have to realign your algorithm lest it goes off into the weeds.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      > It's hard to keep your feed "clean" and dialed into just things that bring you intellectual stimulation or enjoyment. The confusion happens because this can be very easy. All it takes is rarely watching youtube. If you only watch a random video here and there, Google won't push all the bullshit at all. So the people watching many videos, getting the shitty recommendations, and complaining that the internet is crazy end-up sounding insane to everybody else.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I was watching exercises for shoulder tendonitis and it escalated to surgeries of shoulder replacement - it seems to be good at upping the intensity (for lack of a better word) of whatever you're watching regardless of the subject.
- FredPret 2y ago
  The algo will only push outrage on you if you secretly like it enough to spend hours watching that shit. I have consumed more than my fair share of content on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook videos, and TikTok. My timeline is all engineering, spaceships, jumping puppies, and comedians (and not the negative kind). It's an algorithm, it wants you to watch more and click on all the ads. It doesn't care if the world burns, but it also isn't going to push you that way. My statement will only be "objectively false" if the algorithm is somehow programmed for political extremism. In reality, each of us is in the driver's seat. People have been spouting crap since time immemorial - doesn't mean you have to watch it. I would suggest a heavy and sustained dose of puppy videos.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    How do you use these short video services? Are you searching for content then watching, or just "doom scrolling" while on the toilet? Searching then watching is effectively realigning the feed to your latest and most engaged preferences. Doom scrolling will get worse and worse as time goes on - it appears entirely unavoidable. They pick up on "positive" interaction signals such as slowing down while scrolling past a video, scrolling back to a video, letting it play more than once, even downvoting can be a sign of engagement and a catalyst for more of the same... You are right - the algorithm doesn't care if the world burns... it just wants to maximize engagement. That, for most of the human population, means stuff that gets immediate reactions. Unfortunately that often means outrageous material.
- animuchan 2y ago
  This actually reads like a much better user experience than what I'm having: for me, the start page of YouTube, as well as half its search results, are just filled with nonsense. Not even slightly relevant, e.g. when looking for a gameplay video the other day, I got a Eurovision clip at the top of the search. (As much as I'd love to play a videogame where I get to shoot these monsters for ruining the pop music...)
AnnoyedComment 2y ago
[dead]
legulere 2y ago
One example of meta instead of google: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
SkyBelow 2y ago
It ends up being a reflection in the flaws built into humans. We have many vices. Individuals overcome it, but as a group we are susceptible. We have a long history of deciding where to draw the line between exploiting a vice to control someone and where it becomes letting others live while minding ones own business. We might allow alcohol starting around 18-21, but we ban food companies putting certain addicting drugs in their recipes (but yet allowing others, not fully consistent). Where this algorithm's exploit falls is a new area we haven't really decided upon as a society. Is it like adding cocaine to soda or like adding caffeine to soda?
mrweasel 2y ago
> Your algorithm is a reflection of you. Yes and no, you're correct in that it feeds you more of the stuff you engage with, but that's not what it should be going if YouTube cared about the mental well being of it's users. The YouTube algorithm is notorious for not responding to deliberate user input. Say I know that the content I engage with is harmful to my mental health, first step in dealing with the issue. You CANNOT tell YouTube to stop enabling you, even if you try. There are things the algorithm isn't smart enough to understand, or if YouTube is evil, understand that it SHOULD NOT respond to. Example: I wasted a lot of time on Shorts, and videos less than 2 minutes, junk content. So I start hitting "Not interested", the algorithm WILL NOT pick up on the thing these videos have in common, that they are short. You can block channels, that works, except that there are thousands of similar channels which YouTube will then just push instead. What I would like to see is YouTube have settings for: What kind of person do you want to be? And then just push the hell out of relevant content, ignoring any level of engagement. I think everyone knows why YouTube won't be doing that. YouTube is a company, they do what's good for the stock price / profit margin. If it hurts the users, they don't care. It's not that they are evil, they just don't give a crap.
gspencley 2y ago
I'm starting to consider creating different accounts / profiles for my different interests. The problem that I have with YouTube is that it can't know what I'm in the mood for at any given moment and it thinks that if I click on one single video about a sensitive topic that suddenly I want my entire home page to be overrun with recommendations about that. To give a specific example, something that honestly kind of baffles and bothers me is the amount of firearms related videos in my recommendations despite the fact that I never watch them, I don't own any firearms and I keep clicking "Don't Recommend Channel" and they never seem to go away. It has to be because the topic is tangentially related somehow to something I've watched, or maybe people who are into firearms overlap with some of the content I watch. But it's the volume and the non-responsiveness to my feedback that annoys me. Another example: my wife and I enjoy watching the Eurovision Song Contest every year. So naturally we've watched a lot of that content in the days and weeks leading up to it. Obviously the algorithm is going to recommend content related to Eurovision, but my home page is completely flooded with these recommendations to the seeming exclusion of most other stuff that I want to watch. And I keep clicking "Don't Recommend Channel" on the various "reaction" videos that are just feeder content featuring people reacting to the songs and performances ... because I CAN'T STAND reaction videos in general and NEVER watch them. But they keep appearing in the recommendations nonetheless. Recommendation algorithms are a hard problem to solve, for sure. I'm not trying to be unfair to YouTube because I know these recommendations are somehow related to what I do watch. I just know that it feels like 90% of those recommendations miss the mark regardless. YouTube is starting to feel like cable TV these days ("200 channels and nothing to watch") where my wife and I often find ourselves just doom scrolling and refreshing the home page (we watch on our TV) hoping that something we're interested in watching at that moment will appear. Often times nothing does and we go do something else.
- gspencley 2y ago
  Replying to myself because I just thought of a 3rd example that is extremely common for me: news channels. I don't watch news on YouTube, ever. If I see a video from a news outlet I automatically click "Don't Recommend Channel." And I've done that with all of the big major news channels like CNN, Fox News, MSNBC etc. But that doesn't stop videos from local affiliates showing up in a never ending game of whack-a-mole. To be fair these do not tend to "flood" my recommendations. But I want them to go away all together and I can't seem to make that happen.
borgdefense 2y ago
[flagged]

