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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#381

Post by fennecfoxy »

bilbo0s wrote: post #110
Salgat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people confused like me on what intensification means, it means maximizing the amount of attention and interaction that occurs. On Youtube this would be the metrics that drive engagement, including views, likes, comments, shares, and watch time. The issue is that the content focuses on driving engagement at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence and depth, for example by sensationalizing or oversimplif…

I think the above commentor is right, in my opinion, intensification shapes our world into being very reactionary, with only a superficial understanding of issues In fairness, this is how the world has always been. In the US for instance, back when there were only 3 networks and a channel for public tv, people were "reactionary, with only a superficial understanding of issues" .

I wouldn't necessarily say intensification is the issue, but more misrepresenting the truth or flat out lying.

Shouting "SO AND SO MAYBE MIGHT HAVE POSSIBLY DID THIS BAD THING BUT I DON'T HAVE ANY EVIDENCE!" from the rooftops won't provoke much action as shouting the same but reinforcing that it is definitely true, for sure, of course it is.

Then with human behaviour/intelligence there's the spectrum of people who care about fact-finding or not and will react according to new information depending on this. Some of it is general laziness, they can't be bothered fact finding, and some of it is tribal, they accept x must be true because it's about y tribe where they're a member of z tribe.

That's why it's so easy for politics, big tech, etc to manipulate people; because we're all still monkeys!

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#382

Post by BlueTemplar »

NickC25 wrote: post #332
Satisfy4400 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glorification of Luigi Mangione in some left-leaning circles seems to be a counterpoint to your assertion.

The only divide is pushed from the corporate media who desperately wants 1. this to be a left/right issue and 2. for everyone to stfu because United spends billions of dollars advertising on said media's platforms. Luigi's selfless act of heroism on the behalf of the American middle and lower classes should be treated as such. You'll find that United Fraudcare doesn't discriminate on left/right when it comes to denyi…

But it is a left/right issue : this obviously wouldn't have happened in a socialist country. (You would still have had issues with higher status people sometimes getting much better healthcare of course.)

The problem here is that people confuse left/right with Democrat/Republican and seem to think that Trump is on the right just because he used the Republican party : he is no more on the right than the Nazis, who deployed both left leaning and right leaning policies when those suited them.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#383

Post by Ekaros »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #365
hn8726 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months sometimes. I'm sure there's plenty of interesting co…

The homescreen recommendations seems to aggressively prioritize what you last searched for. I missed the end of the recent Australia vs India cricket series so I searched for highlights from the final day of play. Since then for the past 2 weeks my homescreen has been an endless stream of cricket related videos. For some reason it has a particular focus on podcasts related to cricket.

Podcasts are popular enough high engagement content. Here engagement is mostly watch time. As such algo pushes those videos that have been recently watched a lot. Recently being popular is also other mechanic that seems very common.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#384

Post by BlueTemplar »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #326
llamaimperative wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains election results (agreed) but I'm more curious why outrage-generators and conspiracists seem to have culturally taken a stronger hold on the right over the course of decades.

I would tentatively suggest that it because the right lost the broader cultural "wars". Our story-telling media is, if not actually "leftish", generally progressive in the broadest sense of that term. Struggles over gay marriage, contraception, divorce, interracial marriage, civil rights were all, as of 2010 or so, pretty much wrapped up in ways that broadly speaking reflected a progressive win. So for quite a few de…

I'll nitpick terminology here, taking a larger view : has the Chicago school brand of economics been around long enough now to be considered "conservative" now ?

And its rightward momentum seems to be much more liberal to me, considering how often it's about removing regulations...

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#385

Post by llamaimperative »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #366
llamaimperative wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody thinks the arithmetic is wrong, we're saying you're engaged in (really transparent and unconvincing) deception. If the approval rate was 0.1% and 0.2%, does it give someone the correct impression to say "Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to approve of the killing?" After saying that sentence, would someone draw a diagram that's even remotely close to the actual probabilities and support levels? No.…

>the positive reaction towards [the CEO's murder], seems rather associated with the left So the question is, "of the population of folks who approve of the murder, how many are left leaning vs right?" So your own data says that the population of murder-approvers is left leaning by a huge margin. you are the one using tricks to obfuscate that fact. further, you are trying to malign the entire trump presidency based on…

Take the two sets of numbers and ask someone to draw a diagram of the probabilities.

