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."

Comments

And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum...

[Z80a]

"See? NASA made youtube to DELETE all the flat earth videos to hide the truth!"

Re:And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum...

[jwhyche]

I wouldn't mind if youtube would be a little more picky on its recommendations. Not to just base them off one video that I watch. I watched, really didn't even watch, more like flipped through, one flat earth video. Next thing you know I'm on the "youtube nutball" list. Everything from bigfoot raped my dog to Elvis is pumping gas down at the 7-11.

Re:And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum...

[lgw]

Did you dislike the video? That's how you tell YouTube's recommendation engine not to recommend more of the same.

Re:And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum...

[Jane Q. Public]

The problem is that YouTube (and Google in general) is wholly incapable of deciding what is a "conspiracy theory" and what is not.

I mean, some are obvious of course, like flat earth and moon landing hoax BS.

But there are many others which are not so clear-cut, and Google uses known biased sources (like Politico and Snopes) as its determiners of "truth".

It's really not Google's job to decide what is correct and deserving of your attention. That's very definitely your business, not theirs.

Who determines what is unsavory?

[JamesNorton]

"These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content:" Which overlord(s) will determine for the algorithm what is considered "unsavory"?

Re:Who determines what is unsavory?

[gillbates]

But what if I find flat-earth conspiracy videos HILARIOUS!? Does it even occur to the censors-that-be that some people find conspiracy theories entertaining? As in, enjoying people making an ass of themselves, like the white collar equivalent of stupid redneck videos?

There's an important, unspoken assumption here: that people who watch videos agree with the content. This is a very dangerous assumption to make, because the fact that people will assume you hold a set of positions based on what you watch has the effect of shutting down discourse. The American experiment was an experiment in determining if differing peoples - diverse cultures, ethnicities, etc... could come together and form a country united by a common creed - the Constitution. If we have to shelter people from unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas, we've essentially admitted that the American experiment has failed; that multiculturalism and diversity are a sham and unworkable. In such a case, tribalism is justified, and ethnic nationalism required, if only for the survival of "your" kind.

What Youtube should be doing is encouraging people to seek out the different, the bizarre, the intransigent evangelists and propaganda to further prepare themselves to interact with the ever increasing diversity of America. What they are doing is quite the opposite; by sheltering people from extreme views, even moderate disagreement - the par for civil discourse in ages past, an inevitable part of making compromises for the public good - is now seen as hatred, and labelled as such (witness the Covington Catholic junior who was called a racist for having smiled at a minority person).[https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/19/us/teens-mock-native-elder-trnd/index.html]

Re:Who determines what is unsavory?

[squiggleslash]

But what if I find flat-earth conspiracy videos HILARIOUS!? Does it even occur to the censors-that-be that some people find conspiracy theories entertaining?

1. How is this new policy censorship?
2. How will it prevent you in any way from watching these videos?

This is about recommendations, you know, the videos that autoplay after the one you selected if you opened it in a new browser and hadn't had a chance to turn autoplay off. It's not about what YouTube will or will not allow on its platform.

Re:Who determines what is unsavory?

[farble1670]

What Youtube should be doing is encouraging people to seek out the different, the bizarre, the intransigent evangelists and propaganda to further prepare themselves to interact with the ever increasing diversity of America.

Youtube isn't a person. It isn't a government entity. It isn't a prophet, or a teacher. The only thing it does is optimize for profit. Saying it should do this or that for the betterment of society is like saying a squirrel should see a psychiatrist. Don't expect Youtube to be anything other than what keeps people watching the longest and causes the least friction in society.

Re:Who determines what is unsavory?

[kenai_alpenglow]

You would think they would optimize for profit. But hatred/bigotry/"save the planet" sometimes gets in the way. Think of the Southern businesses that wouldn't do business with "colored folk" in the past. Now look at CNN, who's news is so unreliable that their viewership is in decline. If you optimize for profit you would make a point not to offend as many customers as possible. If you "make enough", then it's tempting to push your bias. Sometimes it works (Google[youtube]--at least for now), sometimes it doesn't. Counterexample: MSNBC. They used to be a left-leaning news operation. Then they made the decision to go even harder left and be the voice of liberals. This increased their viewership--middle/right wing folks never really watched them anyways. So will this (youtube) work? Google makes so much money, they can afford to show bigotry (not so much the flat-earthers; this will morph into "anyone who doesn't toe the liberal line"...kind of like Microsoft did with their new-checker. Buzzfeed being reliable? Don't make me laugh!

Well there goes 10% of their content

[mnemotronic]

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?

So youtube is going to fight conpiracies

[Crashmarik]

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"

Re:So youtube is going to fight conpiracies

[Luckyo]

Unknown, but bitchute already has been deplatformed by all the same familiar actors with far left activists dictating the ideological persecution a few months ago.

It appears to be still up and running fine, which suggests that they successfully secured funding via means that aren't as vulnerable to far left activist pressure.

Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True

[pgmrdlm]

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.

The abuse of free speech.

[jellomizer]

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.

 

Re:The abuse of free speech.

[Littleman_TAMU]

I agree comrade! We know much more than the average person. Rather than dealing with people on a one on one basis and sometimes agreeing to disagree, we should have our glorious and impartial tech, governmental, and corporate overlords decide what we can and cannot read, see, or hear!

On a serious note, we need to educate people to think critically. It's a long game and you'll have to fight the urge to drop into the fetal position when you fully understand that the vote of flat earth guy, who you've calmly reasoned with and still won't accept your conclusions, counts exactly as much as yours. One of the lessons of history is that control of knowledge is power. We should approach free speech the same way we should approach the justice system. It is better to let 100 guilty men free then to deprive one innocent man of his freedom by imprisonment.

Re:The abuse of free speech.

[DoctorBit]

"My opinion is there is problem as I see it is there is a big abuse on free speech."

I totally agree. After the Las Vegas mass shooting, I spent most of two days watching youtube conspiracy theories about it. It was pretty clear that they were wrong, but nonetheless, I found them fascinating. Since when is all entertainment required to be educational? And what if the videos had turned out to be correct?

The authorities "knew" that Galileo was wrong back in the 17th century, but that didn't make their censorship of him OK.

Google does

[rsilvergun]

it's their website.

Re:9/11 truther video Loose Change is 6 years old

[lactose99]

There is no opportunity to learn if you censor someone you disagree with.

--
Censorship is NEVER the solution. It is PRECISELY the PROBLEM.

This isn't censorship, its simply not promoting crap conspiracies. Cretins can still post them to YouTube if they want.

Learning stupid is much worse than sitting idle, not every harebrained idea deserves mindshare.

Rabbit hole leading to an echo chamber ...

[kbahey]

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?

Re:9/11 truther video Loose Change is 6 years old

[farble1670]

Censorship is NEVER the solution. It is PRECISELY the PROBLEM.

Except there's no censorship here. The creators of those videos are free to move them to another platform, or host them on their own servers, or share them via peer-peer, or whatever. Nobody is stopping them.

Re:9/11 truther video Loose Change is 6 years old

[Layzej]

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...

I think the wake-up call was when it became apparent that a great deal of disinformation was part of an orchestrated campaign by an enemy state for the purpose of undermining American democracy.

Re: Oh the hits just keep on coming...

[Atrox Canis]

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.