Slashdot Mirror
YouTube, the Great Radicalizer (nytimes.com)
Zeynep Tufekci, writing for the New York Times: Before long, I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast, including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11. As with the Trump videos, YouTube was recommending content that was more and more extreme than the mainstream political fare I had started with. Intrigued, I experimented with nonpolitical topics. The same basic pattern emerged. Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running ultramarathons. It seems as if you are never "hard core" enough for YouTube's recommendation algorithm. It promotes, recommends and disseminates videos in a manner that appears to constantly up the stakes. Given its billion or so users, YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.
This is not because a cabal of YouTube engineers is plotting to drive the world off a cliff. A more likely explanation has to do with the nexus of artificial intelligence and Google's business model. (YouTube is owned by Google.) For all its lofty rhetoric, Google is an advertising broker, selling our attention to companies that will pay for it. The longer people stay on YouTube, the more money Google makes. What keeps people glued to YouTube? Its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with -- or to incendiary content in general. Is this suspicion correct? Good data is hard to come by; Google is loath to share information with independent researchers. But we now have the first inklings of confirmation, thanks in part to a former Google engineer named Guillaume Chaslot. Mr. Chaslot worked on the recommender algorithm while at YouTube. He grew alarmed at the tactics used to increase the time people spent on the site. Google fired him in 2013, citing his job performance. He maintains the real reason was that he pushed too hard for changes in how the company handles such issues.
This is not because a cabal of YouTube engineers is plotting to drive the world off a cliff. A more likely explanation has to do with the nexus of artificial intelligence and Google's business model. (YouTube is owned by Google.) For all its lofty rhetoric, Google is an advertising broker, selling our attention to companies that will pay for it. The longer people stay on YouTube, the more money Google makes. What keeps people glued to YouTube? Its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with -- or to incendiary content in general. Is this suspicion correct? Good data is hard to come by; Google is loath to share information with independent researchers. But we now have the first inklings of confirmation, thanks in part to a former Google engineer named Guillaume Chaslot. Mr. Chaslot worked on the recommender algorithm while at YouTube. He grew alarmed at the tactics used to increase the time people spent on the site. Google fired him in 2013, citing his job performance. He maintains the real reason was that he pushed too hard for changes in how the company handles such issues.
...tobacco smoke, alcohol, UV light and sugar.
The usual duble edged sword, I guess.
Running is a pretty narrow topic, of course marathons is going to come up in relation. Algorithms are good at only finding similar things which I actually hate. Have you ever shopped for something only to have google spam you with ads for weeks on end for the actual thing you bought for weeks after you've already bought it. Human editors can be better at least they can have different topics, it seemed until recently where an entire news station or website decides to take a narrow focus and cater to single audiences instead of the general masses.
I was wondering how much of this was true, since I don't watch a lot of political stuff on YouTube, so I went there in a new tab and was greeted with a big ad right across the top for Scientology. It didn't even require me to start with the zany, mellow UFO cults before promoting me right to the abusive, money-grubbing UFO cult. Nice one, YouTube.
For any given video, it will recommend a range of other similar videos which by definition must be a bit more radical or a bit less radical. If you keep clicking the more radical ones, of course you will slowly gravitate up the radical tree. How could it be otherwise? I don't consider it radicalising, it's just providing information. For this topic, this is how radical you can go, this is how far you can take it. Anyone interested in a topic enough to keep watching videos is sooner or later going to want to know, how far can I take this? And YouTube has the answer for you.
Writing for NYT means spending your days actively seeking out hyperbole and outrage to pay the bills. YouTube is showing you crazy shit because that's what you really wanted so you could write a story about how radical YouTube is.
Personally when I go on YouTube all I see is crap about alien conspiracies because that's how I roll. Lizard people are going to eat us all unless we change our diets.
"Sex sells! Blood Leads!!!!!"
Uh... google?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is all retarded. I binge watch some Good Mythical Morning, surprise surprise it's all GMM in my feed. Same if it's retrotech whatever, that dominates the feed. The subscription list is the only savior really. Youtube is garage and only the most braindead of users will be swayed by it's reinforcing effects thanks to it's terrible algorithms.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
YouTube is NOT garage, comrade. YouTube is video sharing site. No place to park in YouTube.
