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YouTube To Curb Conspiracy Theory Video Recommendations (venturebeat.com)
YouTube said today that it is retooling its recommendation algorithm that suggests new videos to users in order to prevent promoting conspiracies and false information, reflecting a growing willingness to quell misinformation on the world's largest video platform after several public missteps. From a report: These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content: ludicrous conspiracy theories about mass-shooting events being staged, far-fetched proclamations that the moon landing never happened, and hare-brained notions that the Earth on which we live is, well, flat. Moving forward, YouTube promises that you'll see less of those kinds of videos. This is similar to moves it's made in the past to reduce clickbaity recommendations, or videos that are slight variations on something else you've watched.
"We'll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to -- but doesn't quite cross the line of -- violating our Community Guidelines," YouTube said in a blog post. "While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community."
"We'll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to -- but doesn't quite cross the line of -- violating our Community Guidelines," YouTube said in a blog post. "While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community."
"See? NASA made youtube to DELETE all the flat earth videos to hide the truth!"
90% of athletes agree too. So it must be true.
"Help, I'm being oppressed!" - Roger Stone with little bits of infant flesh still on his unwiped jowels.
Move along...
"These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content:" Which overlord(s) will determine for the algorithm what is considered "unsavory"?
Who is going to determine what's fake, ludicrous and far-fetched? It's going to be the most unbiased arbitrators of truth like Buzzfeed and Vox again, isn't it?
You know ... those smug morons who think and act exactly like conspiracy theorists, but instead of calling everything they can't handle a conspiracy, they call everyone who says anything they can't handle a conspiracy theorist.
So merely conspiracy theorists with an opposite polarity.
Because somehow, if you want your bullshit to be fashionable, and the masses to back you, that polarity still flies.
DUCK! He wont' go to the pokey. He will CAVE. Like the DUCK!
One of the great ironies about the fake news crisis since the 2016 election has been the fact that there was no urgency to combat fake news prior to Trump. The most-viewed version of the Loose Change "documentary" about how the US government orchestrated and covered up 9/11 is now 6 years old and has 2.7 million views. Another version entitled "BEST 9/11 Documentary: If You Seek TRUTH, WATCH THIS" has 4.7 million views. I specifically remember how it was first located on Google Video prior to Google acquiring Youtube, and was online around 2005-2006. It's interesting that fake news only becomes a crisis when it might impact the causes and politics that align with the political biases of those in the media and Facebook/Twitter/Google executives.
Seeing conspiracy theorists literally everywhere; making up crazy theories just like regular conspiracy theorists; yet being completely smug about it, and never realizing they are just as nuts.
Come on. Only a bit more, and you can start denying the facts from the NSA leaks or the existence of black sites.
Youtube has a LOT of conspiracy theory stuff. How do you separate the innocent "aliens ate my brain" stuff from the "Inside Hillary's secret child porn studio on Mars". That "line" might be obvious to some people, but not everyone, and the fact that there is a line could be considered disturbing too. Why not just superimpose a flashing "PROBABLY BULL$HIT" on the video content if it gets close to, or over, that vague line?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
- Iraq tried to buy yellow cake from Niger ...
- Iraq's evil aluminum tubes
- Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda
- Iran did WTC
- Assad gassed his own people
- French protesters are racists, misogynists, fascist homophobes
- Ghaddafi distributed viagra pills for rape
- Ghaddafi was carrying out a genocide
- Russia poisoned a spy and its daughter, on orders of Vladimir Putin or the highest authorities in Russia
- Trump is doing the Russians's bidding because he is blackmailed by the pee tape
- The White Helmets are a Syrian organization
-
about cabals trying to control what you can see and hear by forming one of their own ?
Well bitchute https://www.bitchute.com/ will be happy for the traffic, and seeing as they are distributed and powered by bit torrent it should make a nice alternative to the company that used to "Do No Evil"
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
As absurd as some conspiracy theory web sites are, please fight for their right to be treated as sane web sites. For one thing, holes in such theories come to light on such web sites.
I have monitored a number of them. Flat Earth and Staged Moon Landing "proof" may be silly, but that is all. The overwhelming majority will always know better. As soon as censorship starts, it lends credence to the sites anyway. It creates a "they" that are censoring, presumably because "they" don't want you to know the truth.
