I don't think this is how YouTube's recommendation algorithm has worked in a long time. I won't argue that the current recommendation algorithm is somehow nefarious in nature, but I'm willing to bet there are factors that are weighed a lot heavier than the fact "I watched A so I should watch B". Your recommendations hardly change based on what video you are watching at the current moment.
My personal theory is that YouTube overemphasizes watch time to a point where any long video gets suggested as long as it has a high completion time. You could be "batshit liberal" and still be stuck in the "alt-right recommendation loop" simply because YouTube thinks you will finish those videos regardless of your political orientation.
So the key to crowd-killing the Alt-Reich on YouTube then, is to have large numbers of people find and open up their videos, let them play for a couple of minutes, and then dislike, and leave the page?
I'm conservative(ish) in a fiscal sense, but don't read conservative news (because it sucks), don't search for conservative topics (nor really any political topics), and am not interested in any alt-right or political conflict type videos. Yet a smattering of this kind of thing often winds up in sidebar suggestions.
I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment. Probably paranoid though and it's more like conflict gets eyeballs to serve ads to. Which is a statement on human nature more than Google. Who knows, but it is annoying.
What's frustrating is that I like to get exposed to a variety of viewpoints, but YouTube very aggressively (as far as I can tell) puts users into left/right boxes, as opposed to just serving content that is historically or politically themed.
I'd be very surprised if it turned out YouTube was NOT intentionally pushing people to anger-addictive extremist content, especially right-wing content, because it's a product that encourages the viewing habits their metrics prioritize.
I've definitely seen this pattern from people. It's rarely overt, but I do see demands that others "punch down" or that "toxic" things be treated a certain way. This is always coupled with an implicit assumption that there's some clearly understood definition of what those mean that just happens to be exactly what the person using those idioms would offer.
Like you, I think this pattern suggests people trying to grab for the privilege of writing definitions.
And, yeah, it's tough to specifically define what's "toxic" and/or "offensive." But YouTube's algorithms are unforgivably dumb about it.
It is censorship. They do it of their own volition, without the government forcing their hand, and it's well within their right to do it. But it is, by definition, censorship.
What it isn't - however - is a violation of a very specific legal rule regarding free speech that often has the misfortune of being conflated with the entirety of free speech as a principle.
>And, yeah, it's tough to specifically define what's "toxic" and/or "offensive."
Yup, and it's doubly hard because the people that want the censorship don't want to admit there are no objective standards and it's all a question of preference.
The govt controls many aspects to out lives.. The police can come to my house and take away my children if I tell them being gay or transgender are mental health issues. YouTube can only kick me off for stating such.
The govt also can censor based on which grants out gives funding for. Another reason academia is broken.
They are some real reasons to fear censorship.
This is not about setting the line about what is "offensive." this about taking responsibility for providing a huge platform for dangerous ideas to spread.
No Im not advocating for thought police but I really do think most would agree that platforms have to start taking responsibility for promoting QAnon style conspiracies and white-supremacist ideas.
How about hmmdaily and the people who are against "toxic" video just put out interesting videos? Why not compete instead of trying to censor everything?
Also, I've never heard of hmmdaily. If anyone knows what it is and what their agenda is, I'd love to learn more about it.
Ding ding ding. It's funny how overt manipulation is well supported.
There are not two sides to every issue, especially when it comes to espousing conspiracy theories, and fake news.
Pretending its about "why dont we just compete in the marketplace of ideas" is naive at best.
It is not making a judgement on video A or B, just that it has noticed the relation. Of course, we now all understand that the most engaging type of content on the internet is the most offensive, negative, and aggressive content. This is no different than much of what is shown on TV, where vast quantities of it are pure garbage, including much of what is shown on the "serious" news channels.
Too frequently, the people writing about this and the politicians talking about it really just want to be the ones to set the line on what is "toxic" and "offensive" and have a very strong desire to influence what Google and these other companies should censor. There's also a very strong contingent of the old guard media that wishes to be restored as gatekeeper and view this as their opportunity.