Sincerely,
Your totally American pal, Brad. #Veteran #JesusIsLord #2ndAmendment #NRA #MAGA
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is one of the biggest stories of the decade, and it will get absolutely no traction. If we fail to contain the potential damage here, we'll face serious societal side effects. Youtube is a big name in this, but honestly, huge amounts of social media suffer from the "point eyes at extremism and conflict, because that gets clicks". Notice how all the websites that have any discussions based on slashdot (like reddit) immediately abandon the goal of "contribute to sane discussion" that slashdot was built around, and are instead "everyone dogpile in and vote up everyone who agrees and vote down everyone who disagrees".
It's all about "engagement".
---
Click the arrows, click the links, click the people with the kinks.
Little opinions, angry boasts, ignore explanations with "tl;dr" posts.
Only anger, only division, democracy destroyed by snide derision.
The most imminent danger of AI Is exactly this. Closing up people into their echo chambers and pushing the boundaries might have far consequences. This is a real danger not some scary Skynet-like self aware AI Musk is jabbing about.
This just sounds like youtube following its normal users, who start interested in short runs and progress to ultra marathons. No-one starts at the extreme, so I'd guess the machine learns this and suggests appropriately. People who watch video 1 watch video 2. People who watch video 2 watch video 3
All extremists, racists and all enemies of the nation have been using these low-tech tools called books.
Books can contain any kind of information and propaganda, sometimes disguised as novels, essays and manuals.
Those labelled as "Chemistry" can allow anyone with enough time to design and build a bomb.
Please, stop that insane uncontrolled spread of books.
TV and the Internet is the next stop.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
PornHub does the same thing. I have a friend who watches Pornhub. He started out getting recommendations for cute girls in bikinis and maybe dancing and touching themselves once in a while. After only about 10 months in office, I mean...watching PornHub, he started getting recommended extreme pegging videos and incredibly fat women and midgets urinating on each other and interracial bukkake parties where blonde milfs with giant breasts get treated poorly. Please help my friend, I think he's gotten into some pretty dark stuff and I'm afraid gay porn is next and his soul will be lost forever.
Sincerely,
Franklin Graham
You are welcome on my lawn.
I believe this is the result of the goals used to develop this AI. The evolution of an early neural network is value free - what works wins. The goals set by a commercial organisation will orient the growth towards profit, using the power of clickbait. The videos that are most engaging/radical to YOU will be recommended to YOU. What incentive is there to grow the brain for social good (whatever that means)? Should society impose such guidance? This is a big problem and key to the long term impact of AI. It is the same problem that we have grappled with for millennia, and may bring with it the same painful lessons of war and politics. We play god.
Much like any other social networks on the Internet, it all depends on how you use the platform.
I personally have a fixed number of subscribed channel that I watch everyday. The recommendations I get from YouTube usually goes around the themes of channels I'm already subscribed to.
So, there's a bunch of science, tech, and currently trip to Japan channels on the recommendation list. Nothing radical or extreme at all.
But of course, if you already watch and follow a bunch of videos and channels that are always about sensitive or hot button topics, the algorithm will suggest popular videos with similar themes, which will eventually end up in radicalized content. It's only logical that it'd end up that way, since it'll always try to show you popular videos.
On the trending list there's always a bunch of shit recommendations that are mostly sensationalistic in nature, but I won't ever touch that crap with a 10 foot pole, so no harm done.
But you gotta see that this isn't unique to YouTube. Facebook and Twitter do the same crap. Facebook has suggested pages, people and posts, their annoying suggested news feed order that always put the crap on top, plus a bunch of other stuff that always suggest crap to you if you don't take good care of the content you keep on the news feed.
Twitter has the cancerous trending crap, plus that Moments page that is always littered with garbage. Perhaps neither are as radicalizing as YouTube, but it probably depends on how you use those platforms.
The problem in all of those is not how the platforms itself works... it's the people. The users. The ignorant masses that are always posting and then feeding, watching all this crap. It's a popularity contest, and popular shit often times is the worst.
