51–60 of 272 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also is not an extreme position to say that that is not my problem, that I don't care, and that I don't want to sacrifice my safety to help them.
Climate change is going to make refugees everyone's problem (if it doesn't make you a refugee yourself) so I would encourage you to keep your eyes open for effective means of absorbing migrant populations.
The international corporate media has not been honest in its reporting of the refugee situation in Europe. This is becoming clearer year by year, because some of the facts that were earlier dismissed as racist rhetoric are now becoming very difficult to ignore. For example earlier this year, Chancellor Merkel finally admitted that there are "no-go" zones in the country where even the police dare not go. This is an ex…
It can be true and racist at the same time. If you never care about rapes except when it’s a dark skinned perpetrator in a white dominated country, then you are both racist and correct that that rape amongst refugees is an important issue.
This leads to extremism as people who rely on those sources for news coverage end up completely misinformed about the world and find people discussing matters to be doing so out of some form of ism and 'fake news' rather than because it may be an increasingly serious problem. And it also fuels extremism on the other end as they also see the lack of reporting as 'fake news' and it fuels questions about the motives involved in not covering these issues.
In my opinion, this quite rapid shift from the news trying to inform people (though of course there some lens of bias) to the news quite overtly trying to control people's actions is probably playing a major role in the rapid and, arguably deserved, deteriorating trust in the media. But that destruction of trust from the sources with the resources to carry out impartial reporting is doing nobody any good.
Now I can not stand YT. 1st, they have clearly decided that they want to compete with IG as their 'Trending' section is nothing more than influencers. 2nd, it is likely the case but the 'Trending' section is always loaded with liberal, nonsensical, click bait videos, and artist of no interest to me.
I am clearly no longer their target demo.
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've noticed this as well, the algorithm hones in on a few topics and videos. Interestingly enough, so does the algorithm on the Quora app. I hate this behavior, I want to use a recommendation algorithm to discover new similar content. My guess is that a "new similar content" algorithm doesn't get the same levels of engagement. Maybe its the same as radio stations playing the same twenty songs on a loop. Clearly goog…
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-radio-stations-play-the-same-ha...
This was addressed more broadly in "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads" by Zeynep Tufekci on TED. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891014 She remarked that Youtube's recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on anything , not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here's something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal…
While I understand the attractiveness of conspiratorial hypotheses, I think there is a simple explanation that applies to recommendation systems generally: such systems are designed, overtly, to identify content the user is likely to react positively the, based on what information it has about population-wide preferences.
When it knows nothing (or nearly so) about your personal preferences, the only thing it can do is recommend the most widely accepted content. As it learns more about your preferences, it has more basis to predict things that you will find meert your preferences that are less widely supported in the population at large—so, over time, it naturally rexommwnds more content that is extreme.)
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…
The extreme left aren't involved in mass murder at anything like the extent that the extreme right are. When looking at HVE groups the far left appears rarely, those lists are full of either militant Islamist or Far Right groups. The focus on the far right happens because it's the far right that are murdering people.
> “Lies, propaganda and manipulation are harmful for society, but on their own are not illegal — and so our hands are often tied,” said Mr. Ipsen, of the government-linked internet monitor.
Good. I think it's insane that the German government is even trying to establish a Ministry of Truth.
It seems now more than ever, we are getting biased reporting from mainstream media outlets, and I guarantee that any government crackdown would not include these mainstream news sources.
Here's an example from just a couple of days ago: CNN's Chris Cuomo as well as a number of major news outlets reported on Judge Brett Kavanaugh "snubbing" Fred Guttenberg, father of a victim of the Parkland shooting, by not shaking his hand at the event. None of these outlets bothered to mention that the day before on Twitter, Guttenberg said:
"I will be at Kavanaugh hearings and I hope to play a role in ensuring that this man does not become the next Supreme Court Justice." (https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/10366004607261614...)
They also didn't mention that Guttenberg was the only one trying to approach Kavanaugh, or that Kavanaugh's kids were removed from the room for safety concerns shortly prior. That seems like manipulation to me.
I don't say this because I want CNN banned, or anything like that. I'm just completely against any censorship, especially government censorship, of ideas. I believe in the liberal values of free exchange of ideas (or "Liberal Science" as Jonathan Rauch calls it, in his excellent book, Kindly Inquisitors).
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.
Ideally it would know how to predict order from title but that doesn't always work
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…
Given my understanding of how the recommendation engine works, if you watch a video slightly related to a topic, then another video slightly related to that topic, there is a reinforcing effect whereby the engine believes you to be more interested in that topic. E.g. if I watch a video on vegetarianism, then another one, it may strengthen the confidence that I am interested in vegetarianism, and conclude that they should be recommending me more content about vegetarianism and perhaps even content about veganism. Apply this to something like conservatism and you'll be getting recommended alt-right content in no time.
Slightly off topic:
I have a theory about this which is that there are certain recommendation loops or "attractors" that you basically cannot escape without manually flagging videos as "not interested", disliking, manually choosing an entirely different topic, or taking many days off of the platform.
I also am curious to know what percentage of content literally never gets recommended. I've been down the rabbit hole, so to speak, on certain youtube topics and I get the sense that at a certain point, there are many videos on the topic that youtube simply isn't recommending. E.g. if I'm watching a video about the Philosophy of Derrida, I feel like my recommendations never show lower view count videos related to the topic, they are much much more likely to recommend higher visibility channels full of slightly related content.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because greatly increasing the suffering of millions of people who flee a warzone just because some of their ranks are criminals, extremists, or terrorists posing as refugees is very unfair to the vast majority of these people. People shouldn't be allowed in without vetting, but refugees need to go or be placed somewhere.
It also is not an extreme position to say that that is not my problem, that I don't care, and that I don't want to sacrifice my safety to help them.
Just like the British benefited from the East India company, the US benefits from destabilisation on the other side of the world. Eventually the world fights back. Every time a western bomb kills 100 civilians, of their 400 relatives 4 turn into extremists with a (legitimate) grievance against the west. Doesn't matter if the western bomb killed a terrorist ringleader, it's not helping.