Your numbers: they will draw something not even close to reality

My numbers: they will draw something close to reality

That’s the whole argument. You are engaged in, again, fully transparent, unconvincing, and unimpressive deception.

And it’s weird because I don’t know who you think you’re convincing. Hopefully it isn’t you!

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#386

Post by BlueTemplar »

Klonoar wrote: post #127
roland35 wrote: post #38

It's interesting how this is happening in software engineering YouTube content as well. It seems like things like "go sucks rust is great! Now rust sucks and zig is great!!" get way more views since it is basically clickbait for nerds. It's too bad that nuanced discussion doesn't do too well on social media.

I noticed this as well and it’s been the first real moment where I feel “old” as a dev. I should acknowledge that our industry has always had some form of this - but it was contained predominantly to mailing lists/forums/blogs and eventually Twitter. It felt like all of these mediums (yes, even Twitter) required some form of proof that you’re an authority or experienced on what you’re writing about. I don’t feel like…

It seems like there was an era of journalism where the minimum quality was higher : in between the disappearance of the yellow press (WW2 ??) and the rise of social media.

Was that a result of economic consolidation ?

Or am I mistaken and the yellow press never went away ? (And why does it seem like it did for a while ?)

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#387

Post by BlueTemplar »

SirHumphrey wrote: post #133
roland35 wrote: post #38

It's interesting how this is happening in software engineering YouTube content as well. It seems like things like "go sucks rust is great! Now rust sucks and zig is great!!" get way more views since it is basically clickbait for nerds. It's too bad that nuanced discussion doesn't do too well on social media.

Nuanced discussion can only happen in good faith. It’s impossible to enforce that so to prevent being turned in to 4chan, social media turns to the most obvious proxy- likes upvote etc. The logic underpinning this is that if a person is a jerk they will be downvoted- therefore there is an incentive to not be a jerk. However, because the person on the other side is anonymous and therefore people can’t instinctively pr…

I don't think it's impossible to enforce, you can probably do it on social media limited to hundred(s) of participants, where moderators (and other users) can get familiar with specific posters.

On most social media people aren't anonymous, they are pseudonymous - this can still have an impact on your behavior when you know that even non-moderators can look up your post history.

But I guess that a lot of posters are still going to feel pseudo-anonymous, because looking up still requires a lot of effort... at least until for a few they become famous enough (dang, pg...) that their pseudo-anonymity is gone.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#388

Post by infecto »

okdood64 wrote: post #112
infecto wrote: post #9

Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining and really uncovered fascinating videos.

This is exactly how YouTube still works for me... I'm still finding new interesting content and creators everyday. Do you subscribe to creators you enjoy, and like their videos? You still need to feed the algorithm.

I think you missed how the old end of video algorithm worked. The old way had a much higher weighting when picking the next video on the current video being watched. The current next video pick algorithm places a much higher weighting on your preferences instead of the current video.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#389

Post by infecto »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #96
ravenstine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. My experience with their algorithm between 2014 and ~2020 was that autoplay would quickly turn into a form of video diarrhea composed largely of Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman. Was pretty bizarre because I only watched a few Peterson videos in the beginning, mostly his "Maps Of Meaning" videos which I think are mostly poppycock, and ever since then YouTube would quickly bring me back to his content even tho…

Funny, I have the opposite experience. I used to get relevant videos to what I was watching. If I'm watching a Phish video, it would recommend other Phish videos. These days, if I'm watching a Phish video I will literally, as in literally literally, get a Candace Owens video recommendation. I have literally never clicked on one of her videos ever. I don't watch political content on youtube at all, and if I did I am v…

I truly miss the way the next video used to be picked. I don't get political videos but I will be watching The Band live concerts and after the second video I will get something like a singing video with The Wiggles (I have a child). It makes absolutely no sense to me.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#390

Post by mbarria »

ravenstine wrote: post #19
infecto wrote: post #9

Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining and really uncovered fascinating videos.

I don't. My experience with their algorithm between 2014 and ~2020 was that autoplay would quickly turn into a form of video diarrhea composed largely of Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman. Was pretty bizarre because I only watched a few Peterson videos in the beginning, mostly his "Maps Of Meaning" videos which I think are mostly poppycock, and ever since then YouTube would quickly bring me back to his content even tho…

Dunno about parent but to me "old algorithm" is more like 2010, not 2014.

Edit: 2010 and earlier. To me old youtube is before the rise of Minecraft. There's probably a better threshold but that's the one that comes to mind.

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