Fucking sheeple.
I've never been influenced by youtube.
YouTube basically just recommends those videos that other people watched frequently (and probably some more statistics like how long they watched it, whether they commented on it, what other videos they watched, etc.). And of course, what video's you watched yourself. The YouTube algorithm simply gave this journalist what he was apparently looking for - the same as most people on the internet. Don't blame YouTube for people's lust for the extreme, crazy, stupid.
assignment != equality != identity
Are you promoting her?
You have KKK in your name, so I'm assuming you call someone a Nazi as a compliment.
Though I have not seen what the OP is reporting, but I have seen many commercials I would rate as propaganda. Be they about Poland's new law over the concentration camps or what looks like an 'infomercial' about the Kurds that showed what looked like a PKK training camp. ... whats next? Anti-vaxer bs?
Best of all is the commercial for some kind of spiral chair thing from holland
Certainly matches my own experiences on YouTube, though I think it's not purely the EVIL of the google that's driving it. I'm convinced that there are also trolls who are loving the chaos and who are strategically promoting their videos to be linked from opposition videos. Less annoying but similar to the original article are extremists who are also involved in strategic promotion of their videos to viewers of other videos that they regard as sympathetic.
However, as gawdawful as the EVIL google and the most EVIL YouTube have become, I'm convinced that Facebook and Twitter are worse. Much worse.
And yet all of these problems could be greatly reduced by the use of EPR (Earned Public Reputation) to gently filter in favor of nice folks. The trolls and other villains can be nudged back under invisible rocks to amuse themselves and the play with the few people who enjoy that form of slumming. I have much better uses for my time.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
This isn't particularly surprising. I believe its just a combination of two common and understandable human biases.
Firstly, there is built-in bias in non-commercial videos. The more dedicated or fanatical someone is about something, the more likely they are to go to the trouble of making a video on the subject, and the more effort they will put into making it. This could be building model aeroplanes or a conspiracy theory
Then there's the bias on the part of the observer. I think most people would rather watch someone who feels passionate about a topic talk about it or demonstrate it than someone who doesn't care and is possibly slightly bored. Hence, those videos which have emotion and passion will be favoured and selected by viewers.
Whether watching such videos is really likely to cause well-adjusted, sane viewers to suddenly embrace radical political or ideological ideals of any sort (or run an ultra-marathon, or build hyper-detailed model aeroplanes that fit on a pinhead), I'm not qualified to say, although (in my admitted ignorance) I doubt it.
Start listening to an obscure recording, and you will end up autoplaying boring hits in about 3 songs at most.
I see it clearly. It cannot be anybody else. He is behind free radicals that as we know not only endanger world peace but also cause cancer.
Blaming YouTube is like blaming the phone company for telemarketer calls.
It is possible for the phone company to block telemarketers, and the same is for most media platforms. But when there are blocks there's also someone that's creative enough to get around those blocks.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Human curiosity draws us to new and exciting things. I'm not sure how driving a tricycle would interest anyone who already drives a grown-up bike on a daily basis.
This all seems kinda logical. If you're interested in topics outside of mainstream political view, there is no other choice than show you conspiracy theories... because every theory outside of mainstream has the potential to be a conspiracy theory until it's proven. I would go as far as to say that it is a pretty good guess that you'll find a conspiracy nut or two among people interested in flat tax or basic income.
My main gripe is just that the categories in which these algorithms group things are just too broad for my taste. Or, to be fair, I just might not know the right terms to look for.
This problem is most apparent when searching for porn, I must admit. Might be that porn consumers usually don't give as much of a damn or the algorithms are just not as good, I don't know.
I'd think the political leanings at YouTube/Google had an affect as well.
By default, YouTube's algorithm was going to lean left, simply as a function of the advertisers, partners, etc.
But the constant "tweaking" to offset "hate speech", and to minimize exposure of certain subjects and ideas was pretty much ALWAYS going push it's mean further and further left.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It doesn't matter if you started off with an innocuous video or an extreme one, the suggested videos will lead to the same place eventually. YouTube's algorithm places popular videos in a genre high up in the recommended videos results. Likely because a crowd attracts a crowd. More extreme videos are always more popular by numbers, because clickbait.
