YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by tmorton » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #119

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

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…

As has been pointed out, in lots of areas a "balanced" view doesn't make sense. I'm reminded of the judgement of Solomon dictating that, to settle a dispute between two women as to whom a baby belonged to, it should be cut in half and they be given half each. For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby. "All humans are created equal and endowed with rights" is a radic…

> For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby.

I think this cuts to the heart of the issue - and demonstrates the problem with this line of thinking.

I also think you're missing the point of the Solomon story. When Solomon proposed that solution, one woman said "No, no - give her the baby." That woman was willing to compromise. She was willing to compromise all the way, to lose the entire dispute, to preserve the important thing they were fighting over.

Solomon didn't actually plan to cut the baby in half. On many social issues, there is a negative-sum, "burn it all down" solution that leaves both sides worse. Which side reaches for that option? Which side is willing to sacrifice the deeper issue in order to "win"? That's the side that deserves to lose.

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

#132

Post by finnthehuman » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #55

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

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…

> She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that. 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 t…

So, rather than being a deliberate choice of Google, it's simply an emergent phenomenon of a system Google expressly designed to manipulate people?

How is it not a hundred times more terrifying than the conspiracy theory, that google chooses to keep such a system online?

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

#133

Post by watwut » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #103

Zarath wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

Not perfect is understatement They are horrible. Not just because of what the article is about, but because their recommendations are ridiculous avwn outside political content.

And youtube rules also motivate providers to churn out a lot of content regularly (leading to quick to produce crap) and punish those who take their time to think or research before they talk.

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

#134

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

ChristianBundy wrote: post #130

throwaway13337 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So radical positions are okay as long as you're right? Who gets to say who is right? For every position that we think is good radical now, there are many more that were not. A slow moving, boring society is one I'd like to live in. Exciting times make for short lives.

Would you be willing to expand on which radical progressive positions ended up being bad? I'd especially be interested to hear examples from the US.

That you can't be racist against white people and you can't be sexist against men. That's a core tenant of western progressivism and does nothing but breed hostility, and denigrate people based on features they were born with.

Also see the other HN thread from today about left wing censorship and anti-science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318

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

#135

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

sureaboutthis wrote: post #97

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

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…

More and more I find people who have done what I do; I don't watch TV "news" anymore and ignore almost every "news" article or posting online. Unless the headline might be a topic I'm specifically interested in and think it affects me I don't give it the time.

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by chriswarbo » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #119

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

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…

As has been pointed out, in lots of areas a "balanced" view doesn't make sense. I'm reminded of the judgement of Solomon dictating that, to settle a dispute between two women as to whom a baby belonged to, it should be cut in half and they be given half each. For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby. "All humans are created equal and endowed with rights" is a radic…

To be clear, the point of Solomon's judgement was not that cutting a baby in half is a good solution: it was just a trick to test the women. One of them accepted it, the other gave up their claim so that the baby wouldn't be harmed. Solomon gave the child to the person who gave up, since they put the child's welfare above their own.

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

#137

Post by BaronSamedi » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #42

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

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…

I think the answer lay almost entirely with echo chambers. These exist not only in the digital world, but even increasingly in the real world as people connect to people through digital filtering. Vegetarianism is a good example. Many, though not all, vegetarians are going to be going in that direction due to some form of objection to how animals are treated. But when you surround them with nothing but other people w…

"The whole thing is people need to surround themselves with a good number of people they disagree with on things."

I agree with this sentiment. I think, however, a more fundamental problem lies with peoples' attitude toward their own ideas and towards the ideas of others. People have an apparently irresistible tendency to moralize; to consider their ideas as "good" and contrary ones as "bad". Once the moralizing starts, reasonable discussion becomes difficult if not impossible. Disagreements quickly devolve into the two sides calling each other evil.

Given this I would rephrase your statement as, people need to surround themselves with those who hold their opinions more lightly and who avoid moralizing. When people acknowledge that their opinions are simply their personal preferences rather than moral truths, genuine discussion becomes possible. In your example of vegetarianism, consider the different response one might get if one says, "I prefer to avoid eating meat" versus "Eating meat is wrong". The first opens up the possibility for mutual understanding, the second is sure to launch a flamewar.

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

#138

Post by bborud » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

In 1999 I was working for a web search company and one of the things we really wanted to do was to make search personalized. Eventually we started talking about what years later became known as "filter bubbles". It would be bad if people were constantly fed stuff from the same information universe, right?

In retrospect, it didn't get all that much of our attention in terms of work done. Sure, we got very obvious (and measurable) feedback mechanisms and we did spend considerable amounts of time countering the aspects that more directly affected percieved quality of the product. But in terms of what it means, we figured "we have time to deal with it later".

Just figuring out how to do this inside a few milliseconds per query was more than enough of a challenge in the near term. Since then (and probably before then) I'm sure thousands of teams have had roughly the same experience. You know that there are going to be problems ahead, but you build it anyway because if you don't someone else will. Your paycheck depends on it.

When you implement software that anticipates the preferred path a human likes to take through content you end up amplifying what tendencies are present in the person. This is "harmless" in the sense that you are not imposing some editorial direction. You can't be criticized for imposing your opinion or notions of good/bad, right/wrong etc. However the results appear to be polarizing in that they allow people to navigate to certain maxima.

The really hard problem here is how you counter this effectively without imposing your view. I think there's interesting work to be done in that area.

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

#139

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

MrQuincle wrote: post #92

dragonwriter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that. 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 t…

To have an algorithm that favors extreme content above non-extreme content because it keeps people hooked is indeed unlikely to be programmed directly. I actually don't think it's learning personal preferences like you suggest either. It likely is a collaborative filtering method. You get served what people "similar to you" have watched most. Similarity is based on your watching behavior. If you watched 1,2,5,6,7 and…

> It likely is a collaborative filtering method. You get served what people "similar to you" have watched most. Similarity is based on your watching behavior. If you watched 1,2,5,6,7 and someone else 1,2,6,7,8. You will be recommended 8 as well.

Yeah, similarity of “preference” is approximated, in any recommender system, by this or some similar analysis of behavior with respect to content.

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

#140

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

finnthehuman wrote: post #132

dragonwriter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that. 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 t…

So, rather than being a deliberate choice of Google, it's simply an emergent phenomenon of a system Google expressly designed to manipulate people? How is it not a hundred times more terrifying than the conspiracy theory, that google chooses to keep such a system online?

Because our systems are already optimized in a hundred different terrifying ways.

There is a review posted around here of the book 'seeing like a state' that talks about how the modern world is not optimized for human needs, but the needs of the state to collect tax. It makes many good arguments on why it is the case.