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

Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[ShanghaiBill]

The problem with suppressing conspiracy theories, and promoting "authoritative" sources, is that it makes real conspiracies even easier for the authorities to cover up.

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[mijj]

problem? .. or a feature.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah but the problem with not is there are about an infinite number of conspiracies, compared to what actually happened.

If you simply go by numbers, you'll wind up with nothing but conspiracies.

Actually scratch that, it's a simpler, bigger problem. Ever since the mid 90s the job of search engines had been to find relevant stuff in a sea of junk. If you don't suppress irrelevant stuff, you get overwhelmed with utter irrelevancies. You know like when porn sites simply copied the dictionary on to every page so that whatever you searched for, the porn site would match.

Same problem. No one wants naive string matching since it's far too easily gamed.

So, search engines have the incredibly difficult task of finding more or less what users want out of a sea of bullshit. They aren't going to be perfect, but if you don't suppress anything, you'll get nothing but porn like the bad old days.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Hal_Porter]

The American revolution was started by memes like this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If the British Empire had had the ability to censor memes and political speech that Google/FB etc have, they'd have been able to stop that.

You can see they're very keen to keep people in their walled garden by the way gab.ai got pulled from Google Play for 'promoting hate speech'. Aka 'allowing speech Google can't control'.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when the idea that the government was spying on everyone, recording all their phone calls, cataloging everything, and going above and beyond the constitution with impunity was just a conspiracy theory?

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Opportunist]

And a stopped clock is right even twice a day.

If I keep making insane claims, at some point in time it's likely that I'll even be right. An easy proof: Think of a number between 1 and 1000. Is it 344? No? Ok, let's try again. Think of a number...

If we play that game often enough, I will guess it. Ain't that amazing? I knew what your number was!

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[UnknowingFool]

I find that most conspiracy theories not only have a lack of evidence but they also ignore lots of contrary evidence. Or they start to delve into increasing complex scenarios to try to explain away any contrary evidence.

For example, the leading conspiracy about Vegas is that it is a false flag operation perpetrated my multiple shooters from multiple locations. Their evidence: multiple points of light from a few videos and what sounds like multiple gun shots sources.

Common sense would say multiple shooters, multiple locations would require multiple rooms. Yet the next morning only 2 windows were shot out from adjoining rooms. Not multiple rooms that had their windows shot out. Their explanation: they were replaced in the middle of the night secretly. Replacing windows that are 150-200 lbs each that required people to cling to the outside of the building in the middle of the night while avoiding being detected by law enforcement is a far more likely to them. Also the hotel and staff are in on the conspiracy because they are hiding the "other rooms" which would be full of gun powder smoke and smell and shell casings.

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[UnknowingFool]

And how is Google no longer promoting a video the same as them controlling free speech? You can still find the videos if you search for them. Google is no longer advertising them at the top of their list. If they blocked them, then you might have a point .

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Reverend Green]

Google's soft censorship move does suggest that Google thinks the conspiracy theories may be true. Look throughout history - loony wingnuts don't get censored. Censorship is reserved for political dissidents.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[MysteriousPreacher]

Given Google's recent behaviour, I find it difficult to accept their stated intentions. While this is a very high profile story, think of how many other less public stories they can suppress. Look at the media take on the Boston free speech event and how they claimed it was brave anti-fascists saying no to white supremacists. In fact it was a small free speech group, which had a black speaker and an audience of various races, being surrounded by a braying mob who did such charming things as throwing bottles of piss at the police.

I simply do not trust Google to act as arbiters of truth, and mainstream media as a source is no guarantee of accuracy.

This is the kind of shit that Google will push; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[UnknowingFool]

The other shooters would not have to be in other hotel rooms they could be on roof tops or other elevated places.

The shots from the videos that the conspiracists cite allege other rooms in the Mandalay not the rooftop or other hotels.

Are the number shell casings found in hotel consistent with the shots fired.

The number would have to be in the hundreds from each room. So far only 1 room with hundreds of casings has been found.

Authorities are trying to identify the number of shots fired including the ones that missed their human targets. There will be a through search to recover shell casings from other possible shooting sites.

There are no other sites unless you want to believe that the hotel and law enforcement are hiding them. Unless you want to believe that heavy windows were replaced secretly in the middle of the night.