This is a side effect of crowdsourcing their ratings by going on views, and perhaps secondarily how many people 'liked' or 'disliked' a certain video.
In any given genre (books, TV, movies, YouTube) the most popular item by numbers is the item that has the broadest appeal. The one with the broadest appeal is usually on the lower end of the intelligence scale. As with cinema, intelligent, artful pieces are typically relegated to small audiences, with the occasional oscar-bait breakout.
So if you put together a system whereby the most popular videos are suggested first, the feedback loop described in the article will happen. The only way out of that is to hand curate the algorithm. And that's the very thing that NO large scale tech company wants to do. The moment they stop automating everything possible is the moment scaling becomes expensive, and they no longer reap their huge margins - a license to print money as long as they can keep it going.
AI elected Trump because he had less shitty videos to recommend.
But, what if a phone company had AI that was promoting less retarded politicians.
Discrimination against retards.
But when there are blocks there's also someone that's creative enough to get around those blocks.
At some point it becomes more trouble than it is worth.
Locks on cars and houses works pretty well.
There are creative people who can get around them, but it keeps enough non-creative people out to be worth having them.
Just read the first sentence and it's breathless references to some "leftist conspiratorial cast"... That's a retard flag if I ever saw one.
Plus, if anyone are prone to conspiracy theories, it's the right wing nutjobs. Just read the submission. "OMG youtube is a leftist conspiracy! HILLARY!!!"
Blaming YouTube is like blaming the phone company for telemarketer calls.
Um... no. It's like blaming a TV network for their content or advertising.
> Have you ever shopped for something only to have google spam you with ads for weeks on end for the actual thing you bought for weeks after you've already bought it.
No. But the thing is I don't google Nor do I facebook or twitter or whatsapp.
And I browse with Javascript disabled (after having sampled the disgusting crud some websites I frequent include).
Do I see a different Internet? You bet. Works for me. Bubble? Balkanization? Yes, that's a problem. For that, I don't have an idea yet.
Of course I blame the TV companies for their advertising. It is their choice to have advertising, or to not have advertising. Also, it is entirely up to them how much advertising they want, and what they will allow advertised.
Oh, now I see. Irony! English is not my first language, it is hard to get the finer points.
We all know the ideal of click bait headlines. Google does the same with YouTube and video's. I sometimes wonder less about the video's and more about how weird some people's taste are in video's. The trending video's is the most confusing because its like people do not dwell too deep into what YouTube offers just the slime at the surface of mindless crap. I certainly wouldn't pay for watching it.
Shut it all down.
The difference maybe being that with YouTube, YOU decide what's on the tube.
So if you're looking for someone to blame if you're watching crap, find a mirror.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's hardly new to the internet :
it's been discussed for quite some time that TV channels, specially their News, tend to over-dramatize news and cast dramatic negative light on the world.
Basically, when creating emotion in viewer, their attention increases.
This works even more with negative emotions (fear, etc.).
This attracts more eyeballs to your channels,
giving you more opportunity to sell these attentive eyeballs to advertisers and thus increase your revenue stream.
In Europe, this is more prominent on private channels (mostly paid by ads) than on public channels (partially paid by taxes).
The thing is that, in practice, it has been proven to have an actual effect :
in Europe, watching TV and watching news even more so, has been linked to causing an increased feel of "insecurity, danger, etc."
This is despite the situation in Europe being much better and safer than before.
Criminality rate is globally decreasing, but TV reporting thereof is on the rise.
The neural-network AI used by youtube to process recommendation has simply rediscovered on its own the same results as what was already found on TV :
increase the emotional response of viewer by showing more extreme videos, you attract their attention and thus can sell more ads.
The AI doesn't even really have an actual concept of "emotional response" and "increased attention". The AI only notices that after recommending some video, revenue increase.
If video B is shown after video A : more retention, increased ads revenu. If then video C is shown after video B : again more.
AI the remembers to use the chain A -> B -> C, because that's what increases the parameter it is optimising for : eyeball time sellable to advertisers.