Censorship tried to prevent knowledge that the earth circled the Sun instead of vice-versa, and evolution.
The first thing Socialism and Communism does is stop the free press. Venezuela could not have happened without tight control of information. With censorship, propaganda easily prevails.
Or just look at your YouTube favorites. I'm sure it will be full of them.
E.g. the NSA denialists, who claim that Snowden is a russian spy and black sited don't exist and the CIA never tried to overthrow any governments ever.
It always seemed to me if you started out with something controversial youtube would go full on psychotic after a few autoplays. At first I thought it was an attempt to denigrate the original video, Later I begin to think that this was an attempt to measure tolerance of conspiracy theories. Now that they have this bit of information and people know that there are crazy people on youtube they can over correct and censor stuff they don't like. Does anybody know why youtube uses some random numbering system so that videos aren't sequentially addressable?
we see their actions. When they establish a track record it will be perfectly clear what the real goals are and who the real targets are.
;)
Just my 2 cents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It is not even close to the top of my list to listen to Conspiracy Theories. Hell, I usually tell people to wrap that tin foil hat a little tighter. But it is a fact that there are Conspiracy Theories that have turned out to be true. Who the fuck is google(notice my link is youtube) to say what is true and what is not.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
about time!
Their link to An Inconvenient Truth just disappeared.
Have gnu, will travel.
My opinion is there is problem as I see it is there is a big abuse on free speech.
The line where someone is stating an opinion, is stating a fact, or is stating parody has gotten very blurred.
Back in the 1990's I have (as I expect others would have too) posted some parody posts about a flat earth mainly to show the arguments against evolution (as Kansas blocking evolution from text books was an issue then).
What seemed to have happened was this parody had been passed with the pseudoscience and half baked conclusions got read by someone who just didn't see this as parody but as fact. And then increased on this topic, and combing with their belief of grand conspiracies to show the topic. Then it just grew further.
Before the internet we had our opinions which can be published in the opinion section of the news papers. People read it and know it was just our opinion. Parody was well defined as such, and fact had a lot of official backing behind it.
Now with the internet we are flooded with too much info, and need more skills to separate truth from fiction. And conspiracy logic will always seem to be a strong counter argument to official channels, to a point today where conspiracy theories are now on the official channels as well, muddying the water even further.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What am I going to watch for a good laugh now?
And especially the one that claims the MSM is conspiring to suppress any speech that is not mainstream and average.
Oh, wait.. that is not a theory anymore.
"... but his mother isn't proud of him, she raised a dishonest traitor, not a mensch like Roger Stone or a powerfully fraudulent INCEL like Donald Trump."
A vast conspiracy to silence regular conservative voices from the internet! It's probably those damned lizard people again! #MAGA
Yes! What we really need is youtube protecting us dumb people from "the wrong ideas." I wish they had started doing this years ago, then places like Prager U and Milo wouldn't have been able to gain a foothold in peoples minds. We need to CRUSH wrong thought and make sure we protect us truly stupid people.
Translation "Youtube is going to block anyone that doesn't follow our political agenda, because our stupid left wing reads can't take the truth.".
Leave youtube on autoplay for long enough and you always end up on some 2 hour conspiracy theory doco.
No more evolutionists and spheroid Earthers? Who decides?
EOS
I know you can turn them off if you're logged into YouTube, but I do most of my video watching while not logged in. I hate clicking on recommended videos even if they look interesting because I know clicking on them means "help us build a profile on your interests." Is there a way to just turn them off entirely?
it's their website.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I don't care what righteous rationalization they have for their meddling, it's meddling in what I can see and what I can't.
I wouldn't like a librarian to refuse to check out a book because they don't believe I'm adult enough to sort fact from well-crafted fiction. That's none of their fucking business.
Which means I'm getting my video anywhere else, wherever I can.
-Styopa
So does this mean in addition to the right wing nutjobs, they'll also get rid of the "Everything is patriarchy" conspiracy theory feminist garbage as well?
Youtube recommendations is horrible.
