
YouTube, the Great Radicalizer - pulisse
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html
======
kevinflo
It's not youtube. It's not facebook. It's not twitter. You can write this
article about any company these days.

It's a deeper fundamental devil's cocktail of monetized attention + modern
(intensely and immediately metrics driven) product development + our buggy
brains. Any company who wants to make money from the attention of human beings
will find the same extraordinarily rapid pull to extremism. That's what we
click. Our brains _love_ these extreme things. The companies are just molding
themselves to our brains in real time.

So much of public discourse these last few years has been pulled towards these
most base human bugs. Fear of the "other", violence, tragedy, banal comedy,
sexual deviancy, cute shiny this or that, inspirational platitudes. Even
worse, the content production itself is now being hooked up directly to the
metrics creating a machine learning feedback loop spinning out of control.

Any company who wants to fight against this needs to sign up for public,
immediate, and painful metrics hits. We saw this happen so directly with
facebook last quarter. These problems are so fundamental that if one company
tries to fight against it and turn back the dials, another won't and the
company attempting integrity will flat out start to lose. Our best shot is to
create completely different incentive structures. In the current overarching
architecture of media and technology, this hell is the clear winner.

~~~
m_ke
I agree with you but if anything is going to be done about it we need to keep
youtube, facebook, twitter, reddit, etc accountable.

~~~
UrukParthian
Accountable for what? We have a disastrous dietary culture in this country, a
never ending bomb of acute illnesses that waste trillions to merely mitigate
symptoms that could have been avoided with better information.

An obese nation literally has the quality of cognition tuned down. Persistent
inflammation, insulin resistance messing with the brain, eventual diabetes...

Instead of making people into strong kingdoms, we give more advanced tools to
kingdoms of the body and soul blighted by people who think ideals matter more
than diet and habit.

------
patrickaljord
Or maybe people are naturally more attracted to the extremes (left and right)
when given the choice. Outlets such as the NYT or their right wing counter
parts have historically filtered out extreme views. What if youtube was just
giving people what they want and the NYT was the de-Radicalizer? For better or
for worse. Also note that today's mainstream pro-democracy/social democracy
views used to be regarded as radical a couple of centuries ago or just today a
few thousands miles away.

Radical ideologues by virtue of not holding any power are devoid of corruption
compared to mainstream politicians and for this reason always attract the
crowd when they (rightfully) denounce the corruption of the current power that
be. Not that they would be just as corrupt in their place.

~~~
azakai
> Or maybe people are naturally more attracted to the extremes [..] What if
> youtube was just giving people what they want

That's part of it, but I think the point is more subtle. YouTube shows the
content that will keep people on YouTube (to maximize advertising), but that
doesn't mean it's what they most want.

Given good or bad news, we may prefer the good but spend more time on the bad,
even if the bad news is something that's irrational to worry about.

The way to get people to spend more time on YouTube may be to make them worry
more, care more, and overall be more involved in the topic by showing more
extreme aspects of it. That may be more exploiting human psychology (perhaps
unintentionally) than giving people what they want, or maybe it's giving our
darker sides what they want.

~~~
noobermin
>[not] giving people what they want

>giving our darker sides what they want.

This almost sounds like people have almost no agency or say in it.

~~~
krapp
These sites are designed to remove as much agency as possible, so that users
are driven to behave in predictable, repeatable and easily monetizable
patterns.

The question is, how much agency can they actually remove? If someone uploads
"radical" material and it's popular with other "radicals," then is exploiting
that any worse than doing so for mainstream content?

~~~
noobermin
I don't agree with the way you phrase it.

No freaking suggested video is going to rob any individual of their agency any
more than yet another hottake NYT Op-ed is going to rob mine. Their algorithms
however do move the _average_ , increasing monetization. The average is not
the same as the individual.

I don't see that as removing agency, even if it is influencing individuals a
little. There are dark patterns like those employed by shady mobile game apps
that hook in players into addiction. The recommended vids on youtube don't
reach that level in my opinion and it's a category error to lump them
together.

------
Teostra
Some examples I've noticed personally:

* Clips of Bill Burr on Conan O'Brien > Men's Rights / anti-feminism videos

* Animal videos > Creepy channel where someone makes various mousetraps and sees how many kills they get a night

* Videogame longform critiques > Pro-Gamergate / Men's rights

* Movie analysis video essays > Video essays on how SJW's are ruining Star Wars / Marvel

* General psychology / self-help > Clip from a ho-hum Jordan Peterson psychology lecture > "Oh, you watched one thing featuring Jordan Peterson, you must agree with his more extreme views. Have some videos about that."

~~~
legostormtroopr
Its quite sad that people consider videos about "Men's rights" a radical view.

