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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!"
Move along...
"These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content:" Which overlord(s) will determine for the algorithm what is considered "unsavory"?
My tinfoilometer is going nuts at this post. Show me examples of these videos.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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"
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.
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?
Oh, US government apologists, those aren't the same thing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What is this comment even about????
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
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.
Well, anyone who has sources they can cite, for a start.
Here's a handy tip for distinguishing between truth and lies. They both come with a price, but truth demands its payment up front.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No more evolutionists and spheroid Earthers? Who decides?
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/
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.
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.
Never trust a man that is entirely harmless in a physical sense yet requires two squads of SWAT and an early morning televised assault to apprehend. That dastardly scoundrel was dangerous I say.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
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"
People who make those claims tend to overwhelmingly oppose current American government for ideological reasons.
Human biology, evolution, mental illness rates and outcomes of people diagnosed with that particular mental disorder.
Youtube tailors your recommendations based on your watching history.
I never get those on recommendations, because I just don't watch them. If you keep getting them, it suggests you're already interested in them.
Actually, paying for your news is a good first step, although of course you don't believe that news uncritically. If you aren't paying people for the information you're consuming, the people feeding it to you definitely are working for someone else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Well, anyone who has sources they can cite, for a start.
This is how the 9/11 conspiracies made it to the top of search results. All of the web sites claiming that our own government did it pointed to other websites substantiating the same claims. Eventually, they all came around in a big loop. Gaming search engines is an old sport.
Have gnu, will travel.
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
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]?
Ah, I see we have a regular youtube commenter posting on slashdot.
How charming.
-Styopa
If you don't think the orange man is bad, regardless of politics, you're simply stupid. Not much more can be said.
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.
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."
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.
Threatening to kill the president isn't covered by free speech. It's a felony under US law:
Threatening the President of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. It consists of knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hillary used - "I dont recall"
I'm not even going to check this but if true is not a lie. "I can't recall" could be a lie. That's the difference. "I never slept with that woman" not a lie even if he had sex with her, but never slept in the same bed as her. "I never said that Mexico will pay for the wall", provable lie. Documented provable lie.
Right, and if you are so confident, post with your real name, and make some death threats against the president. You can even state that you love him and agree with his policy in the same post to rule out political motives.
You'd love to paint this as political, but threats against the president are always taken seriously.