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YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#11

Post by gboudrias »

jdminhbg wrote: post #10
joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Just anecdotally, Youtube's recommendation system seems effectively self-referential. On virtually any subject I look at, recommended videos seem to cycle between just a few themes or even just a few specific videos. I think there's a logical reason for this. I imagine for a given topic you wind-up with: [broad video] related to [other broad but unrelated video] plus [extremist video]. And [extremist video] related t…

I see the same thing on a completely uncontroversial subject: music videos. If I watch e.g. a Beatles video, the recommendations aren't [Rolling Stones, Kinks, Badfinger, ...], they're always [Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, ...]. I don't know if it's naive and bad or if it's actually good for engagement and I'm just an outlier in what I expect to get.

I only wish I would get songs by the same band... It sort of seems like Youtube tries its darndest to steer me away from the current band. I'd be happy if it just cycled between hits from the same artists, but I've never seen it do this recently.

I think what's most frustrating about it is I don't know what game they're playing. Recommendations used to be logical, now they're almost a waste of screen real estate. What even happened?

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#14

Post by joe_the_user »

jdminhbg wrote: post #10
joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Just anecdotally, Youtube's recommendation system seems effectively self-referential. On virtually any subject I look at, recommended videos seem to cycle between just a few themes or even just a few specific videos. I think there's a logical reason for this. I imagine for a given topic you wind-up with: [broad video] related to [other broad but unrelated video] plus [extremist video]. And [extremist video] related t…

I see the same thing on a completely uncontroversial subject: music videos. If I watch e.g. a Beatles video, the recommendations aren't [Rolling Stones, Kinks, Badfinger, ...], they're always [Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, ...]. I don't know if it's naive and bad or if it's actually good for engagement and I'm just an outlier in what I expect to get.

My guess is the system creator think a lot about making the best recommendations for situations where they have enough information but seldom think much about the consequences of making recommendations where they don't have the information to make a recommendation and both users and developers underestimate how information is needed for a decent recommendation.

Edit: And the situation seems very much a product of youtube (and all the content providers, basically) stripping any user content controls from their UI. The user has no easy way to tell youtube what they want besides choosing between video that youtube offers them and those become more circumscribed as the process progresses.

There's a myth of the content providers doing magic to give the user what they want and the results seem to be this, ie, just terrible.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#15

Post by ardy42 »

> Perhaps most striking is what was absent. The algorithm rarely led back to mainstream news coverage, or to liberal or centrist videos on Chemnitz or any other topic. Once on the fringes, the algorithm tended to stay there, as if that had been the destination all along.

I wonder if part of the problem is the "news coverage" on YouTube is mostly amateur. People in the mainstream don't feel the need to produce amateur news coverage, since that's done professionally. However, people on the fringes produce and consume vast quantities of amateur news content, because there's so little fringe content that's professionally made. That leads to a large, focused single that Youtube's algorithms have trouble filtering out because they're too coarse and they confuse activity for quality.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#16

Post by everdev »

joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Just anecdotally, Youtube's recommendation system seems effectively self-referential. On virtually any subject I look at, recommended videos seem to cycle between just a few themes or even just a few specific videos. I think there's a logical reason for this. I imagine for a given topic you wind-up with: [broad video] related to [other broad but unrelated video] plus [extremist video]. And [extremist video] related t…

There's is a hidden "not interested" button on mobile where you can then say why you don't want to watch a video and choose to block the channel or similar videos.

The algorithm isn't ideal, but after a couple days of filtering you can pretty consistently get a feed of videos you're interested in.

The idea of people getting persuaded by fake news, etc. is a topic for another day. This assumes you can vet trustworthy sources on your own.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#18

Post by throwaway2048 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #8

Just anecdotally, Youtube's recommendation system seems effectively self-referential. On virtually any subject I look at, recommended videos seem to cycle between just a few themes or even just a few specific videos. I think there's a logical reason for this. I imagine for a given topic you wind-up with: [broad video] related to [other broad but unrelated video] plus [extremist video]. And [extremist video] related t…

Another aspect is youtube's algos tend to heavily favor "engagement" ie watching a full 30 minute video, not hard to see how this funnels people into fanatics due to their nutty followers devoted engagement.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#19

Post by throwaway2048 »

DavidWoof wrote: post #6

The focus of this article is on right-wing extreme content, but I think the tendency is true on both sides. The fact is that partisans are more likely to seek out news content, and partisans are happier with content that matches their prior viewpoint. And so the extreme content rises in popularity and is presented as the recommended option to the less partisan. It's a worthwhile question as to whether this is a flaw…

It is important not to put the cart before the horse, its youtube that controls recommendations, thought various mostly opaque means.

Do not confuse that with what people want, you hear plenty of stories about how somebody watched some $stupid_shit and then their recommendations are pure $stupid_shit for the next two weeks.

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