Re:YouTube Knows How to Stop Serving Toxic Videos
by zeroname on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:48PM
(#18676431)
Recommendations are not based on political alignment, they're based on how interests cluster. If watching a video on Austrian economics is correlated with watching "Louder With Crowder", that's what they'll recommend to you. There's no intent behind it.
Re:YouTube Knows How to Stop Serving Toxic Videos
by w323898 on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:39PM
(#18676376)
>I can't help but feel it's a bit of a fishing expedition to determine political alignment.
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'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.