I am into astronomy, and one time, out of curiosity, I wanted a video 'proving' the the earth is flat and 'refuting' the usual proofs for it being round and rotating.
What happened next is that I was bombarded with similar videos all refuting that the earth is spherical, from someone doing laser over a frozen lake, to observing Toronto's skyline from across lake Ontario, ...etc.
This kept happening for months before it subsided, maybe because I hit enough 'Not interested' links, or maybe simple not clicking on the recommended videos. But it was very annoying for that duration.
The arguments presented range from blatant conspiracy theory (NASA is promoting that the earth is round to maintain funding), to ignoring science (atmospheric refraction causing skylines to be visible).
This is not about politics, this is not opinion.
The Greeks knew the earth was round (and probably other civilizations before them, in Mesopotamia). Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth (before 200 B.C.E.). So did the Arabs in 800 C.E., by a committee formed on the orders of the Abassid Caliph in Baghdad.
Why are we (as a species, and civilization) regressing to such low levels?
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
fuck off apk
The problem is not so much that this content is available by search on demand; it is that it is often amplified and promoted on the landing page if you watch a few videos of this nature, initially only out of curiosity (yes, I am aware that you can tell Youtube to not show similar content). I am now in a developing country. All the landing page content is utter junk and the people (especially the low information users who know Internet only through their phones that form the majority) know no better. People seem to think whatever Youtube content is popular or is promoted is probably true. Most of these don't seem to actively seek junk, but passively consume whatever Youtube says is right for them. Internet is not enlightening them; it is doing the opposite, reverse of the early promise of the Internet when it was all academic.
This is a hard problem to solve. We all know the issues. The real solution is ultimately better education, but the current recommendation algorithms are amplifying ignorance. Their goal is purely to promote engagement. Google would not exist without the Page Rank algorithm and while that is often gamed, it does mostly work. They need to come up with an equivalent of the Page Rank for Youtube landing page.
Whatsapp seems to be way worse with respect to propagating junk in developing countries. The new effort that limits forwarding to 5 is at least a start.
It's always the Russians.
Secureteam10
In my college days we had a flat earth society, which was really a euphemism for drinking club.
Some apparently never sobered up
Citation needed on that "fact"
We don't need corporations to protect us from information based on what they think.
This is "shadow" censorship - it makes it harder to find these videos.
For example, are they going to hide 90% of Russiagate stories, which is the greatest conspiracy theory of our time?
Are they going hide alternative news media that say the White Helmets are bad actors? (they are)
Is a bitch ute another term for minivan?
Get ready kids, this round they do NOT want to lose again. Look there are certainly questionable videos on Youtube, a lot of them are trolls or refer to some niche meta that there's no way Youtube nor anyone else could possibly understand. But that is kind of the point since it means they will have no other choice but to censor^Wblock^Wfilter^Wdemonitize first, ask questions later. It's self-fulfilling BS that will only get worse as elections get closer.
Here's a somewhat amusing test you can try yourself - Search for polar topic like abortion or things a child might lookup and be bombarded with some of the alt-leftist shit that makes MSM look normal. The topics targeting kids in particular are outright proppaganda. Issues involving females for example are almost completely dominated by feminists. It's not necessarily that topics are bad but they blur the line between promotion and some random review / discussion. Female health is an easy target that will have your daughter believing she needs a brazillian wax before she's 13 and only using Venus Super Female Non-burning razers with ultra soft bs you'll pay $30 a tube for.. But hey, those make Youtube money.
Publish their own video material on social media.
A video site then steps in with its recommendation algorithm to define what content will be found?
A video site should be a utility as they are not the publisher of the user created content.
Want a video site to be news reporters? Create your own news under a brand and publish that.
Let people have their freedom to publish, the freedom to search, the freedom to link, the freedom to comment on other users content.
Its their content and their comments. Their search terms and their interest to link and support.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Human biology, evolution, mental illness rates and outcomes of people diagnosed with that particular mental disorder.
You do not prove him a liar, you only prove that you fear what he had to say.
A barefoot man in a trenchcoat offering to let me pet his pet rat in the pocket.
A used car, cheap!
My 10 year old cousin in the server vault. With a pair of pliers and a screwdriver.
A woman widowed twenty times. All by tragic accident.
