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A comment on YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud. Parent comment

Re:YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread electio... by gameswithgo on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @01:21PM (#25361803)
There are many examples out of there of people ending up in some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and often it starts with some youtube video, or post on facebook. Mothers who have lost sons, wives who have lost husbands. They have seen them turn into crazy people

(examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-f... )

If those videos are not as present on youtube to begin with, perhaps fewer people end up down these rabbit holes. Of course it won't do anything to convince people who are already falling down the hole.

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Re:YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread electio... by jakelazaroff on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @01:27PM (#25361930)
Not sure why this is downvoted. The YouTube radicalization pathway is fairly well documented, e.g. [1][2][3]. Even if we can't all agree on the specific mechanism of action, the phenomenon certainly exists.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211

[2] https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-au...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...

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Re:YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread electio... by dylan604 on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @01:30PM (#25361986)
Conspiracy peddlers and those that follow them have been around long before YouTube and social media. Some extraordinarily bizarre ideas have been published on Xeroxed/mimeographed 'zines sent out via snail mail. While social media definitely makes it easier, it's not the only way for information to disseminate.
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Re:YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread electio... by metamet on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @02:03PM (#25362788)
The difference is that mainstream platforming of those ideas exposes them to massive amounts of folks who stumble upon them, whereas you would have historically had to seek it out on purpose.
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