In the end, why would someone lie about one vs multiple shooters? What is accomplished by diminishing the number of shooters?

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[SirSlud]

Manipulating results? They made the results, invented out of whole cloth. Are you under the impression there is some kind of laws of physics in web searches?

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Ol Olsoc]

And how is Google no longer promoting a video the same as them controlling free speech? You can still find the videos if you search for them. Google is no longer advertising them at the top of their list. If they blocked them, then you might have a point .

Here on Slashdot, we get into the same thing here when they claim that mod points are censorship.

And who wants to be interrupted by notifications about kooky end of the world/NASA moon landing hoax/perpetual motion/heat your house with 1 tea candle and a flowerpot/ bullshit except other kooks?

This is just an attempt to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons effect, where the lowest and least destroy the commons.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[elrous0]

Muddying the waters with fake conspiracies achieves almost the same.

Yeah, but at least without some algorithm blocking all of them, I can decide for myself which sources are more reliable than others and which stories seem plausible. And, as an experienced and knowledgeable human, I can make these choices much better than any algorithm ever could.

I hope they will at least allow the option to turn this filtering off. I don't need Google or anyone else telling me what news I'm allowed or not allowed to see, thank you very much.

Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[Ol Olsoc]

I find that most conspiracy theories not only have a lack of evidence but they also ignore lots of contrary evidence. Or they start to delve into increasing complex scenarios to try to explain away any contrary evidence.

Cherry picking the evidence. Conspiracy theories are full of that. You can see both of these in the moon landing hoaxer's arguments.

Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong

[AmiMoJo]

I wasn't there. The only way I have to determine what happened is from reports by other people who were there.

I have to evaluate each source. Some have a history of being reliable and publishing corrections when they get it wrong. Those sources don't support your narrative.

In fact, the only sources that do take the position you do are notoriously unreliable. Brietbart, for example, publishes articles that get debunked in their own comments and almost never post corrections.

If you want people to accept your version of events you will need to provide some compelling evidence that established, proven reliable sources are wrong. Sorry, that's reality.

Unless, of course

[Bender Unit 22]

Unless, of course it is CNN or any of the old news outlets, having "experts" speculating for hours.

Re:Unless, of course

[helga the viking]

Thats the crux of the problem. Great they're reducing the conspiracy rubbish saturation. But there are also serious credibility issues with mainstream *cough* Rupert Mourdoch owned media on many certain issues.

Re: Unless, of course

[poity]

Up next on CNN with Don Lemon: Could a black hole have altered the shooter's brain waves?

Re: Unless, of course

[Mashiki]

Up next on CNN: Someone who was pointing out an inconvenient fact....and we've lost the feed.

Another YouTube Hit Piece

[mentil]

Recall a few months ago, advertisers were pulling ads from Youtube, complaining that their ads were being shown with videos for extremist content, even though this was hardly new. Around the same time, there was much handwringing about Pewdiepie's allegedly racist antics. Also recall that the RIAA recently complained that they're being severely underpaid by Youtube, despite being one of their highest sources of streaming revenue. I can't help but feel there's some coordinated attack against Youtube, particularly against ordinary people's ability to post videos and have them noticed/monetized.

I suspect that ALL corporations (aside from Google)/trade groups/governments would approve of/look the other way to/assist in such an attack. I can't help but recall the idea that a gradual lessening of online liberty is agreeable to big business as it makes the internet less 'wild west' and more 'safe place to spend money'. Take away the copyright infringement, extremist content, and conspiracy theories, and all that's left on Youtube are funny animal videos, 'how-to's and trailers/music videos officially posted by their creators.

Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO it's more that old media is used to telling people what to think. That's why people get into journalism these days. They abhor that dissenting views can be spread online and that they are losing control over information. So they push for censorship.

Google is perfectly happy to censor its products to push the approved narrative. They're on the same political side as those media companies. The only conflict is a difference in opinion how radical they should be.

Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece

[Anonymous Coward]

>Take away the copyright infringement, extremist content, and conspiracy theories, and all that's left on Youtube are funny animal videos, 'how-to's and trailers/music videos officially posted by their creators.