~~~
thristian
"Men's rights" is often a code-word for "radical misogyny".

~~~
legostormtroopr
This sentiment is exactly why communities focusing men's rights end up
revolving around "radical misogyny".

You start discussing something like paternal rights or men's mental health.
Because it is about "men's rights", people denigrate it as about "misogyny".
Those who actually care about equality, distance themselves from the group,
misogynists move in, and the group is either destroyed or becomes a hive or
"radical misogyny". A self-fulfilling prophecy.

------
olivermarks
A recent Corbett Report piece on YouTube and alternatives such as Bitchute and
Dtube, given the recent purge and '3 strikes' 'community policy' constraints
on commentaries unpopular with 'moderators'....
[https://www.corbettreport.com/youtube-is-now-themtube-
time-t...](https://www.corbettreport.com/youtube-is-now-themtube-time-to-flee-
the-failed-platform/)

------
ineedasername
I think, in the technical sense, radicalizer is less apt than "signal
amplifier". It seems youtube is good at identifying a single, perhaps too-
specific theme and focusing on it. So "jogging" leads ultimately to extreme
marathons, instead of broader based "fit and healthy" content. So maybe it
needs to optimize for amplifying a wider band, but to a lesser degree.

~~~
duskwuff
This is a problem that's inherent to many recommendation systems. Viewing
history feeds into recommendations, and recommendations drive viewing habits
-- so there's a feedback loop. Depending on how the recommendation engine is
tuned, this can result either in recommendations that drift (e.g, leading
users to "the weird side of Youtube"), or ones that hyperfocus on one topic
(as described in this article).

------
LeoPanthera
I've been watching "hbomberguy", who is doing a good (and entertaining) job of
dismantling the claims of the YouTube right-wing.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/hbomberguy/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/hbomberguy/videos)

~~~
chhs
Another great channel in the same area is "Shaun", he does a great job of
breaking down and debunking the claims of a lot of popular right-wing
channels.
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6o36XL0CpYb6U5dNBiXHQ/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6o36XL0CpYb6U5dNBiXHQ/videos)

~~~
citruscomputing
While we're recommending leftist youtubers, I think ContraPoints[0] is
wonderful, educational, and entertaining. She has made me reconsider a lot of
things.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/contrapoints](https://www.youtube.com/user/contrapoints)

------
ZenoArrow
There's a simple solution. If YouTube recommends a video you're not interested
in, click on the three dots to the right of the video and select 'Not
Interested'. It then gets removed from your recommendations. Occasionally I've
had to do it more than once for it to stop recommending similar videos, but
otherwise I can confirm that the YouTube algorithms quickly get the message.

~~~
ewok
I like the article,l and the first thing I thought was the same as you; To
manually help the recommendations algo by assigning 'not interested' tags BUT
leaving this as standard routine for billions of users is not a effective
option and has indeed measureable affects on society while misusing human
behavior to collect money from advertisers. As it boils down again in the root
of the money system behavior, to manipulate and collect money. It is not
intended to do so.

I like the article to just acknowledge the fact as status quo. Understanding
the system means to deliberate from it in the first place before asking how
anything can achieve a better purpose for society in general.

On a deeper level I guess it's even more about the understanding how our
subconscious mind is modeled in society and how we unconscious select
information in our daily activities. I mean the whole mass and every
individual itself.

~~~
ZenoArrow
I'd suggest the main challenge is in breaking out of echo chambers. It's
healthy to engage with people you (respectfully) disagree with. Not doing so
can easily lead to misinformation being spread amongst like-minded people.

------
BadassFractal
Seems to me that it's just easier than ever to fall into an extreme echo
chamber, regardless of what side that is on. Pick whatever flavor you want,
you will find a community for it online with all sorts of supporting material.
It's a natural consequence of everything being open and available for
consumption, it's pretty hard to have just the good without the bad.

------
wpietri
For those interested in the history and process of radicalization, I strongly
recommend David Neiwart's book "Alt America". [1] He's a journalist who spent
decades covering the "Patriot" fringe in the US, which often had elements of
white supremacy, conspiracy thinking, anti-government paranoia, and other
nuttery. It gives him unique depth on how the Internet, for all its benefits,
also made it much easier for political extremists to connect and organize.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786634236](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786634236)

------
WisNorCan
If you have kids at home, I strongly recommend blocking YouTube. We did this
about a year ago after our son shared that his friend had found lots of
disturbing videos.