bee_rider 2y ago

Do you have a specific example for Google? The fact that it has been reported by groups like Amnesty International that Facebook helped to enable the ethnic violence in Myanmar makes arguing this sort of point much easier. People want to treat complaints about attention economy companies like they are coming from whiners who just don’t like ad profiles. It is useful to have specific information to remind people of the actual stakes of uncontrolled, personalized propaganda and social manipulation that these companies can enable. So if you have one for Google I’d definitely be interested in adding it to my collection. (I’ll admit some bias, I think they are a little better than Facebook, but that bar is so low, let’s be careful not to trip over it).

holonsphere 2y ago
Some of the best examples are too sensitive to share on this forum. Other things get flagged and reported. Some new topics/sources that squeeze by invite the bots. The best arguments for Google's algorithms making people crazy for lay people would be Aaron Swartz like individuals who just go unknown. I can think of atleast 4 individuals new to me the last 6mo ive discovered who used to cover court cases, ran NGOs, or worked as journalists that have been seemingly swept up in what looks like delusions. Lots of typos, egegious oversights, etc#. Its hard to personify these individuals as theyre hard to reach and anyone w ptsd or whom knows people w ptsd know how hard it is to provide support to someone locked in a fight-or-flight reflex. After a terror/fear/paranoia becomes familiar anything else feels foreign. Human connection becomes scary. Read up on bateson-esque schizomogenisis and reflect on the CIAs relation with the "unabomber".
- kridsdale3 2y ago
  What you’re describing sounds uncannily like the effects of Snow Crash.

southernplaces7 2y ago

Holy shit folks, use a bit of your innate agency, and let others do likewise. Yes, Google, sorry, "Alphabet", is a dirt shitty company that engages in all kinds of ugly corporate and legal practices, but no, the YT algorithm isn't destroying democracy or ruining human thinking. The vast majority of us are cognitive beings with the ability to choose what kind of content we consume, or not. In most cases, people who watch a whole pile of garbage on YT are people who would find some other source of it anyhow and always would have throughout history. Those who can separate wheat from chaff will do so regardless of what the algorithm pushes at them. In fact, they'll generally find their own algo-generated suggestions to be in line with the higher quality they steadily pursue. And quite frankly, there is a great deal of excellent content on YouTube to be found. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many of the comments here exaggerating the evil of the algo and claiming that it ruins people's minds unless they're "shown better" reek of elitism and an implicit desire to control other's belief/feedback choices for their own good. Aside from this being a morally weak viewpoint, it's also bullshit in a practical sense. The majority of such people with an intellectual superiority complex are little better at avoiding intellectual bias than the average person, they just sometimes learn to disguise it with more sophisticated looking justifications.