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Senator Warns YouTube Algorithm May Be Open To Manipulation By 'Bad Actors' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee has warned that YouTube's powerful recommendation algorithm may be "optimizing for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content" or susceptible to "manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities." Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, made the stark warning after an investigation by the Guardian found that the Google-owned video platform was systematically promoting divisive and conspiratorial videos that were damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
"Companies like YouTube have immense power and influence in shaping the media and content that users see," Warner said. "I've been increasingly concerned that the recommendation engine algorithms behind platforms like YouTube are, at best, intrinsically flawed in optimizing for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content." He added: "At worst, they can be highly susceptible to gaming and manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities." YouTube's algorithm determines which videos to promote in the "Up next" column beside the video player. The Guardian found that "the algorithm was six times more likely to recommend videos that was damaging to Clinton than Trump, and also tended to amplify wild conspiracy theories about the former secretary of state."
"Companies like YouTube have immense power and influence in shaping the media and content that users see," Warner said. "I've been increasingly concerned that the recommendation engine algorithms behind platforms like YouTube are, at best, intrinsically flawed in optimizing for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content." He added: "At worst, they can be highly susceptible to gaming and manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities." YouTube's algorithm determines which videos to promote in the "Up next" column beside the video player. The Guardian found that "the algorithm was six times more likely to recommend videos that was damaging to Clinton than Trump, and also tended to amplify wild conspiracy theories about the former secretary of state."
Are there more anti-Clinton videos than anti-Trump videos on YouTube? If so, most Bayesian methods will recommend you an anti-Clinton video... unless if you apply a completely partisan bias that enforces equal time for both sides (or even mute out the other side)
Only if it's an entirely trivial algorithm. More likely, it will take other factors such as number of comments, number of views, and so on into account. Given the information that Google collects, it will probably also take into account the amount of time that people spent watching them, the things that other people geographically close to you watched, the things that other people who read the same kinds of new sources as you read (if they've got Google ads, Google knows whether you prefer an R- or D-leaning news site), what news apps you have installed on your Android phone, how many times the word Trump and Hillary appear in emails that you've sent and received with GMail (and with what modifiers, such as whether 'lying' appears near 'Hillary' or 'treason' appears near 'Trump') and so on.
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Video of Gowdy getting Comey to admit under oath that Clinton lied under oath at least 6 times. We call that perjury and it is ILLEGAL. It was referred to the FBI to bring up charges, but Stroke decided to toss that referral in the trash and not follow up, which is not an exoneration but instead an obstruction of justice by Stroke.
So there you go, outright evidence of Clinton being a criminal.