------
akjetma
If the algorithm is directing people to more 'extreme' content for a given
topic, does that imply it has some latent notion of what is less extreme? In
order to draw a vector from one point away from the center, it'd need to have
some concept of where the origin is.

------
none_to_remain
Western society already went through this. Precursors of copyright law were
spurred by the invention of the printing press. People who might use the press
to spread unapproved politics or theology were to be denied access to the new
technology.

The authoritarians lost.

------
darepublic
The radicalization of the mainstream media is far more scary to me than some
random people making pepe videos (which, although I would consider myself
conservative, never get recommended to me by youtube). White men = evil. Read
all about it! It's okay to say it now -- just accept it. White people are
fucking scum of the earth. It's time that we finally DID something about it:
source: NYT, Washington Post, Democracy Now, western universities. I guess its
time for western civilization to collapse already.

------
sqdbps
Conspiracy theories and disagreeable speech are still speech and are still
protected, I understand not wanting to run ads against that content but
advocating to memory-hole it altogether is the morally wrong argument.

People will choose what to ultimately watch and spent their time on, this
insistence on shielding and infantilizing the general public is patronising,
not to mention that there are no studies that would indicate any of the
content is changing anyone's opinion, the few scientific studies on this "fake
news" scare would suggest that mainstream outlets were and are the shapers of
public opinion e.g.
[https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud](https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud)

The attacks on youtube are especially alarming with the scope of the
censorship demands ever increasing with every new feature being blamed, first
it was about running ads on obscure videos and the channels of "controversial"
personalities and now they demand that the viewer not be suggested content
that the author thinks is objectionable as though they are forces to watch it
"A Clockwork Orange" style. I'm old enough to remember when this author and
her peers were defending web firms against censorship attempts by governments
around the world.

------
UrukParthian
And the old media was a propaganda machine. And a total waste of cognitive
frames. How I wish I could trade all the stupid ads I saw for a memory of a
few seconds with my wife.

If people are being radicalized, it signals that maybe the system of
incentives have been gamed. We live in the shadow of another housing bubble.
We live in the shadow of a pension bubble. We live in the shadow of possible
emergent dystopias, whether they be left-aligned or right-aligned. And we used
to live in the shadow of a massive propaganda machine. This type of extremism
is borne of the shock of hearing good actionable information over bad
information forged with bad faith.

Imagine growing up and you find adults, actual people with actual
responsibilities, act like children when it comes to politics. High school
teachers making fun of George W Bush as if he was a total idiot. That was very
bad information. He might have squandered blood and treasure on Iraq but he
managed his image well, even coming off as "a simple down to the earth man"
before his supporters. Down to his accent he adopted despite growing up in old
WASP holdouts. Nope,instead grown adults preferred to amuse themselves with an
image of a total idiot president. Which was both disarming and catastrophic to
understanding how power works in this country.

Surely there is a "center" in this country but the "center" gave us
unmanageable time bombs of massive liabilities bequeathed, "awarded" one might
say, as burdens for future generations.

As far as Youtube goes, it's not proper to blame the failings of ordinary
people. If anything, it's our useless public education apparatus that let bad
information, bad faith, and bad habits become a triumvirate incarnated. So
much cognition wasted so a class of bureaucrats, school administrators and
clerical staff, could collect pensions that future generations will be paying
very dearly for.

That's my two cents rant.

~~~
m_ke
> As far as Youtube goes, it's not proper to blame the failings of ordinary
> people.

They're making money by abusing our weaknesses. That's what happens when you
optimize for attention and ad impressions.

~~~
UrukParthian
You act as if we were helpless. You're just seeing the ugly side of "average"
people. How quick they are to form blobs around novel information. How lacking
in critical thought most people are. It sounds almost absurdly cynical but my
experience has made me a cynical person about most other people and their
ability to discriminate further than the two categorical blobs of "right" and
"left".

Not to mention that focusing on YouTube is a minor thing. Especially when the
quality of cognition can be radically changed with diet and habit. Imagine all
the people drinking milkshakes from Starbucks, enjoying that sugar and
caffeine rush. Remember, it's not a coffee company (profit wise), it's a
milkshake company that blends in coffee.

Look at sugar content of their items.

~~~
UrukParthian
And to add, they're even worse than milkshakes. At least there's fat content
which slows insulin resistance.