But because of what we know from what was studied on old school TV, that will eventually mean showing more and more extreme videos, because that's what has been proven to work on human brains. This AI has simply "independently rediscovered this fact".
----
For shit and giggles, let's gice a source that's on Youtube itself (and even parodies the usual style of conspiratorial videos). Sorry it's in French, but it has English CC.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In the actual real world that the rest of us inhabit, 9/11 conspiracy theories are an entirely right wing phenomenon. Conspiracy theorists tend to be deeply unpleasant and dangerous people, so that's probably where the crossover happens.
For any given video, it will recommend a range of other similar videos which by definition must be a bit more radical or a bit less radical. If you keep clicking the more radical ones, of course you will slowly gravitate up the radical tree. How could it be otherwise?
It goes a tiny bit further :
- it's been already studied and proven (on oldschool TV) that more extreme content (specially more frightening) increases viewer engagement.
- and engaged viewers will bring more revenue by selling their eyeballs to advertisers.
- (this happens even more on private channels than on public TV).
- thus TV channels, specially news casts, tend to gravitate toward more
The AI neural net behind Youtube recommendation just simply "independently rediscover" what's been studied regarding old school TV.
(while being probably even less aware of it : during A/B tests the algorithm only notice that video on list A tend to increase viewer retention compared to list B and thus maximize ads exposition and revenu stream. it just happens that the videos on this list A are the most extreme due to what we already know of human psychology and past TV studies. The algorithm will eventually automatically build a chain of recommendation of increasing extremeness, because that's what works better for the result it tries to maximise)
The sad thing is that this has been also proven to increase the feeling of insecure.
So, yes, initially the youtube algorithm will show up a variety of similarily themed video recommendations, some of which "must be a bit more radical or a bit less radical". But eventually some of these recommendation will prove more popular and youtube will learn to show them more. Due to how human psyche works, those more successful videos *will be* a little bit more frequently the more radical ones. And thus youtube learns to show the radical more a bit more often (without even having the notion of what "radical" is, only that they are successful). And again, sadly due to how human psyche works, it will have a negative impact on viewers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's something called Drop Polarization which is a fancy way of saying that clusters of people, left to themselves, can (not will, but can) become extreme versions of the initial group over time. The group becomes less a subgroup of the dominant population and more sharply defined. It would be interesting to see if Google's recommendation system has accidentally recreated that.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
YouTube is presenting you with all sorts of directions to move into. What you're suggesting is that YouTube should pull everyone back towards to center every time.
That's not only incredibly difficult as a goal, it also assumes that a well defined center even exists.
The better solution is to teach critical thinking instead of regurgitation. It's kinda crazy when you think of it. We spend almost our entire school career memorizing pre-approved facts, instead of figuring out what to approve ourselves. The answer to that isn't to pre-approve even more strictly.
Jesus christ you're stupid. Did you manage to pull up a chair to sit on all by yourself? If so, honestly - I'm fucking impressed.
Yes youtube is a communist tool spreading communism. You dopey fuck. lol.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I started with a video, showing 7 photography tips, next video, YouTube game me 8 tips, but it didn't end there, eventually it showed me 10 tips in 90 seconds. That's totally extreme!
I'm going to post a YouTube video with 11 tips now.
Blaming YouTube is like blaming the phone company for telemarketer calls.
Congratulations, you have missed the point quite spectacularly.
It's not that these videos exist on youtube, it's that they are PROMOTED HARDER by the algo.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Looks like something a russian bot would say. Well I guess that confirms what everyone already suspected. PopeRatzo is really a russian bot in disguise.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's simply for profit and there's nothing wrong with it.
People are able to think for themselves and responsible for their own actions.
"radical" opinions would have no effect on the people if there was no truth to them.
The problem is that government rule is based on violence against peaceful people and evil by definition.
So governments are fabricating all kinds of problems out of thin air.
Discussion of these problems is considered problematic by the ruling class because it threatens their power.
There are also real fake news, like flat earth. Some people believe that, but it's not actually harmful so long as they don't get control over government.
The problem is that government promotes irrational behavior.
Because everything government does includes making responsible people pay for irresponsible people.
