
Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' - jedimind
https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.html
======
Avamander
I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets heavily
personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years.

Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how
music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start
repeating.

I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the
suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video
recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all
too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new
topics more than old ones and so on.

It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how
hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's
why it is like that.

~~~
emilecantin
I don't go to Youtube for news / information, I go there for entertainment. In
that regard, the "bubble" works well, because it recommends the type of
content I find interesting.

However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed
interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that
direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is
actually too easy to extend.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Some topics seem stickier than others. Like clicking on one Jordan Peterson
video seems like enough to change a third of the front page to other videos by
him.

At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm completely
uninterested in the guy.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Aye. I fucked up once and clicked a link to a PragerU vid that was being
discussed on reddit. Non-stop recommendations about OWNING LIBS for a few
weeks.

It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply because I don't want
to get spammed.

~~~
coldpie
At least on desktop, you can remove videos from your watch history, which I
_think_ will drop them from the recommendations algorithm. Search here and
click the X on the offending videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/feed/history](https://www.youtube.com/feed/history)

------
yndoendo
Seems YouTube recommendations does not adjust for context of keywords. I click
on a Sport video not because of the sport but want to hear what the person has
to say about XYX and not sports. Then YouTube now thinks I wants sports and
there is no way of stating to the algorithm "Do not show me sports" because it
will take the keywords without context.

They recommendations are fixated on YOU as in the last search or viewing
instead of the sum of the content viewed. So a day of just looking at Cat
videos equates to I want all Cat videos now and forever until I search for
something else.

Also, there is not degree of separation for showing new / thought of content.
Or simply put, a meson to walk through the bookstore and see something you
never though of looking for and become interested.

~~~
graton
I will watch things in a "private window" if I don't want it affecting my
recommendation or later go and remove it from my watch history.

This seems to help me. Also I will mark videos as not interested.

But yeah I notice I watch one video and then I get a lot of recommendations
related to it. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.

~~~
deadmutex
Also note that the mobile app has an Incognito mode too.

------
dgellow
FYI, the project they mention, "TheirTube", can be found here:
[https://www.their.tube/about](https://www.their.tube/about)

~~~
KeytarHero
Thanks. One of my biggest bad-internet-journalism pet peeves as of late is
articles that talk about a thing that exists on the internet without linking
to it. I mean, I know I can just search it, but it's a dark pattern designed
to keep you on their site, disguised as lazy journalism.

------
FreakyT
This does seem like a problem, but at the same time, this would appear to be
the expected result from a well-written recommendation engine. That is, if a
user watches a bunch of videos about a specific topic, it makes sense that it
would recommend more of that same topic, since that is clearly what that user
is interested in.

That said, I see how this is a problem, but what is the solution? Do away with
recommendations altogether?

~~~
joedevon
Platforms that create filter bubbles should show "opposite content"..perhaps
with a heading that could have titles like "Videos we don't
recommend"..."Videos you may disagree with".."break out of your filter bubble"
or something to that effect.

~~~
kanox
Somehow I've managed to avoid most political/argumentative content on YouTube
and this solution wouldn't make sense for me.

Would I get videos about how bikes suck?

What people who complain about "filter bubbles" mean is that they're sad that
traditional media's hold over what people watch is weakening but that's a good
thing. I don't need more people telling me that "orange man bad".

~~~
iforgotpassword
I wouldn't strictly limit the term filter bubble to politics here. Sometimes
its just "whoa that stuff exists!" moments. Unless YouTube decides to let some
video/channel go viral, you'll never get recommended stuff that isn't very
similar to the last couple videos you watched.

All the cool stuff that isn't related to IT stuff or retro computing I've
found through comments on hn or elsewhere. Like that guy that restores
matchbox cars, or the other one who builds dioramas.

------
nicetryguy
A few years ago, i used to get youtube recommendations based only on the video
i was watching at the time, and it was awesome! I could discover new
videos/songs related to the video i was watching much more easily.

