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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

#151

Post by ilamont »

Google News works the same way. I've been using Google News since it was a list of links to news sites. The algorithm is very good at surfacing breaking news, but can't help showing the most extreme clickbaity BS among the legit stories.

Interested in stories about Oceach Science? We'll show you "Holy S*, These Triassic Ocean Reptiles Were As Big As Hell"

https://twitter.com/ilamont/status/983714720153612289

We see you read about NASA and space flight. Then you'll love this story about a Russian boy who who says 7-foot aliens reside on the red planet!

https://twitter.com/ilamont/status/929392451193835520

Or fossilized alien footprints on Mars, covered up by NASA!

https://twitter.com/ilamont/status/970814193631981568

Trying to get an update on news about China and foreign relations? Let's show you a "news" headline that suggests WWIII is about to break out:

https://twitter.com/ilamont/status/1037765753162919937

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

#152

Post by bachbach »

ehsankia wrote: post #65
ericdykstra wrote: post #57

This article seems a bit sensationalized. The examples they give are a single video with 500,000 views, and a couple of channels whose views average 20-30k. If YouTube is recommending "extreme" channels so often, why aren't they getting more views? > “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…

Absolutely. Those numbers are peanuts in Youtube scale. Popular Youtube videos regularly get 10m+ views. It's similar to back when WSJ went digging for days and managed to find 2-3 racist videos with 10k views, then refreshed them until a Coca-Cola ad showed, to screenshot it. Most of these are manipulating reality to drive their narrative. I've yet to see a proper scientific and thorough example of this actually hap…

The valley is in a bit of moral panic in my opinion.

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

#154

Post by ajross »

ilamont wrote: post #151

Google News works the same way. I've been using Google News since it was a list of links to news sites. The algorithm is very good at surfacing breaking news, but can't help showing the most extreme clickbaity BS among the legit stories. Interested in stories about Oceach Science? We'll show you "Holy S *, These Triassic Ocean Reptiles Were As Big As Hell" https://twitter.com/ilamont/status/983714720153612289 We see…

Two criticisms: one old tweet (edit: parent added extra tweets after I posted this -- and... I can't find them when I do equivalent searches anywhere near the top of the page. ilamont appears to have some kind of axe to grind here) doesn't carry much weight. A current search for "ocean science" on news.google.com in fact looks pretty much like what you'd expect.

Secondly: sorry, what exactly is wrong with a sensationalized headline about interesting content? Some of those animals were, in fact, "big as hell", and it's worth covering in popular media. This appears to be the article in that screenshot:

https://gizmodo.com/holy-shit-these-triassic-ocean-reptiles-...

And it's a good article! It's a writeup of this paper, and it even links to it:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

So... what's your criticism here, exactly? That Google put a good story up on their front page even though it had "shit" in the title?

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

#155

Post by 0x4f3759df »

paradite wrote: post #25

For people who are new to this topic and find it to be surprising: This is not new. There is a term for this called "echo chamber": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media) I have observed this trend happening on Internet since 2014 and written about it in my blog: https://paradite.com/2014/11/11/internet-polarized-society/ Previously it was more for closed communities like reddit and Facebook groups, but s…

I've only ever heard the term 'echo-chamber' as a pejorative against people who hold anti-establishment views, ie 'Hillary lost because middle America is stuck in right wing / alt-right echo chambers.' It's appears to be a derivation of the 'conspiracy theorists are mentally ill argument' or 'Yes, people hold these views, but its not their fault, choose one (mental illness/echo chamber).

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

#156

Post by dragonwriter »

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?

Oh, it's far more terrifying that the natural result of being good at feeding people things that you can determine that they will respond well to is that you will progressively feed them more extreme content, because tragedy of the commons is much scarier than mustache twirling villains.

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

#157

Post by yesenadam »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #137
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 star…

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...

Well, that sure sounds like 'moralizing' to me, and I don't think you realize it. If you don't care much about anything, well ok. But that's no virtue. It sounds close to the relativism that talks of "true for me" and "true for you".

For example, I think we have no right to kill and eat animals, much less subject them to horrific lives. (So I'm vegan) This to me isn't a 'personal preference' or 'opinion'. It is a major moral and ethical issue, much like, say, slavery was/is. People disgusted by slavery didn't say it was 'simply their personal preference' not to own slaves, that it was merely their 'opinion' that slavery was wrong. That would have been ludicrous. We'd still have slavery if people had talked like that.

And no doubt you had pro-slavery people in the 19th C giving the same lofty advice: "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..."

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

#158

Post by tptacek »

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…

That's essentially what she believes as well. The only intent she ascribes to Google is a desire to keep people on the site, which, of course, is that point of any recommendation engine.

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

pixl97 wrote: post #140
finnthehuman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by ajuc »

I regularly view videos on Polish politics and geopolitics. I am constantly suggested videos by fringe extreme right geopoliticians and conspiracy theorists ("it's all a Jewish conspiracy to destroy white race and Poles", "EU is USSR", "muslims will rape us", that kind of videos - Michałkiewicz, Braun, Kowalski and similar). I regularly click "don't like this suggestion, stop showing me it", and I'm still suggested it after a few days/weeks. It seems there's endless supply of these videos and they have hundreds of thousands of views.

It's like youtube wants me to become a right-wing nut. That despite me mostly watching mainstream news and liberal news-as-comedy shows.

My coworker is a right-wing estremist and he gets suggested the exact same videos, he doesn't see liberal or mainstream news in youtube suggestions, ever.

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