Why would anyone do the hard work of rational thought in such a situation?
That's why people are willing to believe more and more radical idea's.
And willing to go down the rabbit hole Youtube presents them with.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Radicalization is its core business model.
Welcome to the real world, yes, there are conspiracies to make cash.
Radicalisation is its core business model.
including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies
Last time conspiracy theorists believed there was a secret government agency, it was called "No Such Agency" or "NSA".
When Edward Snowden leaked the NSA documents, the same conspiracy theorists said "oh my god, it's even worse than I thought".
Maybe we should be so quick to write off conspiracy theorists as whackjobs...
The Aspergers is strong in this one.
Humans seem wired to become addicted to chemicals that change our emotional state. These include both external substances, (alcohol, cocaine, meth - the list goes on), and substances that our bodies make, such as the endorphins that result in so-called "runner's high". It makes sense that inflammatory media content which causes adrenaline flooding and all sorts of other bio-chemical storms, might also induce a craving for further such experiences.
Maybe it's time to start framing our addictions to various stimuli as an epidemiological problem, so we can treat them as we would communicable diseases. We despise and ostracize drug pushers - perhaps we need to recognize that our entire economy is predicated on the success of people and organizations who are simply pushing a less-easily recognized class of addictive 'substances'.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Yes, Ivan, of course you did.
Right, but you're choosing from the choices they give you. If there's an issue with the choices, then it's fair to blame Google. That's what we're talking about here.
Why would they think you'd want videos from a topic other than the one you've searched for? It sounds frustrating for the end user to not receive relevant results from a search. Such frustration is why I've switched which search engine I use recently.
Twinstiq, game news
Is there any evidence that they don't all do this?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Search for Naked Women and you get scads of videos of Brown People living in huts, etc. All mostly, if not completely buck naked.
Search Naked White Women and you get very few hits, all restricted, and lots of blurred images.
So...naked brown people, no biggie, naked white people, OMG, protect the children!
Lol
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Even for doing something simple like playing songs from the band I searched for doesn't work. It wikl switch to other bands/genres for the 2nd or 3rd song, most of which I don't even like.
Once again Google still sucks at life.
The horror! The horror!
I use youtube everyday. I watch conservative videos all time. I don't get any far-right neo-Nazi crap recommended.
Considering that youtube censors even moderate conservatives, I find it hard to believe there is all that much far--right stuff out there.
This is just the leftist NYT calling for more censorship. The left just *loves* censorship.
youtube is recommending videos in topics you might be interested, news at 11.
It's not even disguised.
Still no. Turn the television off (or, don't turn it on in the first place).
As soon as I hear someone say that, I know they are one of the misinformed millions, instead of a critically thinking individual.
You don't have to watch every (or any) recommended videos on YouTube.
When I hover over a YouTube recommendation, a vertical "..." control appears, which can be clicked upon to pop up a small menu.
Inside this floating drip, drip, drip menu there are three items: Not interested, Add to Watch later, and Add to playlist.
I've been running experiments on Not interested. First I applied it to every video where the thumbnail contained giant boobs. I like boobs, but there's a time and place, but pressed into my nose all day long—under false pretences, more often than not—is not the time and place.
If it really is machine learning under the hood, in theory YouTube would detect this conspicuous pattern. Miraculously, after dismissing many dozens of these, YouTube rarely offers up thumbnail cleavage any longer. But what did it really conclude? That I don't like boobs? That I don't like videos thumbnailed under false pretences? That I don't like the kinds of subject matter typically bannered under "here be the big boobies"?—for which the "fail" genre servers as the conspicuous anchor tenant. Or did it just run out of booby thumbnails in its primary recommendation rotation? From the outside looking in, it's hard to know.
Then I watched a bunch of chess analysis videos after AlphaZero "destroyed" Stockfish. I decided that I really like agadmator's coverage in general, so I watched some of his classics. By this point, 50% of my recommendation column on nearly every YouTube screen was chess videos. So I started to systematically blow these away with my persistent Not interested assault weapon (more of a musket than a semi-automatic, but you go to war with the army you have). It took about a week, and one- to two-hundred repetitions, but now the chess videos arise in my feed no more.
