YouTube should be renamed "Game of Trolls"

[Jaskalas]

Actually, no. It is not. It will throw in conspiracy videos for no particular reason. This has been shown and is something YouTube is supposedly addressing now.

Youtube will close the barn door after the animals escaped.
I wonder how we'll ever put people's brains back into their heads.

 

[Zorba]

I’ve honestly never had this happen

I assume because so many conspiracies are science or history "related" so it probably keys in more with my normal suggestions that someone that mostly watches music.

I also haven't noticed it as much lately, but I've also been better about telling it to stop suggestion them the first time I notice it.

 

[Starbuck1975]

I assume because so many conspiracies are science or history "related" so it probably keys in more with my normal suggestions that someone that mostly watches music.

I also haven't noticed it as much lately, but I've also been better about telling it to stop suggestion them the first time I notice it.

I also watch a fair amount of military history, and also follow a few game streamers, so I am honestly surprised my feed is fairly free of nonsense.

 

[Lanyap]

I want to hear Craig and Steven's side of the story. #Twosides. Why were the couples in the article composed of liberal women and conservative men? The women made it sound the men were weak. I guess they were incels?

The men's side:
Man, life was great when we first got together. Great sex anywhere/anytime. We got along great. Then she turned in to a liberal biotch. Constantly talking progressive, liberal bullsh!t. I would jump on youtube trying to find stuff just to piss her off. Then, no more bloweys. I said, fvck it, and left her.

 

[pmv]

While I agree that people need to be open to this sort of suggestion to begin with there are indications that YouTube is a primary vehicle for injecting those nonsense opinions. For example there’s this:

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-flat-earth-conspiracy-youtube-20190218-story.html



Surely not definitive but it does suggest that people take the dumb videos they see on YouTube more seriously than they should. I mean we have had right wing idiots on here repeatedly try to post YouTube videos as some sort of proof.

Though that's part of what gives me doubts. I cannot believe youtube videos, or Facebook feeds, could produce someone like certain posters not-a-million-threads from here. That level of disordered thinking and long-nurtured rage has to come from something deeper.

Why is social-media and other modern communication particularly prone to spread these particular ideas? Surely it explains too much, it could be spreading any number of beliefs , but why are these ones in particular becoming a problem?

I suppose one could say it's something to do with the intrinsic nature of the technology and _how_ the ideas and messages are encountered and consumed, maybe the particularly restricted form of connections it creates. It connects people otherwise isolated, and maybe in its wider social and economic effects actually creates that isolation? But then it seems to me one is back to a materialist argument again - that it's about the real material nature of modern life, including all the other ways that technology has affected people's day-to-day lives.

I suppose I just find it incredibly hard to imagine finding 'truth' in this stuff, whether it's 'red pill' ideology or ISIS (they seem quite similar to me), unless one already exists in a very particular kind of social milieu.

(Also my next thought is to wonder what am _I_ being fooled by, then, what's the ideological nonsense-drug that might fit my predispositions? Wondering about that too much is the way madness lies, I suppose)

 

[Vic]

A girl and guy were together. The guy got more hardened political views as he did more of his own research, his liberal girlfriend didn't agree with him. They broke up. The right is bad, evil.

Think I got it covered?

Ah, "research," the favorite word of anti-vaxxers and the politically brainwashed.

 

[shortylickens]

I just like the music videos.

 

[Vic]

YouTube is a reflection of what you search for. My landing page is typically a mix of guitar covers, music videos from the 80s/90s, clips of Star Wars lightsaber duels/space battles and Monty Python skits.

Youtube has a remarkably simple marketing algorithm. Whatever you watch, youtube will suggest you watch more of it. So if the viewer doesn't proactively search for and watch different and/or new things, they'll end up in bubble, watching the same things over and over again.

 

[pmv]

I largely stopped using YouTube when I realised they track you not by your account or even cookies, but by simply noting your IP address. That seemed downright creepy to me. Probably they aren't going to do anything much with that data, but it was just annoying.

(I gather they _probably_ do let you opt out now, but, screw it, I don't have the attention span to watch videos)

 

[Victorian Gray]

I don't post there, did you misread?

You're also a liar. <shrug>

 

[Aikouka]

One problem that I think permeates YouTube is the injection of politics into seemingly benign content. For example, I saw a video in my suggestions that was something along the lines of "The SJWs Are Ruining FFXIV". My first thought was "Wait... what's happening in the game?"; however, I had a bit of trepidation as I just am not interested in people injecting that political bias into their reporting. In addition, I just can't stand constant use of terms like "SJW" or "snowflakes". These terms have become so conflated and are typically used to demean others without considering any sort of point -- it's a sly ad hominem. It has come to the point where tossing out these terms usually means you just have nothing worthwhile to say.

So, considering that situation, I do think it's possible to use the combination of political slant in an unrelated (i.e. not inherently political) video to adjust someone's opinion on a political topic. Will it affect everyone? I don't think so.

 

[sandorski]

This criticism is somewhat misplaced. Youtube gives a voice to anyone who wants one, many of those people are kooks and rabble rousers. Technology and the widespread use of it has caused this, Youtube is just the platform that has most successfully utilized the technologies to blend the concept of a Forum with Video. We have the same shit here, just in a different format.

I too get recommendations for things I'm not interested in viewing, but these undesirable recommendations are not made in a vacuum. Almost all of them were made after I had watched the opposite side being discussed on the channels I have subbed to. The undesirable recommendations range from Flat Earth, Political nuttery, Religious Apologetics, and other Science(denialism) Conspiracies.

The biggest difference between Youtube and Real Life is really in the access it brings. Before Youtube/Internet one could live their whole life without talking to a Flat Earther(for eg), yet they would exist. A side effect to this exposure is that some people will be convinced, for various reasons, that stupid ideas they never would have heard before are actually legitimate. This is disruptive and can be very dangerous, such as Anti-Vacc conspiracy, but so were mass produced Books, Radio, and TV. We are still relatively at the beginning of the Internet Revolution and it will take time for the full effect of that change and how to reasonably respond to that change to become normalized.

So, don't become a Luddite and start carrying your pitchforks to the HQ of Google/Youtube because Nutters exist.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I don't post there, did you misread?

fake news