YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant (bloomberg.com)

Proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies on YouTube were sacrificed for engagement, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing Google employees. From the report: In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world's largest video site surfaced and spread. One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers. Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of "alt-right" video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don't rock the boat.

The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement. Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'"

Comments

RR

[kackle]

Does Rick Rolling count?

Something has changed

[ruddk]

I have been watching cat videos on YouTube for 10 years now and it has been a good run. But not they have stated to show the odd dog video now and then.
Thatâ(TM)s extremely offensive and now I am afraid to open the browser because with no warning what so ever, BANG, there it is. A DOG video in my recommended feed.

Meow.

Re: "Toxic Videos" Please!

[elrous0]

Quick Robin, someone is disagreeing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Youtube! To the Batmobile!