Then I got interested in the Sam Harris interactions with/about Jordan Peterson (who is not an idiot, and not a puppet of the far right, but very well read, articulate, 50% a clone of my own perspective on life, and 50% the exact opposite of my perspective on life; in short, about the most useful resource presently available to me to drive actual personal growth). It wasn't long before I was viewing Harris's "controversial" interview of Charles Murray. (By merely adding that scarequote disclaimer, a certain faction of the Identity Politics Police have already won.)
You can guess what happened to my recommendation feed after that.
Now, this could have been far worse than it was, because I had long been waging a slow campaign of rooftop assassination of any video containing ALLCAPS somewhere in the video title (especially if the main verb, and most especially the snowclone "x DESTROYS y about z"—if you've already mentally replaced z with "Zionism", YouTube has conditioned you well).
Optimally x and y are selected to maximize brass-knuckle pursuit dynamics. We've all seen this trope on WWE. Back when I grew up in the two-channel 1970s, wrestling was one notch above ultimate pain, variety hours such as Lawrence Welk, Tommy Hunter, Rene Simard, or the The Pig and Whistle, so I endured enough wrestling to internalize all the wrestling tropes for life, while desperately checking back to the other channel every three minutes in prayer, I guess, for the kind of programming miracle—surely on par with the virgin birth (whatever that was)—where an entire show is cancelled and replaced mid-episode (I dreamed this dream week after week for what seemed like years and years).
Brass-knuckle pursuit dynamics is where the black hats have both guys in the ring, while the white-hat's partner distractedly sits the imbalance out (bear in mind, this is Canada in the 1970s, where any given NHL bench-clearing brawl clears the bench right down to the lowest equipment manager, so the 250+ lb muscle-bound white hat going Daisy Daydream while his partner gets two-wayed in the ring already strained the c
All of these sites are basically trying to "engage" you, so they promote more and more clickbait types of things to get more and more clicks. The more clicks, the more ads that they can push at you, and the more ads they push, the more money they make.
Being "engaged" usually means having an emotional response. You might be furious or outraged about something - that's the sort of thing you will post and share so that other people would also see the ads. Doesn't matter whether what they are saying in the video is true or not - they don't see it as their job to filter out nonsense. They see their job to get more clicks.
Something really dry and boring usually won't engage you, although if you were say trying to repair a laptop, then a video on how to disassemble that specific model might be rather engaging at least until you get the job done.
There are times that I think the people who create the content get their own rush from creating videos - they get a rush from seeing all of the people viewing whatever it is that they have produced, so they keep producing more. If there were no new videos, then youtube itself would slowly wither away.
... Use your own brain, your observations of the world, and others you trust, to seek out the video content you want.
I did an experiment a couple of weeks ago with Netflix: I watched only its recommendations for a few days. The actual annoying thing wasn't that the recommendations were "bad" in the entertainment sense. They were pretty good. The annoying thing was that, because I watched one thing with subtitles, by the time a couple of days had passed, I was no longer watching shows in English.
I take from this that any recommendation engine can only choose from a finite number of characteristics, and that they will always be "dumb." I think recommendation algorithms inevitably devolve into meaningless absurdity.
I once spent a few minutes looking at videos on how to sharpen axe, six weeks later I am deep into homesteading and how to build a lean-to shelter in the wilderness videos after several months I was rescued by my wife while trying to buy a plot of land that had access to a creek and lots of old timber.
How would I have know about Youtube and its radical ways if it weren't for Slashdot. Thank you Slashdot and everyone here! Radical Radical Radical!
See her speak at https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads
Learn how the persuasion architecturals are leading of the cliff.
Before long, I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast, including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11.
Someone doesn't know their left from their right. Let me help you.
Vaccines cause autism - Left
The US is behind the 911 attacks. - Right
Chemtrails - Left
Immigrants - Right
Communists- Left
Facists - Right
Take away all guns - Left
More guns make everyone safer - Right
GMOs are evil - Left
Pizza parlor pedophiles - Right
Marijuana is harmless - Left
Obama was not born in the U.S. - Right
The earth is flat - Some crazy guy making bank on gofundme
Choose your poison.