Lately, most/all of the recommendations are based globally on every video i've
ever watched, so the recommendations are almost the same no matter what video
i watch, so it's tougher to discover new things. For some reason, it insists
on constantly recommending videos i have watched before, which is annoying.
Maybe it's because i use youtube as a music player often and i do repeat
videos. It is amazing for video game OSTs, which i enjoy and are hard to find
anywhere else.

I could certainly see how this could lead people into isolated thought
bubbles, especially with how the algorithm is lately compared to a few years
ago, it has happened with myself to some extent.

~~~
fpgaminer
> For some reason, it insists on constantly recommending videos i have watched
> before, which is annoying.

The insanity is deeper than that:

1) YouTube recommends videos they _know_ you watched before (they're marked as
watched).

2) YouTube forgets which videos you've watched after a few months. Google, of
all companies, forgets what I've watched. WTF?

3) So even if YouTube didn't recommend videos you've watched before, they'll
forget in a few months anyway and recommend it again.

4) And you can't mark videos as watched. Say you watched a video elsewhere.
YouTube recommends it to you. But you've already seen it. Can't mark it as
watched. Can't make Google not recommend it. Even if you could, they'll just
forget in a few months.

5) Watched a video, but skipped the last 5 minutes because it's sponsorship
content? YouTube: Better not mark that as watched and instead recommend that
you finish it for the next few months.

~~~
cuddlybacon
Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple times, if not dozens.

YouTube likely isn’t forgetting that you’ve watched it. It is probably
suggesting it again because it thinks it has been enough time you’d want to
watch it again.

~~~
fpgaminer
> YouTube likely isn’t forgetting that you’ve watched it.

No, they do. Videos that you've watched are marked as such. They have a red
bar at the bottom of the video thumbnail that shows how much of the video
you've watched. For ones you've watched all the way through, it's just a solid
red bar.

After a few months, YouTube just forgets. I can go to, say, Chubbyemu's
channel
([https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos)),
which I've watched most videos on, and it only shows that I've watched videos
6 months or newer. YouTube forgets everything past that.

The point of my post was multi-fold. YouTube will recommend a video they
_know_ you've watched; it's got the red bar at the bottom. But even if they
didn't do that, they'll forget in six months anyway and recommend it anyway.

> Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple times, if not
> dozens.

Hmmm, yeah, you're right. I do the same. Must be that their AI has learned
that behavior, but hasn't quite figured out what makes a video "rewatchable"
yet.

~~~
cuddlybacon
I think I was just being needlessly pedantic.

For whatever reason I was fixated on the word 'forgetting' meaning that /all/
records where lost or deleted and that it couldn't mean they just get rid of
the visual indicator after some time in order to trick you.

Upon reflection, that's a bit silly of me. Sorry.

~~~
fpgaminer
No worries. I didn't think you were being pedantic; I figured my comment
wasn't worded clearly. Hope my reply didn't seem defensive? I was just trying
to clarify.

But yeah, it's possible that Google does keep the records around, but don't
surface it in the UI after six months for some reason. Could be an
optimization, to keep the edge databases lean. Or it could be a weird dark
pattern.

------
scrollaway
YouTube recommendations is one of those filter bubbles which I've learned to
use heavily to my advantage.

I consume a lot of video content and I've learned to curate my watch history
(what to watch/search for in incognito versus watch logged in; what to delete
from my history etc) so that my youtube homepage actually consistently has a
lot of high quality discovery.

One thing I systematically do is avoid videos that are anywhere between 10m00s
and 10m20s in length: those are almost always videos that have been
arbitrarily lengthened to meet some ad length milestones. I've even seen
videos _slowed down_ by some percentage just to fucking get to 10 mins.

Also apparently youtube's changing the milestone to 8 minutes soon, so I'm
going to watch out for those too…

~~~
WmyEE0UsWAwC2i
I had similar results following similar practices. I distinguish between stuff
I want the algorithm to recommend and stuff that I only want to consume "on-
demand" (that is when ever I search for it).

The second category covers topics with lots of content so It would overwhelm
the other interests.

