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YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

arxiv.org

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Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#61

Post by Thorentis »

iudqnolq wrote: post #37
Thorentis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNN and TYT are both partisan left. They both published content showing extreme dismay at the election of Trump. That's fine, they're allowed to do that. This just shows their political bias. The same way Fox was airing pro-Trump things at the same time. This isn't a dispute over whether they are right, just over what type of content they publish. I see no problem putting CNN and TYT on the same side of the political…

> Downvotes? Give me a counter example that shows how TYT or CNN is not left-leaning. Maybe downvotes are because you claim your parent claims CNN isn't left-leaning, whereas what they said was that CNN isn't "partisan left" in the same way that TYT is. You also don't address their main evidence for their claim, that they frequently attack each other. I have no idea if you're right, because I haven't looked into the…

CNN is very pro-democrat, as clearly shown in all their election coverage. This makes them partisan left.

From what I've seen, CNN tends to support the favoured democrat candidate/front-runner, and TYT lean further left and often show support for somebody like Sanders, but show general support across the board.

> You also don't address their main evidence

What main evidence? Their main programming? The main programming of both is left leaning, and when it comes to discussing elections and US politics, is incredibly partisan.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#62

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sandworm101 wrote: post #55
dfabulich wrote: post #2

For the convenience of those who can't conveniently read a PDF on their current device: > The role that YouTube and its behind-the-scenes recommendation algorithm plays in encouraging online radicalization has been suggested by both journalists and academics alike. This study directly quantifies these claims by examining the role that YouTubes algorithm plays in suggesting radicalized content. After categorizing near…

Whether it works one way or the other, I find what it recommends to me very disturbing. Example: I'm a former rock climber and am very interested in knot and knot-tying. I watched some vids on hemp ropes, including "braiding" strands of rope. That points me to a video on hair braiding, which I watch as I do find it mildly interesting, a knot system that won't bind into a mess. Now youtube is recommending me very odd…

I think your Google account has a page where it tells you what it thinks your interested in and lets you opt out of mistakes. Not used it in a while so it may have changed.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#63

Post by tpmx »

psandersen wrote: post #52
faizshah wrote: post #23

Difficult to take this analysis seriously when CNN is categorized with The Young Turks as “Partisan Left.” Regardless of what you think of either channel the programming of these two channels is dramatically different. The fact that the tags were manually created by the experimenters and were manually assigned by the experimenters throws the results even more into question.

Its interesting seeing how arbitary all points are along the 'Overton window'; I'm not from the US so CNN strikes me as center right wing, low regulation, anti-union and moderately pro war etc. This illustrates the danger of ranking everything relatively... if enough people watch infowars like content then every university will be marked as radical left wing etc. There needs to be some way of anchoring the spectrums…

CNN International is quite different from CNN (US).

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#64

Post by pjc50 »

baking wrote: post #34
dfabulich wrote: post #2

For the convenience of those who can't conveniently read a PDF on their current device: > The role that YouTube and its behind-the-scenes recommendation algorithm plays in encouraging online radicalization has been suggested by both journalists and academics alike. This study directly quantifies these claims by examining the role that YouTubes algorithm plays in suggesting radicalized content. After categorizing near…

Anyone who regularly browses their Youtube recommendations knows that the algorithm changed dramatically a few months ago.

It's not like they announced this. I suppose they're always tuning it against spammers.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#65

Post by pjc50 »

jakeogh wrote: post #48
ceejayoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They both published content showing extreme dismay at the election of Trump. So did the National Review ( https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/01/donald-trump-conserva... ), but they're hardly left. Same for George Will ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-spiraling-presid... ). Again, hardly left.

George Will and the National Review crew are neo-cons. AKA not-Conservatives. Straussians. They are the fake "right" of the modern pro-global government party. Watching people aruge over what's "left" and "right" is surreal. The real differences (if one wants to find them) are sovereignty of nation states vs a permenant ruling class that sets quazi-global policy. To anyone who thinks they are "left": Consider watchin…

> Consider watching the current presidents UN speeches.

I can't. They're a nonsensical standard of English full of insultingly untrue things.

