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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."
Ok the Republicans said the same about Democratic videos popping up against Trump. So which is real? Can we can the # of times that pro-Trump and pro-Hillary videos actually ran and unique views by person? We never will because it would reveal too much about Google's algorithms.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
There's a difference between having your own opinions and discussing facts about a political issue on a website and outright lying - particularly when the liars are being funded by a foreign government with a particular fondness for vodka.
There is a key difference in what the Russians were able to accomplish in the last American Presidential election and what the US has been able to do meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign nations for generations: the vodka drinkers were not that influential.
Outright lying is troublesome, but not for the morality fail so much as for the number of voters who seem unable to make, or care to make, the distinction... as long as it reinforces their world view.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This is the salient point. The algorithms are customized to the individual, so YouTube, Google, Facebook and other social media platforms are echo chambers.
So when the guardian writes:
One must ask, to who? Who is the user that is getting served up this content, and what have they been doing online?
It would be absolutely stunning if a Google company was an overall net negative to the Clinton campaign. Alphabet (Google parent company) Chairman Eric Schmidt worked closely with the Clinton campaign and created the company "The Groundwork" for the purpose. With deep knowledge of the algorithms used by Google and YouTube and a slew of engineers from the companies, The Groundwork has direct ties into the backend at Google.
Claiming that YouTube was manipulated to shill for Trump (overall) would be like claiming that William Randolph Hurst's papers were shilling against his favored candidates. It just doesn't make any sense at all.