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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

#101

Post by abhiminator »

blattimwind wrote: post #98
abhiminator wrote: post #96

> Users searching for news on Chemnitz would be sent down a rabbit hole of misinformation and hate. And as interest in Chemnitz grew, it appears, YouTube funneled many Germans to extremist pages, whose view counts skyrocketed. As a long time YouTube user, I've noticed this myself. The starting video doesn't even have to be extreme. For example, watching a 5-minute daily news video on Fox News channel primes YouTube's…

I very rarely use youtube on my (iOS) phone; I'm not logged into any Google account on it. Before Chemnitz started I showed some friends a video of a robot marching to "Erika" (a WW2 marching song)... a few days later I got a push notification by the Youtube app on my homescreen of a video posted in some fringe-AfD channel which was full-on propaganda. Youtube will literally push extremist right propaganda onto peopl…

> Youtube will literally push extremist right propaganda onto peoples homescreens based on what I can only assume a single video view.

Absolutely. It's as if YouTube forgets about your previously viewed videos and channels, and tunnel-visions you into watching content around your most recently viewed single video.

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

#102

Post by krapp »

abhiminator wrote: post #101
blattimwind wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very rarely use youtube on my (iOS) phone; I'm not logged into any Google account on it. Before Chemnitz started I showed some friends a video of a robot marching to "Erika" (a WW2 marching song)... a few days later I got a push notification by the Youtube app on my homescreen of a video posted in some fringe-AfD channel which was full-on propaganda. Youtube will literally push extremist right propaganda onto peopl…

> Youtube will literally push extremist right propaganda onto peoples homescreens based on what I can only assume a single video view. Absolutely. It's as if YouTube forgets about your previously viewed videos and channels, and tunnel-visions you into watching content around your most recently viewed single video.

>It's as if YouTube forgets about your previously viewed videos and channels, and tunnel-visions you into watching content around your most recently viewed single video.

Which, if your primary concern is maximizing engagement, makes perverse sense. Viewers are more likely to be attracted to content similar to what they just watched than content they watched less recently.

Edit: I just realized the opposite might be true as well... some viewers might be attracted to videos which appear to contradict their preferences as well, just to be able to criticize or debunk it in comments. There's probably a relationship between this and successful clickbait thumbnails with their random arrows and circles that don't actually indicate anything.

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

#103

Post by ekianjo »

Zarath wrote: post #59
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…

To add on to your point: 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,…

> 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

Recommendation algorithms don't "conclude" anything though, they are merely statistical tools to ensure you get somewhat relevant content, but they are never perfect because there is a lot of noise in what everyone watches.

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

#104

Post by lsmarigo »

As a content creator it's very quickly apparent the best route to driving views and subs is to push extreme/edgy content. Balanced content gets no engagement. It's really that simple, with the ADHD short attention span of the current gen of heavy media consumers (read: kids) you have to shock them/surprise them/make them laugh ~once every 5-6 seconds to keep them on the video. YouTube offers very detailed metrics on engagement and you can study the exact time where people lose interest/close the video.

Only massive established channels have the privilege of pushing non-edgy content as their audience is built in already, for anyone new it's shock value and hard-line extremism or your voice will be lost among the noise.

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

#105

Post by beeforpork »

It also happened to me. I was watching some completely unrelated stuff (technical stuff) when I noticed that a polemical and obviously stupid and dumb right-wing AfD propaganda video showed up high in the recommendation list. I was watching stuff in English, yet BS in German was shown (just to be clear: that it happened to be German was not the problem, but additional to be puzzling that it was such BS, it was also strange to show me something in a different language). I don't remember what the current news was at that time, but when I then searched for something related to that, that extreme right BS pub talk stuff was all over the place. It was obvious that the recommendations were skewed. I was puzzled. I closed the browser (cleared cookies) but it remained the same. One video was recommended regardless of how non-political the videos were that I tried to watch. And once I searched for that topic, again, every second video or so was extreme right BS. It took a few days before that video was not shown anymore.

Scary. Definitely a problem.

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

#107

Post by abhiminator »

krapp wrote: post #102
abhiminator wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Youtube will literally push extremist right propaganda onto peoples homescreens based on what I can only assume a single video view. Absolutely. It's as if YouTube forgets about your previously viewed videos and channels, and tunnel-visions you into watching content around your most recently viewed single video.

>It's as if YouTube forgets about your previously viewed videos and channels, and tunnel-visions you into watching content around your most recently viewed single video. Which, if your primary concern is maximizing engagement, makes perverse sense. Viewers are more likely to be attracted to content similar to what they just watched than content they watched less recently. Edit: I just realized the opposite might be t…

>primary concern is maximizing engagement, makes perverse sense.

I agree. But considering online platforms have, more or less, become de facto town squares, it's no longer responsible for a tech company to ruthlessly optimize for user engagement at the cost of stability of democracy.

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

#108

Post by dnomad »

pas wrote: post #79
dnomad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My comment: what does it say about us humans that we fall for progressively more extreme stuff? This is the fundamental question. Every YouTuber quickly figures out that the more extreme content you produce the more views you get. This is how something as silly (but harmless) as the Atheist Youtube community degenerates into idiots raging about feminists and denying 9/11. YouTube is just a market where the endless…

Could you elaborate please on the atheist community going extreme? Regarding the recommendation algorithm: it's utter bullcrap. The simplest and dumbest collaborative filtering for category and popularity system that they can get away with. Yet it works. YT is addictive.

> Could you elaborate please on the atheist community going extreme?

I read a paper on this some time ago... and now can't find it. There are many blog entries that discuss the evolution of the Skeptic community and the whole anti-SJW out there but can't find the actual researcher who was quantifying this using YouTube data.

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

#109

Post by dnomad »

pendenthistory wrote: post #88

It just struck me that this explains a lot of changes I've seen in people near me and myself. My mother started getting really into stuff like essential oils. My dad (non-american) spends a crazy amount of time watching videos and reading news about how crazy Trump is (yeah, he IS, but we don't even live in America!). My sister got really into nutrition and diets, with a bent towards complete suspicion of western med…

> My wife, while not a full on anti-vaxxer yet, is now suspicious of vaccinations and wants to wait to vaccinate our child, and skip some of them all together. This after having watched some "documentary" series on Youtube.

Out of curiosity is your wife college educated?

It's the radicalization of "average" people that is most interesting. I suspect what your wife discovered wasn't just a series of videos but a whole community of people deeply committed this nonsense. This is the secret of radicalization: it appears as just a (very rigid) community of like-minded souls. This shows up again and again in the literature and the news.

The internet is doing its job of bringing people together. What's not clear is whether any of these communities are actually beneficial.

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