YouTube some times asks me how do I feel about my recommendations and some
times all of them are interesting. But I can't watch them all (maybe I should
add them to watch later, to tell the algorithm that I care)

The turning point was when they allowed us to tell the algorithm which videos
were not relevant.

------
jamestimmins
'Videos for the prepper will “explore apocalyptic scenarios and how to
“prepare” for them.”'

Interesting that it seems to suggest that preppers aren't /truly/ prepping for
these scenarios, or that the scenarios aren't real. If anything, it seems like
Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense.

It may not be a zombie situation where people need large stores of ammo, but
the modern world can fall apart to such a degree that the ability to survive
outside of dependence on normal systems is an advantage.

~~~
dharmab
I feel like the preppers were not prepared. Too much ammo and MREs, not enough
pasta and hygienic supplies.

~~~
Zhyl
There was a great Cracked podcast about this recently. Preppers are basically
preparing for some Hollywood doomsday scenario where the hero overcomes
challenges by putting himself first and (sometimes violently) surviving by a
series of physically demanding challenges that depends on his canny and his
wits.

The real life pandemic scenario is 'solved' (in the same sense) by listening
to Government advice, being considerate of others and staying at home and
watching TV.

~~~
cpeterso
Many preppers just want to play soldier and imagine they will get to shoot up
marauding neighbors.

The real preppers are Mormon families who follow LDS guidelines for keeping
their pantry stocked with one-year's supply of food to provide for their
family.

~~~
dharmab
As someone who lives in Mormon country, most families here are incredibly
well-prepared for emergencies. It's notable that the LDS-style emergency
preparedness assumes that social structures will be available through the
local wards and therefore individual preparedness can be planned more
practically. For example, emergency food stores are standard groceries rotated
through the household's regular diet rather than special emergency foods.

------
speedgoose
This website redirects me to
[https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=)

I guess I have to stop browsing Engadget.

~~~
swebs
Same, and uBlock origin stops it from going further. Here's an archive link

[http://archive.is/k2gG7](http://archive.is/k2gG7)

But it's mostly just blogspam. Here's the real project

[https://www.their.tube/](https://www.their.tube/)

------
Nihilartikel
I actually find myself curating my recommendation bubbles. One identity with
clojure talks and embedded hacking, another with 70s progressive rock and
Japanese Doujin trance music, and steak cooking videos primarily, etc..

------
rland
If you find the youtube algorithm interesting, you may like this interview
with the guy in charge of the team who works on it (warning, hour plus video
that will fill your recommendations with Lex Fridman!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWmiNRPU-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWmiNRPU-c)

I suspect that "sticky content" like conspiracy videos is just as difficult
for Google as it is for us -- certain content is just magnetic, for one
psychological reason or another.

The big takeaway from that interview for me was that "time watched" is the
biggest metric, not likes, clicks, subscriptions, etc. I guess that makes
sense, given that time is a bit like currency. But sometimes what people think
they like doesn't line up 1:1 with what they actually like.

------
ausbah
I guess a question I have is how does a platform promote "truthful" content
when only user actions are present (voting, viewing, subscribing, etc.) with
resorting to an omnipresent, final "arbiter of truth" or "presenting all view
points as equal"?

~~~
Avamander
It doesn't. It promotes the truth people want to see, a platform can only flag
obvious false information but that will always piss people off. Imagine if all
the creationism videos suddenly get flagged as false news, I'd cackle, but
YouTube would be lynched.

~~~
leppr
Or imagine they flagged videos showing how face masks help contain Covid-19 as
fake news back when the official US government recommendation was still to not
buy and wear masks because they are useless? That'd have pissed people off
too.

------
djaychela
If you want a laugh, delete your YouTube watch history. I did this about 18
months ago as an experiment. It took YT a LONG time to get back to suggesting
anything like worthwhile content, despite me spending time on YT deliberately
watching things that I liked (and avoiding the initial suggestions it gave me
after the deletion which were all generic videos with millions of views.

There are some channels that I used to watch that I no longer see as a result
of this, but then there are others I wasn't aware of that I now see.

I'm careful now to not watch what I consider junk, and if I want to watch
anything I don't want my suggestions to be influenced by, I do so in a private
browsing window.

------
Steltek
Fun fact: all six personas had beekeeping Youtube videos suggested to them.

More seriously, I wonder if one could determine the "strength" of a bubble's
wall and then check that against the expected time spent online by a group.

