YouTube Alters Algorithm To Promote News, Penalize Vegas Shooting Conspiracy Theories (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: YouTube has changed its powerful search algorithm to promote videos from more mainstream news outlets in search results after people looking for details on the Las Vegas shooting were served up conspiracy theories and misinformation. YouTube confirmed the changes Thursday... In the days after the mass shooting, videos abounded on YouTube, some questioning whether the shooting occurred and others claiming law enforcement officials had deceived the public about what really happened...

Public outcry over YouTube videos promoting conspiracy theories is just the latest online flap for the major U.S. Internet companies. Within hours of the attack, Facebook and Google were called out for promoting conspiracy theories... Helping drive YouTube's popularity is the "Up next" column which suggests additional videos to viewers. The Wall Street Journal found incidents this week in which YouTube suggested videos promoting conspiracy theories next to videos from mainstream news sources. YouTube acknowledged issues with the "Up next" algorithm and said it was looking to promote more authoritative results there, too.
At least one video was viewed over a million times, and Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein writes that "I've received emails from Google users who report YouTube pushing links to some of those trending fake videos directly to their phones as notifications." He's suggesting that from now on, YouTube's top trending videos should be reviewed by actual humans.

Comments

The reason for conspiracy theories

[guruevi]

The only reason conspiracy theories exist is because no plausible story exists to answer all the questions. People don't understand why these things happen and the government typically isn't all too clear about their prevention, response and subsequent investigation.

If the government were fully transparent, it would quell the conspiracy theories. In this case, they should be transparent as to the reason that individual could buy and bring up 400lb of gear, break the window on a high riser and disable the security alarms all without getting noticed. They should be transparent about the reason it took police an hour to respond to a shooter situation or why they killed instead of capture him. We still don't know much about the person, but once again it will become clear over time that he was deranged, was taking some serious meds and that he was never institutionalized and otherwise fell through the ObamaCare cracks.