Sure they'll censor fake shit. It's the deliberate collateral damage I'm worried about.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
everything on YouTube is conspiracy theory! Just ban YouTube!
I commented on this story to link a relevant youtube channel, lets call it the insomniateam channel. The comment has been removed. Slashdot (@whiplash) does not want you to see that channel. That is really, REALLY interesting.
Pure and simple.
Look, if the material is so outrageous that Google's better than you employees do not believe it then why are they so hellbent on removing it from sight?
If it is patently false, why should they care?
They care because it conflicts with their personal view of the world.
And when it conflicts with their view of the world they want to remove it from view. Which is ..... wait for it ..... censorship.
Caution: Contents under pressure
I don't see what the problem is here and unlike apparently most people commenting and clutching their pearls actually see it in action.
If I'm watching an SNL clip that mentions Hillary Clinton and there's a bunch of dumb right wing trolls and agitators going on about her being the antichrist and part of a child sacrifice ring and so on I don't want to see videos about it as a related video but it regularly churns up garbage like that. It's clear their system is being manipulated
Sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
Now, whether rantings of madman or insight of genii, all will be banned.
All Hail Mediocrity!
(R)ule in Hell or (S)erve in Heaven [R]?
The return of planet 10, aka Nibiru, referred to in the Bible as Wormwood which will be seen just before Armageddon. Check youtube for videos about the Sumerian Annunaki if you'd like to know more. Doing just a yt search for Nibiru brings up dozens of bullshit vidoes that are constant reposts with new titles from the day before. Annunaki will get you the actual videos. As will the term Zecharia Sitchin which is one of a handful of people able to read Sumerian cuneiform.
No he isn't. The only thing in that list that has ANY amount of plausibility is the hollow earth lizard men. And learn what the fuck irony means, MAGAtard.
Exactly. They were fine with your argument when it was Daily Stormer and Gabby (or whatever that bullshit commo site was called). Nothing but screams of freeze peach and freedumbs.
Hypocrites gonna hype.
if it is such a work of fiction then why doesbthe Goobermint just gotta tell us at the end of Harry Potter movie that SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDORE when i can drive up in my yellow Volkswagon beetle and say that the Harry Potter movie franchise has nothing todo with the book about another scholastic Mandela effect tgat made the move more inspiring and please oh please LEAVE DUMBLDORE ALONE in this movie. Do you know that fiction means you cant argue with it as a art form? Do you know what a fvcking Contract is? No video on youtube ever posed itself to a courtroom or jurry as truth because it will always be in contemplation consisten with Free Speach and Association.
and leave Britney Spears alone too. and Timecube grouch says it better than Yablonski Hates You on Something Aweful
speak your opinion, do not silence others.
I love to watch so-called conspiracy videos and following the recommendations to similar. Gives me something to either think about or laugh about or somewhere in between. Open-mindedness beats close-mindedness. So in what universe does this improve my experience? Everytime I see google mentioned now I immediately associate 'censorship'. Maybe they are changing their brand image. See recent discussions about potentially shutting down ad-blockers in chrome.
Oooh, look, nothing. a conspiracy. When it comes to businesses, they're immaculate and perfect, all the problems come from government interference, SJWs, eco warriers et al, but when YOUR idiotic stuff is being targeted for being, well, idiotic (such as eco warriors being why nuclear is so expensive), suddenly they#re incompetent boobs.
You believe, on fuck all, that it will be better than what YT does. Why? Because that would make what YOU want done the thing that is done.
Want anyone to DO it? Provide your case so it can be judged. Otherwise you just get Hitchens' Razor'd.
It's not very hard. If there's a huge conspiracy and the proof is that there is a lack of evidence, being hidden by that big conspiracy, THEN IT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY.
Patriarchy? Conspiracy theory.
Flat earth? Conspiracy theory.
Drumpf colluding with Russia? NOT a conspiracy theory. Not even the orangeutan is hiding it, just going "There's nothing wrong with it!".
Until you have to be inconvenienced by it, even just potentially, in any way.
See the OWS protests. Just because you would have been inconvenienced by it if you HAD a job in Wall St, you are against it and for the police moving them on.