~~~
kps
Clearly YouTube senior management has determined that colony collapse disorder
is an existential threat to their business.

~~~
Steltek
In-joke reference to a seemingly random beekeeping video that ran wild through
a while ago due to a YT recommendation engine hiccup.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177)

------
Kednicma
I've noticed that using youtube-dl seems to prevent my recommendations from
changing much. Are there other tricks that one can use to avoid getting
bubbled?

~~~
kohtatsu
Flushing cookies, and watching specific videos in a private tab.

If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location,
incognito is enough.

Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations without cookies,
despite them being capable of tying your sessions together.

I don't use the app on iOS. If you need higher than 720p playback for a video
you can request desktop site.

~~~
Avamander
> If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location,
> incognito is enough.

I personally find that unpersonalized homepage rather offensive. It often
considers small countries near a large one as a part of it as the borders are
unclear for its algorithms. The same happens with things like Google Play.

~~~
kohtatsu
Yeah it's not great. It goes away after a few videos though. Then you can nuke
it and start fresh on your own terms.

------
throwaway_kufu
The only recommendations I enjoy are music playlists based on my history.

Otherwise it always seems to ultimately lead to conspiracy style videos. I may
start with some DIY videos, archeology, history, physics or even MMA...then a
couple recommendations in its Basically “fail videos” and conspiracy videos.
As of late I’m also loaded up with pizza reviews which is ironic because I’m
generally following low carb or keto regimens.

------
tmaly
I purposely visit YouTube with Firefox in Private mode so I do not
accidentally teach the algorithm that I am interested in how to fix garbage
disposals.

------
LockAndLol
This has been a phenomenon for the better part of a decade. I can't even
remember when it happened, but some day they decided that the channels one was
subscribed to were less important than "hot videos". They also split and moved
those subscriptions into some sidebar where you had to click on every
subscription manually to see what was new.

Their focus is ads. Top videos mean ads are watched more often so that's what
they promote. Everything is geared that way and creating bigger, less
heterogeneous groups means there are less "niche" videos. I'm sure their AI
has worked out the smallest number of groups that spans the biggest amount of
users and drives views upwards that way.

If you don't want to get caught in the pooptube loop, don't subscribe, don't
create an account and get recommendations offsite. They are more likely more
diverse. In fact, if you want new stuff, don't go on youtube, go to vimeo,
peertube, dtube, or whatever else has tube appended to its name.

------
scoutt
So YouTube feeds their users the things they want to consume. Interesting...

------
nonbirithm
I find that every time I go to YouTube's homepage to look at the
recommendations, I'm really just bored and expecting them to feed me something
of low long term value that catches my attention for a split second with the
YouTube face or something, and it doesn't particularly matter what it is so
long as it's "interesting" in that vague superficial sense.

This is in contrast to when I use YouTube as a library of videos that I walk
up to in order to look something up in that I want to know about.

Now even when it's some guy's hand made animation they did in college, I feel
kind of guilty that the only reason I cared to see it was because YouTube gave
it to me, and also that I didn't know what I was looking for to begin with so
I essentially went "well, that will have to do."

Maybe that will work for keeping me off YouTube until I start believing that I
have absolutely nothing better to do with my time again.

------
hugh4life
One thing I noticed on music videos is that if I click on the Mix on the
sidebar for that video it has a heavy bias for videos I've previously watched
even if it has nothing to do with that song's genre.

I have kind of weird tastes that go from old country to happy hardcore to
synthwave to many different genres and it's just weird how I get songs in the
youtube mixes that are extremely unrelated to one another. I could be wrong,
but it seems like it used to be much better than it is now.

------
fouc
The means of filter bubbles should be in the users hands, and not in the hands
of corporations. Corporations cannot be relied upon to have the user's best
interests at heart. When users control their own filter bubbles the internet
becomes a useful and productive place again.

