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YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#161

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

dang and I thought the whole point of youtube was to end up in its weird corners. So many memories of me whistling to the cheerful tunes of the Arctic Monkeys, 4 hours later I'm googling "anxiety" to the background music from Boards of Canada.

And whenever I fall asleep to the stimulating and thought provoking ideas of Yuval Noah Harari, I wake up several films later and likely half way through a 4 hour documentary of the 4 horsemen & NWO.

But I guess the remedy is to use Google even more, deactivate my adblock and embrace the milking experience as intended. So that they can build a more accurate picture serving me "better" content. :)

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#162

Post by CynicalDio »

It's quite bizarre, the way YouTube works. I will watch a video that covers something like climate change and immediately I am bombarded in my recommendations with left leaning news clips and stories, the same goes for when I watch a video that could be considered conservative, right away I am suggested videos like "Professor puts liberal sjw student in her place - compilation."

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#163

Post by wu-ikkyu »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #143
tmorton wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby. I think this cuts to the heart of the issue - and demonstrates the problem with this line of thinking. I also think you're missing the point of the Solomon story. When Solomon proposed that solution, one woman said "No, no - give her the baby." That woman was willing to compromise. She was willing to compromise all the wa…

Can you provide a specific example(s) of a side sacrificing a deeper issue in order to win, in recent history? I'm having trouble coming up with examples.

How about the US government in the 1960's conceding to civil rights demands in order to avoid a violent revolution?

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#164

Post by bachbach »

puppymaster wrote: post #69

Anecdotal but +1. Watched a couple Jordan Peterson videos and YT started recommending far right wing channels everywhere. Identity politics is exactly the kind of thing he preached against.

That is not meaningful.

In Germany a new edition of Mein Kampf was published - and it sold a lot of copies. Nearly all of those copies were to people who were already anti-Nazi.

I read all sorts of stuff - doesn't mean I buy it.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#165

Post by malvosenior »

bilbo0s wrote: post #149
malvosenior wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you can't be racist against white people and you can't be sexist against men. That's a core tenant of western progressivism and does nothing but breed hostility, and denigrate people based on features they were born with. Also see the other HN thread from today about left wing censorship and anti-science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318

This is an example of what the article is discussing. Essentially, content on open platforms, (this thread), tend to link to more extremist content, (the thread you're pointing out). Then that content links to more extremist content, and on and on and so on and so forth. So your comment is a good "for instance" of why YouTube does what it does as an algorithm. In essence, what YouTube's algorithm does is the exact sa…

Interesting ideas. I don't know that "extremist" is the right word though. It seems that it's just further investigation into any particular topic (for instance I replied to a direct question asking for an opinion). "Extreme" is a very subjective term and when talking about sensitive topics, it would be easy to label any further research as such.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#166

Post by close04 »

tmorton wrote: post #131
pjc50 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been pointed out, in lots of areas a "balanced" view doesn't make sense. I'm reminded of the judgement of Solomon dictating that, to settle a dispute between two women as to whom a baby belonged to, it should be cut in half and they be given half each. For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby. "All humans are created equal and endowed with rights" is a radic…

> For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby. I think this cuts to the heart of the issue - and demonstrates the problem with this line of thinking. I also think you're missing the point of the Solomon story. When Solomon proposed that solution, one woman said "No, no - give her the baby." That woman was willing to compromise. She was willing to compromise all the wa…

In the Solomon story one woman was 100% right and one was 100% wrong. Are there many social issues where the 2 sides that meed this criterion?

I think a better visualization of the problem is "you can't cross a canyon in less than a single bound". Sometimes there is no meeting half way.

Last but not least, compromising is sometimes not an option. It's like the paradox of tolerance where the only thing you have to be intolerant to is intolerance. Because allowing that is basically killing your options. It's like allowing bacteria to kill you because you are pro-life and not willing to kill them.

In the case of free speech, anything that would lead to someone else losing their freedom for the same should not be allowed just to have "a compromise". Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction. And just like contract killing, hate speech should be punished the same as the crime it instigated to. You instigate violence, you have to be put in the same jail cell as the people who threw the punch.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#167

Post by wu-ikkyu »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #97
b0rsuk wrote: post #23

This was addressed more broadly in "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads" by Zeynep Tufekci on TED. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891014 She remarked that Youtube's recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on anything , not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here's something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal…

More and more I find people who have done what I do; I don't watch TV "news" anymore and ignore almost every "news" article or posting online. Unless the headline might be a topic I'm specifically interested in and think it affects me I don't give it the time.

I'm in the same camp.

It seems the "news", in general, is a buffer overflow of malicious information that serves to override our logical thought processes with negative emotions and irrational tendencies.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#168

Post by giantsloth »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #150
malvosenior wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you can't be racist against white people and you can't be sexist against men. That's a core tenant of western progressivism and does nothing but breed hostility, and denigrate people based on features they were born with. Also see the other HN thread from today about left wing censorship and anti-science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318

Those aren't progressive positions at all, those are internet bred radical identity politics issues that have nothing to do with progressivism, and stem out of liberalism which is meant to further divide the country. Most people on the true left wouldn't identify with those positions. Edit: People downvoting need to look at a political spectrum of the left and research the viewpoints of progressive, democratic social…

[flagged]

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#169

Post by cynoclast »

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

This was addressed more broadly in "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads" by Zeynep Tufekci on TED. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891014 She remarked that Youtube's recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on anything , not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here's something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal…

We want to feel better than others, and through that shore up our insecurities.

Being more 'extreme' is the easiest and most obvious way to do that, even if being more extreme means virtue signalling in more ways, or being more of a victim, or being richer, or having more cars.

Re: YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content

#170

Post by wu-ikkyu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #55
b0rsuk wrote: post #23

This was addressed more broadly in "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads" by Zeynep Tufekci on TED. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891014 She remarked that Youtube's recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on anything , not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here's something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal…

> She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that. While I understand the attractiveness of conspiratorial hypotheses, I think there is a simple explanation that applies to recommendation systems generally: such systems are designed, overtly, to identify content the user is likely t…

How is tying to "make people spend as much time on a site as possible" is a conspiratorial hypothesis?
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