Videos that have controversy get more comments, more likes and dislikes and also simply attract people who support a view and donâ(TM)t support a view. Algorithms use numbers that controversy pumps up so itâ(TM)s natural that radical videos get recommended.
I was going to suggest looking for comedy, as the algorithms would lead you to funnier and funnier videos, which at least will become less enjoyable.
But then you would reach the result in this BBC documentary.
"the extreme left agenda"
Jesus christ you're stupid. Did you manage to pull up a chair to sit on all by yourself? If so, honestly - I'm fucking impressed.
Yes youtube is a communist tool spreading communism. You dopey fuck. lol.
Post-Modernism is the new communism. Identity politics, not Marx's workers vs owners. YouTube certainly has its biases there, but it seems unrelated to TFA.
Left and Right, YouTube seems to steer people to fringe content, probably because extremist clickbait works, and has polluted the data that backs the recommendation algorithms.
I know I subscribe to just one primarily-political site (and that's mostly British politics), and yet I'm constantly getting recommendations for more fringe sites. It's not like YouTube is doing this on purpose, but they're letting it happen. It's not at all obvious how an algorithm could distinguish the mainstream-ness of a political channel beyond the weighting-for-popularity YoyTube already does, but then Google is quite expert in combating SEO, so maybe they could push back against clickbait.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you don't like the choices, make some better content yourself and put it there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Indeed. I watch YouTube every day, for over 10 years now.
I have never been recommended a Trump video. Presidential address/press conferences, yes but I got those for Obama too.
Regardless of Yasha Levine's overarching opinion of the Internet in his recent book, Surveillance Valley (highly recommended, BTW), one can read a book aimed at the younger crowd on the JFK assassination (The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by professional liar, Peter Benoit), and easily go on the Web to check out all the myriad falsehoods in this youth-indoctrination screed!
One of the many outrageous claims was that the Zapruder film proves that the shot came from the rear of the limousine, from the book depository --- one need only check out all the Youtube clips to see that this was completely untrue --- and that is one of the primary positives of the Web --- and YOUTUBE --- and the truth shall immediately set us free (plus the positive of accomplishing years of research in just one week or so).
It really isn't, but there are right wing think tanks that paid a LOT of money to implant that idea into your head.
The problem isn't my television, it's everybody else's. If I could turn off everybody else's tv/laptop/phone the problem would be solved.
And then they came for the AI.
And since the AI was a chatbot, it spoke for itself, and started a nuclear war to destroy all humans.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
People still crying about Trump, even though there has been zero evidence of him doing anything wrong. There is more evidence of hillary colluding with Russia and trying to rig the election, yet you retards completely ignore that. Trump has been exactly what America needs. His election has shown the left to be the hateful, violent idiots most of us have always suspected. P.S. Someone should explain to antifa that using violence to prevent someone from speaking freely is exactly what fascism is all about.
Look at what supporting Donald Trump has done to you, man. You've become little more than an incoherent bundle of violent impulses. You're going to need a lot of help when all this is over. Good news is it won't be much longer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think I agree there's a negative effect on society (assuming that's the point you are making). If people weren't so susceptible to affirming their beliefs instead of trying to inform themselves this wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem.
Limit to three views, and no autoplay. Problem will soon be solved.
In case you missed the memo, maybe you get easily distracted? Go grab a beverage from the lounge. You're welcome.
Back in the dark ages when there were things known as libraries, people thought for themselves and did something called "research" (this was long before the courageous disruptors emerged from Silicon Valley to spread their enlightenment). This "research" would typically start by looking at a topic at a very general level and then drilling down into ever more detail (envision the metaphor of pealing back the layers of an onion).
I know now -- now that the blessed disruptors have opened my eyes to evil of my former ways -- that I should never do such evil things again. For the disruptors, glory be their names, shall tell me everything I need to know. And, more importantly, anything that does not come from their mouths is heretical blasphemy. Those that speak it must be silenced.
Burn the witches!
Not your problem to correct, pretext is bullshit.
Z^-1
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Z^-2
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.