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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

#71

Post by aptidude187 »

fareesh wrote: post #26

The international corporate media has not been honest in its reporting of the refugee situation in Europe. This is becoming clearer year by year, because some of the facts that were earlier dismissed as racist rhetoric are now becoming very difficult to ignore. For example earlier this year, Chancellor Merkel finally admitted that there are "no-go" zones in the country where even the police dare not go. This is an ex…

I think your description is misleading when you start talking about no-go zones refering to a statement[0] from Angela Merkel without mentioning by which group this is supposed to be created by and then go on to talk about refugees, which suggests that they created it, when in fact those no go zones are upheld by racist violent right wingers who just attack about anyone who looks non white and foreign. I am living in Germany near those areas so I can differentiate fact from fiction.

(google translate if necessary) [0] https://faktenfinder.tagesschau.de/hintergrund/no-go-gebiete...

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

#73

Post by yesenadam »

ahana27 wrote: post #56
DanBC wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme left aren't involved in mass murder at anything like the extent that the extreme right are. When looking at HVE groups the far left appears rarely, those lists are full of either militant Islamist or Far Right groups. The focus on the far right happens because it's the far right that are murdering people.

The extreme right are currently mass murdering people? What? Where?

Well, most recently I've heard about hundreds being killed in Nigeria by Boko Haram and hundreds of social leaders murdered recently in Colombia. Plus whatever countries the US is currently slaughtering people in.

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

#74

Post by dnomad »

notahacker wrote: post #44
DanBC wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme left aren't involved in mass murder at anything like the extent that the extreme right are. When looking at HVE groups the far left appears rarely, those lists are full of either militant Islamist or Far Right groups. The focus on the far right happens because it's the far right that are murdering people.

[flagged]

You have to be willfully blind not to see the obvious connection between far right groups and violence. Both the US and the UK have seen dramatic increases in far right terrorist attacks and equivocating this clear, observable phenomenon with bogeymen on the left is very disingenuous. If you're actually concerned with rising extremism you'd focus on the more pressing issue which is very much not the anti-imperialists.

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

#75

Post by anonymfus »

ericdykstra wrote: post #57

This article seems a bit sensationalized. The examples they give are a single video with 500,000 views, and a couple of channels whose views average 20-30k. If YouTube is recommending "extreme" channels so often, why aren't they getting more views? > “Lies, propaganda and manipulation are harmful for society, but on their own are not illegal — and so our hands are often tied,” said Mr. Ipsen, of the government-linked…

>They also didn't mention that Guttenberg was the only one trying to approach Kavanaugh, or that Kavanaugh's kids were removed from the room for safety concerns shortly prior. That seems like manipulation to me.

They didn't mention fake news?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brett-kavanaughs-children-...

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

#76

Post by propman »

fareesh wrote: post #26

The international corporate media has not been honest in its reporting of the refugee situation in Europe. This is becoming clearer year by year, because some of the facts that were earlier dismissed as racist rhetoric are now becoming very difficult to ignore. For example earlier this year, Chancellor Merkel finally admitted that there are "no-go" zones in the country where even the police dare not go. This is an ex…

Well said, agreed. Your point is completely rational and it’s not at all controversial in any way. However, the thought police has made it so and you can bet someone will cry “racist” to drown you out at this completely obvious point.

It’s becsuse we as a society have ingrained it that even thinking this makes you a racist and our response is to immediately shut it down. I actually think that’s a very very good thing. 20th century nationalism was atrocious and all our institutions have greatly succeeded in reigning in that threat and each generation proves more empathetic than the last.

That being said, Europe clearly went wayyyy too far. Completely bonkers. The YouTube videos in 2015 were the only real source of info I had. Previously my opinion was completely made by bbc articles about poor Syrian Children. World media covered stories were completely misleading as I saw the truth on the YouTube videos. I’m not talking cherry picked random crimes either. I used to think Fox News was the crazy right wing media and everything else, especially the BBC, was high quality I’m ashamed to admit. I’m curious if my mistrust of the news of the refugee crisis was mimicked by the vocal minority who thereafter supported Trump or other extremes. The lack of faith in media has been present for a while but sharply increased with Trump and possibly preceded him with this refugee crisis. During the election, the right wing media couldn’t really hate on many foreigners in America because not many were committing crimes but they got their base all riled up with tribalism hate by covering Sweden and Germany.

Anyways, this same phenomenon is all over the place. “I support Syrian refugees and others fleeing war torn countries or persecution for sexuality or religion. I do not support 80% young males traveling alone as economic migrants or (possibly worse) and wish to quickly deport bad actors”. View shared by probably 80% of people but 3 years ago you could not even post that on Facebook. How can we seriously discuss policy when we are too afraid to hurt feelings (not being condescending, it’s true becasue I am afraid to hurt feelings too)

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

yesenadam wrote: post #73
ahana27 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme right are currently mass murdering people? What? Where?

Well, most recently I've heard about hundreds being killed in Nigeria by Boko Haram and hundreds of social leaders murdered recently in Colombia. Plus whatever countries the US is currently slaughtering people in.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by ahane27 »

yesenadam wrote: post #73
ahana27 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme right are currently mass murdering people? What? Where?

Well, most recently I've heard about hundreds being killed in Nigeria by Boko Haram and hundreds of social leaders murdered recently in Colombia. Plus whatever countries the US is currently slaughtering people in.

I'm not familiar with the situation in Colombia, but Boko Haram is extreme right?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram#Ideology

Also, the US is extreme right? I would consider them to be globalists, which is quite the opposite in my book.

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

#79

Post by pas »

dnomad wrote: post #68
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…

> My comment: what does it say about us humans that we fall for progressively more extreme stuff? This is the fundamental question. Every YouTuber quickly figures out that the more extreme content you produce the more views you get. This is how something as silly (but harmless) as the Atheist Youtube community degenerates into idiots raging about feminists and denying 9/11. YouTube is just a market where the endless…

Could you elaborate please on the atheist community going extreme?

Regarding the recommendation algorithm: it's utter bullcrap. The simplest and dumbest collaborative filtering for category and popularity system that they can get away with. Yet it works. YT is addictive.

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

#80

Post by pfisch »

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…

I don't really see why this is a conspiratorial hypotheses. The goal of youtube is to keep you on youtube watching videos with ads. That is what they are trying to do, and it happens to coincide with pushing extreme content as an unintended side effect.
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