> sovereignty of nation states vs a permenant ruling class

These two things are not in conflict; historically most nation states have a fairly fixed ruling class. There was a paper a while ago showing how many of the ruling families of 14th century Venice were still in significant positions politically or economically.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#66

Post by pjc50 »

pitay wrote: post #58
joe_the_user wrote: post #24

This quote raises questions: "The scraped data, as well as the YouTube API, provides usa view of the recommendations presented to an anonymous account. In other words, the account has not ”watched” any videos, retaining the neutral baseline recommendations, described in further detail by YouTube in their recent paper that explains the inner workings of the recommendation algorithm[38]. One should note that the recomm…

Have the recommendation system mix it up, put niches that are somewhat similar in the recommendations not quite as often, put things a bit further away less often, etc. This should have the algorithm recommend counterpoints which are clearly visible to the user. This is assuming things that are partisan one way are similar to things that are partisan in the other way and counter partisan content. Avoid censorship, ce…

We should not classify "refusal to ever recommend X because you know X to be untrue or defamatory" as censorship.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#67

Post by cirno »

This applies every bit as much to Google's web search as it does YouTube search.

I know of many marginalized people targeted by online hate groups that have been smeared with proven-false allegations and doxxed online, and these stalking websites are consistently ranked as the top results in Google search and Google Images search results for their names.

Google's AI is clearly trained to recognize and promote controversy, because it is human nature for controversy to drive engagement.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#68

Post by pitay »

pjc50 wrote: post #66
pitay wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the recommendation system mix it up, put niches that are somewhat similar in the recommendations not quite as often, put things a bit further away less often, etc. This should have the algorithm recommend counterpoints which are clearly visible to the user. This is assuming things that are partisan one way are similar to things that are partisan in the other way and counter partisan content. Avoid censorship, ce…

We should not classify "refusal to ever recommend X because you know X to be untrue or defamatory" as censorship.

I didn't mention anything specific, so I am not sure what you are replying to. Your example can be dealt with better in other ways, such as putting a prominent statement with a brief description of why something is untrue and a link to further information. For YouTube something like a popup that appears on the video which has to be manually closed, and also the information appearing under the video.

Censorship in general is terrible, and abused very regularly. Even on the really small scale I see little mafias pop up all the time, such as on forums, where anyone a bit critical of the select group gets banned and their posts deleted. On a larger scale is Putin announcing that criticism of the state is to be censored, citing other European laws do just that and punish people for what they say. If someone is censoring someone it is just extremely suspicious, and I don't blame anyone for going 'it is censored, therefor it is likely true', because the censor has removed the information that could be used as evidence for whatever it is.

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." - George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#69

Post by taneq »

cirno wrote: post #67

This applies every bit as much to Google's web search as it does YouTube search. I know of many marginalized people targeted by online hate groups that have been smeared with proven-false allegations and doxxed online, and these stalking websites are consistently ranked as the top results in Google search and Google Images search results for their names. Google's AI is clearly trained to recognize and promote controv…

I've been convinced for a while now that Facebook tries to start fights between people of opposite ideology. I'm sure it's just that their algorithms have picked up that pro-skub people are highly likely to reply to anti-skub comments in pro-skub threads (since that was the pattern I was seeing) but it sure comes across as trying to cause drama.

Re: YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization [pdf]

#70

Post by thinkingemote »

Thorentis wrote: post #61
iudqnolq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Downvotes? Give me a counter example that shows how TYT or CNN is not left-leaning. Maybe downvotes are because you claim your parent claims CNN isn't left-leaning, whereas what they said was that CNN isn't "partisan left" in the same way that TYT is. You also don't address their main evidence for their claim, that they frequently attack each other. I have no idea if you're right, because I haven't looked into the…

CNN is very pro-democrat, as clearly shown in all their election coverage. This makes them partisan left. From what I've seen, CNN tends to support the favoured democrat candidate/front-runner, and TYT lean further left and often show support for somebody like Sanders, but show general support across the board. > You also don't address their main evidence What main evidence? Their main programming? The main programmi…

To most Europeans the US Democrats are center / right wing. There are no major left wing political parties in the US and no major left wing media outlets.
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