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Subscriptions Drive Views of Extremist Videos on YouTube

16 points by alephnerd 2y ago

cardanome 2y ago
Effectively disabling dislikes is what has led to this mess in the first place. If your algorithm takes takes the like and dislike ratio into account for what videos are shown then people are encouraged to create content that is not offensive to the majority of people. There is a natural self-policing and extreme takes get less visibility. If you optimize for engagement, well we all know that spreading hate and general negativity generates the most engagement. So content creators will focus on that kind of content. There is no way for the moderate majority of the user base to keep them in check.
- djaychela 2y ago
  Dislikes are not disabled, just the count is not visible. You can still see the ratio in your creator studio. The algorithm is optimising for view time, I think that's far more of a variable than Dislikes, and people will dislike content but still watch a significant portion of it.
  - cardanome 2y ago
    Yeah, that is what I meant when I said it is optimizing for engagement i.e. view time. Early youtube algo did take dilikes into accound and tried to optimize for quality. Dislikes are effectively disabled. A high dislike count isn't something content creators need to worry about, hence the more extrem content.
    - hhh 2y ago
      It is something they need to worry about. It’s just less effective for brigading videos. Except now those people over-focus on the chrome extension that records the like:dislike ratio of videos (of extension users only) and they end up filtering themselves by thinking it’s authoritative for the overall view population.
Syonyk 2y ago
> Given the challenges of trying to characterize the content of every single video viewed, the researchers focused on the type of YouTube channels people watched. They compiled lists of channels that had been identified as alternative or extreme by journalists and academics and then examined how often a participant visited videos from those channels. > Alternative channels included content for men’s rights activists, anti-social justice warriors, and intellectual dark web material; extreme channels included white supremacist, alt-right, and extremist material. Eh... Relying on "journalists and academics disliking a channel enough to claim it's extreme," but then not bothering to actually go look at the details of the material watched, sounds pretty lazy to me if you're trying to make this sort of argument. Or to at least sample a reasonable cross section (perhaps videos that showed up in a lot of the monitored profiles) and make sure they're generally consistent with what the claimed nature of the channel is.
- sien 2y ago
  Yeah. Given that half of America votes for a party that many people inside the party would describe as 'anti-social justice' it's a pretty hard to guess at what is being regarded as harmful. The Intellectual Dark web includes stuff like 'Quillette' which most people would have no problem with. The bit at the start : "In 2019, YouTube announced that changes to its algorithms had reduced watch time of harmful content by 50%, with a 70% decline in watch time by nonsubscribers." Seems like a very good result for YouTube. They are funneling people away from politics unless you go out and seek it. Most people are presumably far more interested in their niche hobby YouTube videos anyway rather than politics which is often a contest of who is less awful.
  - cardanome 2y ago
    > The Intellectual Dark web includes stuff like 'Quillette' which most people would have no problem with. Just checking Wikipedia: > Quillette has published articles supporting the "human biodiversity movement" (HBM),which attempts to reintroduce ideas from eugenics and scientific racism into the mainstream. > HBM refers to beliefs that human behaviors are impacted by inherited genes, and certain predispositions are unique to certain ethnic groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette I sure hope most people would have a problem with that crap.
23B1 2y ago
The academy's fear of 'harmful' words has become more dangerous than the words themselves.
wakawaka28 2y ago
People voluntarily watching their favorite stuff that occasionally offends yyour sensibilities. Perish the thought! The situation on the ground is that YouTube suppresses a lot of harmless videos and channels under the pretense that it is "extreme" stuff. They also demonetize anything they like and you have no recourse as an uploader, unless your channel is making them insane money and they want to keep you at all costs. What good would subscriptions be for if they did not increase the odds of you seeing sub videos in your feed? Stop trying to tell people they shouldn't watch stuff you disagree with.

16 points by alephnerd 2y ago

Effectively disabling dislikes is what has led to this mess in the first place. If your algorithm takes takes the like and dislike ratio into account for what videos are shown then people are encouraged to create content that is not offensive to the majority of people. There is a natural self-policing and extreme takes get less visibility. If you optimize for engagement, well we all know that spreading hate and general negativity generates the most engagement. So content creators will focus on that kind of content. There is no way for the moderate majority of the user base to keep them in check.

djaychela 2y ago
Dislikes are not disabled, just the count is not visible. You can still see the ratio in your creator studio. The algorithm is optimising for view time, I think that's far more of a variable than Dislikes, and people will dislike content but still watch a significant portion of it.
- cardanome 2y ago
  Yeah, that is what I meant when I said it is optimizing for engagement i.e. view time. Early youtube algo did take dilikes into accound and tried to optimize for quality. Dislikes are effectively disabled. A high dislike count isn't something content creators need to worry about, hence the more extrem content.
  - hhh 2y ago
    It is something they need to worry about. It’s just less effective for brigading videos. Except now those people over-focus on the chrome extension that records the like:dislike ratio of videos (of extension users only) and they end up filtering themselves by thinking it’s authoritative for the overall view population.

Syonyk 2y ago

> Given the challenges of trying to characterize the content of every single video viewed, the researchers focused on the type of YouTube channels people watched. They compiled lists of channels that had been identified as alternative or extreme by journalists and academics and then examined how often a participant visited videos from those channels. > Alternative channels included content for men’s rights activists, anti-social justice warriors, and intellectual dark web material; extreme channels included white supremacist, alt-right, and extremist material. Eh... Relying on "journalists and academics disliking a channel enough to claim it's extreme," but then not bothering to actually go look at the details of the material watched, sounds pretty lazy to me if you're trying to make this sort of argument. Or to at least sample a reasonable cross section (perhaps videos that showed up in a lot of the monitored profiles) and make sure they're generally consistent with what the claimed nature of the channel is.

sien 2y ago
Yeah. Given that half of America votes for a party that many people inside the party would describe as 'anti-social justice' it's a pretty hard to guess at what is being regarded as harmful. The Intellectual Dark web includes stuff like 'Quillette' which most people would have no problem with. The bit at the start : "In 2019, YouTube announced that changes to its algorithms had reduced watch time of harmful content by 50%, with a 70% decline in watch time by nonsubscribers." Seems like a very good result for YouTube. They are funneling people away from politics unless you go out and seek it. Most people are presumably far more interested in their niche hobby YouTube videos anyway rather than politics which is often a contest of who is less awful.
- cardanome 2y ago
  > The Intellectual Dark web includes stuff like 'Quillette' which most people would have no problem with. Just checking Wikipedia: > Quillette has published articles supporting the "human biodiversity movement" (HBM),which attempts to reintroduce ideas from eugenics and scientific racism into the mainstream. > HBM refers to beliefs that human behaviors are impacted by inherited genes, and certain predispositions are unique to certain ethnic groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette I sure hope most people would have a problem with that crap.

23B1 2y ago

The academy's fear of 'harmful' words has become more dangerous than the words themselves.

wakawaka28 2y ago

People voluntarily watching their favorite stuff that occasionally offends yyour sensibilities. Perish the thought! The situation on the ground is that YouTube suppresses a lot of harmless videos and channels under the pretense that it is "extreme" stuff. They also demonetize anything they like and you have no recourse as an uploader, unless your channel is making them insane money and they want to keep you at all costs. What good would subscriptions be for if they did not increase the odds of you seeing sub videos in your feed? Stop trying to tell people they shouldn't watch stuff you disagree with.