TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Youtube home page?

Re:TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Y... by guscost on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @12:10PM (#23988362)

I would be described as a "climate denier" by many people here, but my YouTube recommendations have zero overlap with the fictional recommendations. This is because I do not feel any need to prop up my opinions with endless wacky video propaganda.

Look, I'm sure there are plenty of people who get sucked into bubbles of YouTube nonsense, and sadly these recommendations may accurately represent the recommendations for typical users. But just deciding that someone is a "liberal" or a "conspiracy theorist" does not in fact mean that you can assume anything about what they are seeing on YouTube, which is what the title seems to claim. Please keep that in mind.

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Re:TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Y... by Trowter on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @05:03PM (#23991569)

well, obviously Youtube isn't going to read your mind and figure out you're a climate denier. It's going to recommend your videos based on previous viewing, this is a preview of what people who view these types of videos will see.

I would have thought anyone on this site could discern that but you're self-proclaimed climate denier so I guess you did your best :)

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Re:TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Y... by sbuttgereit on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @05:08PM (#23991609)

I actually find the exercise on this TheirTube thing to be utterly useless. It has a real world validity on par with lie detectors and homeopathy.

A person, or group of people, set up this site and built YouTube profiles on what they think people in these categories are like. Then they use those profiles to show "what these people see". The problem is few actual, real individuals match these caricatures. The people that built this site aren't "them", except within a limited one of the presented profiles or two. My only hope is that nobody tries to build an argument around the outcomes of this exercise.

I think if anything is to be learned, it's the biases and preconceptions of the people that built the site moreso than anything about how YouTube builds recommendations... re-enforcing or otherwise (and I'm no fan of YouTube recommendations, either).

Esse quam videri

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Re:TheirTube – How do the recommended videos look on their Y... by mikael-gramont on Sunday August 02, 2020 @10:34AM (#24028942)

That's not what they did though.

"Each of these TheirTube personas is informed by interviews with real YouTube users who experienced similar recommendation bubbles"

"These accounts subscribe to the channels that the interviewees followed, and watches videos from these channels to reproduce a similar viewing history and a recommendation bubble"

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