Spoken like someone who doesn't use youtube for anything not mentioned here. Gaming videos, light entertainment, art (film, tv, book, etc) analysis/criticism/etc, video art, documentaries, and the list goes on. The entire thing about search engines is that the stated goal has always been to filter out BS that pretends to be legitimate. In the 90s that was porn, gambling, and browser exploits that pretended to be real content. Now the bullshit has gotten smarter, so the search needs to adapt.

Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece

[Opportunist]

It's not even extremist content anymore. It's pretty much any content that could remotely be considered "offensive" by anyone. No matter what or who, if anyone could have a huwt widdle feeling by looking at your video, you're demonetized.

Re:Conspiracy theory, or just asking questions?

[coastwalker]

Alex Jones's YouTube entertainment channel Infowars is often in the first page of search results for any current news item. The site makes up stories to increase view-count which are later conclusively debunked. They are welcome to use their business model but it should not be promoted as a news source by Google. They absolutely should show up in search results for conspiracies about the news. That would not be censorship, it would be accurate cataloging of information.

Re:those trending fake videos

[Rei]

The "recommended videos" algorithm on YouTube is terrible; it's not a user's fault what comes up there. You watch a single news clip which mentions Trump in its title, and for the next week you'll be flooded with recommendations from channels with names like "RealTruthNews" and titles like "DONALD TRUMP is a LIZARD who is now ROUNDING UP DISSIDENTS!" Every time I watch something random, if I even want to try to minimize the amount of terrible garbage that shows up on the front page, I have to spend the next 5-10 minutes clicking to block channels. And for some reason it seems to forget the blocks over time, too. It's a bloody awful algorithm.

Re:Present

[Opportunist]

You start questioning the "official" media when what they report don't match your own observation.

That's basically one of the things that fell the communist states. People eventually saw that what they're told by media and politicians does not reflect what they experience. They heard that the plan was fulfilled and overfulfilled yet you could buy nothing in the stores. They heard that they live in the best of all words and saw that everywhere else the world is better.

What's keeping our system afloat is that there is no west showing us how we're being bullshitted.

Education is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The K12 system in the US teaches kids to pass tests needed to graduate. They donâ(TM)t teach critical thinking and discernment. Free speech relies on a public capable of thinking critically to discern between a bullshit theory and an alternative explanation backed by evidence.

Corporate censorship

[ratpick]

Do we really want tech companies deciding what material is proscribed? How is that better than government censorship? So called fake news is unavoidable and inseparable from freedom of speech and press. In a free country, people are free to be gullible and stupid. Any effort to actually fix the problem of "fake news" would focus on educating people and promoting critical thinking, but that would also mean not blindly swallowing propaganda and ideology from media, liberals, conservatives, et al, and so is unlikely to gain any traction.

Re: Present

[UnknowingFool]

From what I remember about the Unabomber the government wanted to publish his manifesto so that someone might recognize it to help generate leads. And it worked. Are you remembering it right?

Since when is YouTube a news site?

[Roger Wilcox]

"Public outcry?" More like "mainstream media narrative." Way to tip your hand there Mr. Author.

The mainstream narrative (not public outcry) here has been for censorship/alteration of Internet algorithms to prefer mainstream sources.

This seems an undesirable development to any but those mainstream sources themselves. (from big media's point of view:) "Alright Internet... we acknowledge that you have the people's eyeballs now. Let us use what thrall we still have over the people to convince them that we should be the only ones they can trust online."

Worse, the news these mainstream companies produce is largely "fake" too, with headlines ever-more tabloid-like, begging for views like clickbait links. Plus, they put a blatant political slant on everything. Hearst famously claimed "I make the news," and he was right. He had editorial sway over what people across the nation would discuss that day, based on what he decided to print.

This whole thing is utter rubbish--a dying mainstream media grasping for relevancy. I say let them die.

wrong promotion

[Tom]

20 years ago, that might have been a good choice. These days, not so much.

Yes, the conspiracy theories around that shooting are probably out of control. I checked about five videos of it, 2 handy videos from the grounds, 1 short news blurb and 2 conspiracy videos and boy do these guys need to take less of whatever drugs they are taking.

But (and that's a big butt, in the words of Ben Goldacre) the mainstream media is not exactly an impartial, reliable and thorough reporter of news anymore. Too many real journalists have been cut in the name of profits, too much funding diverted from investigation and background checking, too much power given to click counts and advertiser demands.

