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Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

youtube.googleblog.com

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Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#81

Post by itchyjunk »

sametmax wrote: post #10
FiveSquared wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, who determines what is a conspaircy? The government might be deciding that Iraq has WMDs and any evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy. While some measures are needed to be taken, who decides what is? No one is truly impartial. The censorship (while required due to how much crap is in YouTube) might devolve to 1984 without comple transparency, which we all know google isn’t providing.

NSA mass surveillance was considered conspiracy before PRISM. Worse, people that said it was a conspiracy are now calling other things conspiracy, without any consideration for their past errors.

There seems to be people around who still think NSA mass surveillance is a conspiracy. Heck, don't the flat earther think round earth is a conspiracy? One mans theory is another mans conspiracy.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#83

Post by bluGill »

fzeroracer wrote: post #75
jlawson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match reality. I've watched lots of conservative videos and I've never seen anything about flat Earth or "insane conspiracy theories". Honestly this comment thread seems like trying to build a narrative bridge between straightforward right-leaning content and bizarre conspiracies. The goal is to use censorship of bizarre conspiracies to justify censoring right-leaning content by conflating the two. I'm v…

Conspiracy theories are, for the most part, a right-wing thing. Unless you can give me examples of conspiracy theories and their peddlers on level of Alex Jones for the far left.

Every looked into anti-vax (there is some right, but a lot of it is left)? How about the impeach trump stuff? Organic, anti-GMO, alternative medicine. Plenty of left wing nut jobs there. (some of them have a right wing component as well)

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#84

Post by itchyjunk »

Elitroness wrote: post #18
FiveSquared wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, who determines what is a conspaircy? The government might be deciding that Iraq has WMDs and any evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy. While some measures are needed to be taken, who decides what is? No one is truly impartial. The censorship (while required due to how much crap is in YouTube) might devolve to 1984 without comple transparency, which we all know google isn’t providing.

Who determines when daytime is? is 7AM daytime? is 7AM in Alaska in the middle of winter daytime? There is a discussion to be had about some topics at the edge...but 2PM everyone agrees is part of daytime; the flat earth 'conspiracy' should never be recommended to anybody. And sadly, in the current climate, this also has to be said: This does not mean Google is picking sides. If you on your own reflections decide tha…

Why not? Who are you to decided what should and should not be recommended? Maybe I would enjoy watching some flat earth theory. Maybe watching it will help me understand it better so I can have a civilized conversation with one when I come across them. What about other conspiracies? What if I am researching conspiracy theories? Wouldn't flat earth theory is relevant to me?

'There is a discussion to be had about some topics at the edge...but 2PM everyone agrees is part of daytime; the flat earth 'conspiracy' should never be recommended to anybody.'

It should be recommended to anything to whom it would be relevant to. That's the whole idea behind recommendation system.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#85

Post by jalgos_eminator »

Say what you want about YouTube recommended political videos, but I have found some absolutely great music because it showed up in my recommended.

A small Canadian band showed up in my recommended and that first song captivated me. Then I listened to their other singles and two albums, and now I'm going to their show next month.

Also, I just found an artist from Belarus that makes fantastic synthpop. The weird thing is that all his videos use cyrillic characters, so I don't know how google even matched it. I am thankful though.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#86

Post by JaimeThompson »

fzeroracer wrote: post #75
jlawson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match reality. I've watched lots of conservative videos and I've never seen anything about flat Earth or "insane conspiracy theories". Honestly this comment thread seems like trying to build a narrative bridge between straightforward right-leaning content and bizarre conspiracies. The goal is to use censorship of bizarre conspiracies to justify censoring right-leaning content by conflating the two. I'm v…

Conspiracy theories are, for the most part, a right-wing thing. Unless you can give me examples of conspiracy theories and their peddlers on level of Alex Jones for the far left.

The anti-vaxers are from all over the political spectrum I am sad to say.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#87

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

YouTube recommendations are so terrible I consider any suggestion of a channel I don't already watch as a warning. "We see you watched an informative video on topic X, would you also like to watch DudeWhoHatesEverything rant incessantly about X, or BaityMcClickface's Top 10 Ys about X? Don't worry if you don't, we'll keep bringing them up every time you watch anything even tangentially related to X."

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#88

Post by FrozenVoid »

It would be much cheaper to use user feedback instead of "human evaluators" who represent a tiny segment of audience. Just try adding some sort of rating system for reccomendation like 10 is Perfect Reccomendation and 0 is Completely Irrelevant and adjust the algorithm accordingly. I think the current one use something like network analysis that feeds its own reccomendations back to itself.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#89

Post by minimaxir »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #76
minimaxir wrote: post #43

It's worth noting that this blog post appeared less than 24 hours after BuzzFeed News posted an article explicitly highlighting the conspiracy theories in the recommended section: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-y... I helped contribute to that article, feel free to ask any questions!

How does one report videos to Youtube that violate their policies and actually get them to do something about it. It appears one can talk about the Holocaust not being real / that people don't get killed in mass shootings in the United States all they want and keep their monitization / Superchats.

Unfortunately, that's all you can do. The real remedy is shining sunlight on the policy violations, which is why the journalism is so important.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#90

Post by Tehnix »

driverdan wrote: post #37
ilaksh wrote: post #33

Unfortunately things are converging on the Chinese model. Young people in the US have been so brainwashed against anything really critical of the government that they are literally earnestly requesting political censorship.

I downvoted you because YouTube made no indication they're censoring anything at the behest of the government. They're also not removing content, just adjust what's recommended.

I sorta view actively suppressing information, while not completely removed, as censoring...which YouTube very much does.

There’s plenty examples of things that should have been on trending by every possible metric, but never gets there. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen PewDiePie appear in my recommended section, even though he’s the only creator I consume regularly. I have to find him in my notification list, on the site, buried.

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