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Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

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Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#31

I was not expecting the truth to be SO much worse than the algorithmically provided view. I'm sold on algorithmic timelines now. That Youtube is awful. People are awful. Fortnite Battle Royale is awful. I don't want to see any of those.

Shows how low quality society is now.

Now, and always. It’s not like bear baiting and midget shows were ever popular because the average person has refined tastes.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#32

I was not expecting the truth to be SO much worse than the algorithmically provided view. I'm sold on algorithmic timelines now. That Youtube is awful. People are awful. Fortnite Battle Royale is awful. I don't want to see any of those.

Shows how low quality society is now.

Hardly. Go back and read old newspapers. They were all awful. This myth that societal culture is on the decline is just a failure to understand that time is a polarizing filter to remove the glare of bullshit.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#33

I was not expecting the truth to be SO much worse than the algorithmically provided view. I'm sold on algorithmic timelines now. That Youtube is awful. People are awful. Fortnite Battle Royale is awful. I don't want to see any of those.

What I hate about the algorithm is that I feel it’s constantly nudging me towards “that” youtube. It feels like someone pulling on your sleeve and saying, “You know how you watched five minutes of the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer? Maybe you’d like a dozen recommendations of GG conspiracy material and tweens screaming at FortNite? And hey, remember that time you watched a living historian cook a meal from the 1800’s? Well,…

True. This is because they're attempting to parasite the hashtag, and because Youtube has a perilously bad conflation of conflict as "engagement."

It may also be a warning that folks looking to push social change that teens and young people want so badly should get the hell on youtube and provide worldviews that are not, "The press is bad because it lies and also I hate the 19th amendment."

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#34

I was not expecting the truth to be SO much worse than the algorithmically provided view. I'm sold on algorithmic timelines now. That Youtube is awful. People are awful. Fortnite Battle Royale is awful. I don't want to see any of those.

This is such a pretentious comment, but I can't disagree with it. It's not that YouTube is stupid, it's that most people watch really stupid videos and that trending algorithms are a black mirror. Everything you see in trending is the LCD of what average people are interested in.

Twitter trends are being dominated by sports I couldn't care less about, Reddit's front page is constantly bombarded with FortniteBR posts, and YouTube is being taken over by clickbait, tabloid press and garbage. Evidently, that's what people want.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#36

I was not expecting the truth to be SO much worse than the algorithmically provided view. I'm sold on algorithmic timelines now. That Youtube is awful. People are awful. Fortnite Battle Royale is awful. I don't want to see any of those.

I think it's more complicated than that. YouTube's algorithms don't just represent (or misrepresent) the truth, they also have a role in creating the truth. That is to say, if YouTube's algorithms disproportionately represent terrible (likely) sponsored videos on the trending pages and your personal feed, those videos will as a result objectively receive more views. The only way a "fair trending" approach could really work was if we somehow had access to the stats videos would receive without the distorting effects of Youtube's algorithms. We don't have that, so this project (while very interesting) is not likely to be very useful.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#38

I think it's funny during Christmas and Easter, thousands of sermons and positive Christian videos are posted to YouTube but do not warrant a special response from Google, despite Christians being a large user base. Google is of course free to do as they wish with their platform and promote whatever they want, it's their choice and they own it. What I dislike is they advertise it as sort of free speech platform but r…

I wasn’t aware YouTube positions itself as a “free speech platform”. In fact that just sounds like a dog whistle for online harassment.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#39

I think it's funny during Christmas and Easter, thousands of sermons and positive Christian videos are posted to YouTube but do not warrant a special response from Google, despite Christians being a large user base. Google is of course free to do as they wish with their platform and promote whatever they want, it's their choice and they own it. What I dislike is they advertise it as sort of free speech platform but r…

quantity != virality. Christmas and Easter sermons are definitely not viral material. Plus, google is definitely not going to go out of their way to push Christian videos on people haha.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#40

I think it's funny during Christmas and Easter, thousands of sermons and positive Christian videos are posted to YouTube but do not warrant a special response from Google, despite Christians being a large user base. Google is of course free to do as they wish with their platform and promote whatever they want, it's their choice and they own it. What I dislike is they advertise it as sort of free speech platform but r…

Probably because those videos don't actually drive much engagement. Most sermon videos -- for example -- tend to be relatively slow-paced, lightly edited (if at all), and do not use any visuals beyond a fixed camera on the speaker. All of these factors are poison to engagement, even for users who might otherwise be interested in the content.
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