"The means of filter bubbles must be in the hands of the users!" as the latest
rallying cry.

------
INTPenis
This is just one of many aspects where Google shows that it doesn't really
care about the UX. They only care about your data.

I can think of a few other examples off the top of my head where their
services could be improved easily but no one seems to care.

Like for example the youtube autoplay algorithm, which is often useless.
Here's a crazy idea Youtube, why not check which other videos are in the
recent queue and play content based on all of them? Instead of just the last
one.

Usually when Autoplay takes over I've already queued up a few videos on my
own, I've literally spoon fed them.

The YT Music UI is pretty bad too but that's a new product so it might
improve. As a long time Google play music user I complacently migrated my
playlists over and decided to give YT Music a go.

First week I only use it to play my Electro Work playlist, basically EDM and
Psy/Goa.

Every time I start the app I begin at the Home screen with their
recommendations to me, and not one single time do they recommend anything from
or related to that playlist.

And every single time I browse away from the Home screen and start that same
playlist.

The recommendations of YT Music seem to be based on my YT history, not my
MUSIC history.

------
briga
New ideologies have always formed as thought bubbles like this, but now
they're forming fasting than ever. Question is: are thought bubbles OK, or
should we try to pop them? This forum itself is a thought bubble, surely they
can't all be bad.

------
chris_wot
So I neither follow nor enjoy conspiracy theory videos. Does this mean that I
might soon be served up such videos because I am actively avoiding them?

I sincerely hope they solve the issue of destructive fringe videos.

------
hedora
I use Duck Duck Go’s video search. Most results are from YouTube, but it
completely solves this problem (to the point where I didn’t even know YouTube
bubbling was a thing for most people).

------
kristopolous
The recommendations on YouTube are endemic of Google's general design problem
as of late.

They appear to "go by the numbers" and effectively bucket all users together.

So children, who almost all use YouTube and want to watch the same content
repeatedly, get categorized the same as say, me.

Then they look for the largest patterns without discriminating or partitioning
and just cater to that.

So for search, they'll ignore the focused queries and just return general
results. They place amateur and sophisticated computer users in the same giant
bag.

This is why the order of the tabs on search (web/products/images/videos) just
dance around and are totally inconsistent.

It's also why they axe projects and strip features, replacing them with
effectively the bubbly hazy shoppingmall version of the feature.

Image sizes no longer have numbers in the toolbar. It's some amorphous icon,
medium, and large.

It doesn't even serve the ends they are looking for. If I was really
unsophisticated, I'd look for an "icon" and then be frustrated because, say
Apple, requires 1024x1024 icons, which I will absolutely not get with the
"icon" size filter. So not only are we worse off, but the newer way doesn't
even service the demographic they're targeting.

Another example, same pattern: Recently all my android devices seem to have a
much smaller dictionary on their gboard keyboard. Less common words are
impossible to swype and perfectly valid, correctly spelled words are getting
the red squiggly underneath them because apparently, using an uncommon word
must have been an error. Almost every day I'm pulling up a dictionary to make
sure I'm not making a mistake.

I call this "design by dictator" syndrome: some person or group (called the
design group) is given unlimited unilateral authority over all aspects of a
product. It's the opposite extreme of "design by committee". Nobody else can
question or change things.

When nobody is allowed to say "that idea is stupid" then you end up getting
stuff with lots of stupid ideas. There's a reason why the one word critical
means "very important", "detailed", and "judgmental". Uncountable empires have
fallen when it is ignored.

Back in the 90s/early 2000s when I did windows development, Microsoft was
really quite good at bucketing users. There were "channels of usage" available
which facilitated many kinds of needs and many kinds of users.

By ignoring the variation of sentiment, Google has lost its magic and in their
quest to please everyone while assuming everyone is fundamentally the same,
they end up leaving the majority minority dissatisfied.

------
akerro
Alert: clicking on engadget.com redirects to

[https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-
session_78c826b5-3cdf-4c7b-ac44-4a178f0c3ccd)

which tracks you transparently, my router is blocking it so I got "Hmm. We’re
having trouble finding that site." DNS resolution error in Firefox

------
zeepzeep
Can't read this, leads to advertising.com which is blocked.

