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Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

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Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#21

Post by tropdrop »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #18
tropdrop wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely: "Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hol…

"Blamed users and failed to give a straightforward answer" sounds like more of a framing issue than a specific false claim Mohan made.

One could argue that Bill Clinton's response to whether he had "sexual relations with that woman" is also a "framing issue." (How do you define relations? If you define sexual relations a certain way, Clinton's response of "no" is fine)

This kind of "framing" is equivocation (aka Orwellian double-speak) and the author is correct in calling it out.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#22

Post by [deleted] »

DannyBee wrote: post #20
pbiggar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really disappointed in this comment. Based on some nitpicking which isn't even correct [1], you're dismissing the entire article. Google's role in spreading conspiracy and hate is serious stuff, and given you're a googler, fairly prominent on HN, and from my past interactions and opinions of you, I expected much better than this. [1] Not to get into the semantics of this, but when you say "when Google closed DoubleCl…

It's not nitpicking. I spent a little time after I wrote this fact checking more, and i didn't edit to include the other clearly wrong facts in this article as a way of being nice to the author. Also, because i won't have a lot of time to be on HN today, and people take no response as a sign of "no good argument" instead of "not gonna spend all my time on a forum". There are plenty of issues here to go around here. G…

[deleted]

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#23

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tropdrop wrote: post #21
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blamed users and failed to give a straightforward answer" sounds like more of a framing issue than a specific false claim Mohan made.

One could argue that Bill Clinton's response to whether he had "sexual relations with that woman" is also a "framing issue." (How do you define relations? If you define sexual relations a certain way, Clinton's response of "no" is fine) This kind of "framing" is equivocation (aka Orwellian double-speak) and the author is correct in calling it out.

One could argue that, but one could also say what the specific lie they think Clinton spread is. He did indeed have relations with her, and tried to trick the public into thinking he didn't.

That second part is what I don't see here. From the author's perspective, which specific facts is Mohan trying to trick the audience into disbelieving? It doesn't sound like he denied that there's extremist content attracting views on Youtube.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#24

Post by tropdrop »

DannyBee wrote: post #20
pbiggar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really disappointed in this comment. Based on some nitpicking which isn't even correct [1], you're dismissing the entire article. Google's role in spreading conspiracy and hate is serious stuff, and given you're a googler, fairly prominent on HN, and from my past interactions and opinions of you, I expected much better than this. [1] Not to get into the semantics of this, but when you say "when Google closed DoubleCl…

It's not nitpicking. I spent a little time after I wrote this fact checking more, and i didn't edit to include the other clearly wrong facts in this article as a way of being nice to the author. Also, because i won't have a lot of time to be on HN today, and people take no response as a sign of "no good argument" instead of "not gonna spend all my time on a forum". There are plenty of issues here to go around here. G…

I'm going to quote the facts you provided earlier:

When Google closed DoubleClick, he was " Product Management Director for Ad Serving, reporting to Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management." She made no claims about what position he had at DoubleClick. She just said "Mohan first began working in the internet ad industry in 1997 at DoubleClick." This is not an error.

Then, you said: "He was promoted to VP in 2009, and SVP in late 2015. I'm too lazy to look up when the other job titles switched." Meaning, that you correctly point out she should have said "Mohan first served as VP, then SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years." Instead, she said "Mohan then served as SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years"

So, that is 1 minor, incorrect detail in the article that you've identified - an extra "S" onto "VP". What are some of the other "clearly wrong facts" that we should just trust (appeal to authority?) you spotted? If you have no time and are "too lazy," as you say, why choose to spend your time attacking the most minor detail instead of the most egregious and appalling incorrect fact?

Seems to me like you couldn't find much else wrong with the article.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#25

Post by rthrowayay »

tropdrop wrote: post #17
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #10

Is there some specific factual claim that the author believes was false, or does "lying" just refer to framing the issue differently than she'd prefer?

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely: "Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hol…

I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#27

Post by dang »

isoskeles wrote: post #26

> More recently, YouTube has been aggressively promoting content from Russia Today (RT), a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet. The author is a moron.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments or personal attacks here, regardless of how uninformed anyone else is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#28

Post by mthoms »

rthrowayay wrote: post #25
tropdrop wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely: "Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hol…

I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.

The claim is that conspiracy content is more sticky than other content, and since the algorithm is optimized for stickiness, it's naturally inclined to skew in that direction.

In other words, starting from any random keyword... the algorithm is naturally inclined to skew towards conspiracy videos in its recommendations.

At least that's what the article (and the sources it cites) are alleging.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#29

Post by ergl »

rthrowayay wrote: post #25
tropdrop wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely: "Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hol…

I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.

The article mentions that the "up next" experiments were done while logged out and with a clean watch history. Still, the algorithm eventually arrived at conspiracy videos.

Re: Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

#30

Post by sieabahlpark »

pessimizer wrote: post #11
Causality1 wrote: post #3

The way Youtube suggests videos has been borked in favor of sensationalism and popularity for a while now. It used to be if you were watching "Cooking Steak Part 2" the first suggested video was "Cooking Steak part 3" and the second suggested video was "Cooking Steak Part 1" and the third suggestion was "Cooking Chicken Part 1". Now it's a dead guarantee that not only will the suggested videos not be the next one in…

Good to know I'm not the only person that has to leave youtube and go to duckduckgo to find the next video of a clearly marked series on youtube. Or failing that, go to the user page, try to stop the autoplay on time, go to the uploads page, and scroll around until I see it. I will never cease to wonder what all of the talented programmers at google are actually doing all day.

Working on ways to copyright strike everything.
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