You're 100% for it unless you have to do something about it. Even listen to it.
And not against it when you accept the KP laws, copyrights, patents and all other "IP" laws. All of those things (the abuse of the child is criminal and real world, not the owning of videos or pictures of it, that could be evidence) are 100% speech and not free.
If you deride them, you're validating their beliefs by persecuting them to silence them. If you ignore them then you are validating their beliefs by tacitly agreeing with them (as they see it). If you silence them they are validated, but THEY CANNOT PASS THAT CRAP ON SO EASILY.
Vaccinations teach vaccines to adapt, if we didn't vaccinate at all we'd not have vaccine resistant strains.
We'd have a shitload more dead people.
But when we vaccinate enough, it doesn't lead to pandemics because the virus cannot spread too far before dying out (either host dies or recovers).
This is the same thing for the destructive pathogen "Conspiracy theories".
Validate them by shutting them up. Go ahead. The mind virus will die like a real one even so.
When Kathy held up a Trump head, the right wing headed out to silence her and get her sacked. Fuck all care for free speech there. When Abu Hamsa preaches the rightwing wanted, and got, him silenced. When the apache vids came out, the right wing HATED it, no care for free speech there.
You want the press silenced, a press you call left wing liberal media, by the president. No care for free speech there. You even laud him musing about jail or violence for the press. No care for even freedom of the press.
The only time you right wingers are FOR free speech is when it is what YOU are saying or what you want to hear, like "Jews will not replace us".
No, you can still 100% see all of the insane bullshit your idiotic ideology demands to soothe your ego. It's 100% absolutely all still there.
It just won't get recommended to you, you have to look for it, fuckwit.
LEARN TO READ SHITHEAD.
i noticed one thing. You didn't deny trump is doing the russians' bidding, only that he did it because of the pee pee tape.
That claim of a pee pee tape is a rumour. not a fake news or conspiracy.
And the entire thing isnt a conspiracy theory either, since it only requires a few people who would inevitably lie by omission, to keep silent. There's nothing about a flat earth that would make EVERY SINGLE SCIENTIST FOR 1000 YEARS keep up the pretense.
Even if there were not evidence that trump is doing the bidding of russia: see the refusal to sign a veto proof bill to sanction russia.
Nothing to do with article but any excuse to TDS! Or ange Man Bad! Everyone knows! Russia! Russia! Russia!
With you, bro! Orange Man Bad! Everything in dossier 100% true! Russians say so!
If they want to create and share harmless conspiracy videos with each other, so what?
Who died and made you or google or snopes or whoever the fuck king of what people are allowed to do on the net?
Why do you give a shit? They hurt no one to talk about flat earth or whatever and it makes them happy.
This is just low hanging fruit on the path to controlling all information on the net. It happens everyday right in front of your face. Censorship and tracking are not exclusive to China. Why else does most of /. use blockers, vpn, etc?
Leave the flat earthers alone to share their videos. It is a slippery slope until you get censored, too. But you wont be able to post about that because your censorship post complaints will be filtered, too.
No.
I always enjoyed watching the 911 Truter idiots with thier stupid stunts.
Especially entertaining was the idiot who lite a fire under chicken wire then jumped up and down on it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Start of censorships worldwide. Thanks to FB, Twitter, Google, Mozilla, YouTube etc
I remember the "crackpot conspiracies" like the FBI is keeping dossiers on social activists like MLK and John Lennon, or the CIA is testing LSD as an interrogation tool by slipping it to unsuspecting subjects, or the NSA has a secret room where they tap into the phone system and monitor whatever calls they think are interesting,
The truth of all of those is now a matter of public record along with testing radioactive substances on mentally handicapped children and poor pregnant women, and providing sham treatment for syphilis in order to see how it progresses without treatment.
Sure, flat Earth and fake Moon landing are bunk, but while I don't necessarily believe any mass shootings are conspiracies, I have to admit it wouldn't be so far out of line with the ones above that are established fact.
Either those are Sisters Of Mercy lyrics or they should be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, it's obvious isn't it? There aren't ANY health professionals performing ANY sort of gender reassignment surgery, therefore ALL health professionals this it's a mental disorder. QED.