------
cannedslime
What is the problem here exactly? Youtube recommends based on the stuff you
watch...

~~~
tsumnia
I call it the toilet seat issue with recommendation engines. If I buy a toilet
seat on Amazon, I'll find it annoying when it begins to recommend other toilet
seats, plumbing valves, other bathroom accessories. This annoyance extends to
other areas of curated content.

Secondly, our interests and preferences are temporal in nature. Things I was
interested in 6 months ago may not be things I'm interested in now. For
example, today I clicked on my YouTube "Watch Later" list and now the engine
is suggesting I watch A Garfield Christmas Special.

Finally, some people enjoy variety. I want to know what new music or genres
are going on, but musical recommendations seem to loop back to the same
things. Google Play also always defaults to 90s alternative for me. While I
enjoy the genre, I would never have developed my preferences for artists like
Fela Kuti or Baby Metal by listening to a curated list of things an algorithm
thinks I'll LIKE. Note, it only wants to suggest things it knows I'll like or
things with close approximation to known liked things. There is no incentive
to explore UNKNOWN things because of fear the user will UNLIKE it and stop
using the product.

~~~
cannedslime
Thats just not how it works for me. I have watched 20 reviews of air rifles a
few days ago, and my YT start page doesn't really reflect that at all...

I have used YT since 2006 and sure, the recommendations are shit, but thats
because they are LESS personalized than they used to be. Sometimes you don't
want a video view to count for anything in your personalization, and other
times you probably will. Imo. It should be based on your subscriptions and
what other who view those generally watch. But it seems like youtube is going
away from subscriptions and channels and into a scheme where they pick the
content they want to feed you with (Start page prioritizes "random" videos
instead of your subscribed channels etc.)

Again I don't understand what the big deal is here, should youtube plaster my
start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never
watch?

~~~
tsumnia
> But it seems like youtube is going away from subscriptions and channels and
> into a scheme where they pick the content they want to feed you with (Start
> page prioritizes "random" videos instead of your subscribed channels etc.)

I wouldn't say that either and the current state of recommendation system
research simply does not have an answer yet. Your proposed suggestion of
basing suggestions by subscription and similar users is what they are doing.
However, while you may not see it, I would argue that does not mean it does
not exist, as evident by the article and the discussions people are having in
this thread.

> should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials
> that they know I will never watch?

In my preference, yes, though not to the extreme of pure random. I would enjoy
seeing options I only select once in a blue moon or not at all. To me that
allows for a sense of exploration. However, that is only my preference and
your's may be entirely different. Again, I'd say this highlights issues with
recommendation systems that maybe one model does not work well for everyone.

~~~
cannedslime
Well I certainly wouldn't like that. I would probably rather see people being
fed the media I like (mainly testosterone, history and science based). Do you
see where I am going with this? Bubbles are what users want.

I don't want political mainstream "satire" garbage tonight shows in my media
feeds.

I don't want "Muckbang".

I don't want sony music gangster hip hop with autotune and minors rapping
about how much p __ __they slay.

I don't want rich kid vbloggers talking about their sneakers.

I use the subscriptions as much as youtube allows for, but they do their best
to make that a thing of the past.

If I want to explore I just hit the "Hot right now" section and loose a little
faith in humanity. What absolute garbage.

Should there be better ways to explore? Possibly. But I don't see how
normalizing start pages across users would accomplish that.

~~~
tsumnia
> Bubbles are what users want.

I disagree; however, I believe we have reached a point where we simply
disagree with each other on foundational matters and no amount of discussion
will sway the other. Please enjoy your content.

------
SrslyJosh
They think there's a difference between a "conservative" and a "conspiracist"?

~~~
bluGill
We just learned a lot about you. Closed-minded is obvious, and there is a good
chance you don't believe you are.

~~~
SrslyJosh
You don't know much about the conservative media ecosystem, do you? (Don't try
to pretend you know more than I do about it--I grew up immersed in it.)