I won't trust the mainstream media on anything more deep than the basic facts. Too many stories where I know the backgrounds have been reported incorrectly, or shortened in simplified so much that they are barely recognizable. Too much clear bias has been uncovered by media studies. Too much press releases and press conference statements are parrot-like repeated instead of properly checked before reporting.

Putting less weight on conspiracy theories - good. But it's a step too little. The balance should be tilted against all sensationalist and click-bait reporting, including that of mainstream media. Balance should be up on reporting that includes background information, fact-checking and independent investigations. But hey, that would require some actual human judgement and is hard to put into a couple lines of code.

Re: MODERATORS & GOOGLE ARE CENSORING POSTS...

[buck-yar]

Someone said bump fire? :D

3d Print your own Bump Fire gadget!
https://mega.nz/#!Vjp1XaDR!0YL...

Pic of gadget
https://i.imgur.com/bZuDcZq.pn...

See it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This is just wrong

[HermMunster]

Manipulation of this sort is wrong. I'm not into conspiracies but I know this manipulation is just wrong.

If they can do it they will do it to anything that they don't like. What they don't like is irrelevant.

It is no longer youtube when you don't choose.

Who says....

[MoarSauce123]

....that established news outlets are reliable sources? Just look at Trump's propaganda channel Fox News and rest assured to be served up at least heavily biased stories if not entirely fake news.

A Real Conspiracy

[JimSadler]

Here we have another sick man killing a bunch of people. There is no understanding him as at the time he did what he did it probably made sense to him although it was idiotic in nature. To understand this guy you would almost have to be him. So where is the real conspiracy? The lack of health care in the US for the mentally ill is abysmal. Decade after decade reasonable funding for mental health simply never happens and the consequences sometimes are the horror stories we all see on the news. When will the US properly fund care for the mentally ill? And it gets worse. there are always debates over the sanity of this type of criminal. Well, here is a news flash. If you have an urge to start shooting people you are insane. Normal people should never feel a desire to go out and shoot strangers. the same is true for sex offenders. The creep that molests a baby simply can not be sane. Sane people do not want to sexually harm babies. So we can spend billions debating whether each bad actor should be treated as ill rather than as a criminal and the system keeps rolling along with a huge path of the dead and wounded in its wake. It is so simple. A person's desires define their degree of sanity. To anyone out there that is having strong urges to harm others simply get to a hospital and demand that you get help.

Actually no

[rsilvergun]

the American revolution was started by wealthy farm owners who didn't want to pay taxes. The folks in charge were by and large in favor of it. Those weren't grass root memes, it was war propaganda.

Now, you can argue that you still agree with the message and that we're better off now than we would have been under British rule (I woulda like the NHS), but make no mistake, the Revolution was about as grass roots American as the Tea Party was 200 years later.

Re:Avoid it? You're building the goddamn road to i

[Ol Olsoc]

Avoid it? You're building the goddamn road to it!

Nope. Humanity has several groups of folks, and allowing those who allow their sociopathy and perversions to dominate because they are mistakenly assuming they are anonymous is a fine example of the tragedy of the commons. While these bits of human excrement are busy acting like the assholes they are, yet way too cowardly to act that way if they were to meet whoever it is they are messing with in person, the actual legitimate participants just go away. Then a group is left with nothing but the trolls and kooks, who lose interest because after ruining a group, they need their new fix.

My best example is the usenet groups. If I might use an example, the rec.radio.amateur.antenna group at one time had some world reknowned experts that you could learn from, and have a conversation with. It was priceless.

But after teh trolls and kooks came on board, some idiot that thinks antennas work by shooting off bits of themselves, and they guy who wants to go into great detail about how they want to fuck the expert's dead mother ended up chasing the experts away. They didn't need that sort of abuse, no matter how much you want to hand it out, AC.

So now we have closed groups, some of which I moderate, which simply don't put up with that. If the AC wants to be a necrophiliac, or believe that hurricanes are God's diarrhea, they can, just not on my watch.

That's why Slashdot's moderation system allows the AC to be as disgusting as they wish. They are not squelched. Unfortunately, in more tightly focused groups, we don't have time for that. Don't like it? Too bad.