What I want to know about is more coherent explanations of abstract math and some scientific experiments which I never got to see in school, in addition to comedy. That I watch something else once in a while is not really an indication of my identity or my Jungian shadow self.

You were offered the recommendations, but you declined. It's still a matter of self-selection and self-exposure. How many recommendations would it take to turn you into a white supremacist? How many video viewings? If your answer is that no amount would, then the algorithms don't seem to be the real problem.

My mother is a PhD. I asked her whether she will accept a paper without sound academic bibliography. She said no. Then why would she believe in extremist videos with shady citations and outright lies? But she does. I think it is because of the recommendation engines which keep feeding similar videos. Just like Goebbels' maxim of repeating a lie often enough and loudly enough to make it the truth.

We can keep saying that our algorithms are fine. But if what we see today has never been seen in history, I think it is high time that we re-evaluate our current beliefs about the impact and the correctness of our work.

This is very common. I would even say the norm. No person is fully rational. Rather, people may think rationally about certain things — their "speciality", perhaps — but not about others. Everyone is irrational in some ways.

> But if what we see today has never been seen in history

Which part do you think is historically unprecedented? The technology of course is unprecedented, but I don't see anything about the beliefs of people today that's unprecedented.

If a large percentage of people who watch gun blowing up videos also are interested in the videos you mention than why wouldn't they show it (I assume if it were breaking guidelines it would be removed)

The homepage ones should show you subscriptions videos but also based on the last keywords/videos watched.

I don't see the value in using 2012-2019 videos watched when your recent ones speak more to what you currently are interested in.

IMO autoplay for anything but music is one of the worst decisions ever made on online streaming services.

Kind of reminds me how repeatedly clicking the first link on Wikipedia articles inevitably leads to the article about Philosophy, but diverging instead of converging.

This is an interesting random walk experiment :)

It's fairly easy to see how this can lead people who did not already hold those viewpoints down a rabbit hole where they end up far more radicalised than they would have otherwise been, especially since I've not once seen Youtube put any sort of "rebuttal" videos in amongst the "illuminati aliens are controlling your government" ones.

My (logged out) YouTube feed has mostly cooking shows, programming videos, stuff about crafts and watchmaking etc, because those are mostly what I like to watch.

I’m also interested in guns. The moment I watch a gun video, I immediately get shown Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and The Blaze instead of all the cooking videos etc.

And yet none of the gun videos I watch are remotely political. They are exclusively about sports and history, and don’t even talk about gun politics, let alone politics in general.

I never see (amateur) political talking heads recommended. It's all trash pop-history talking heads, semi-trash documentaries and low brow entertainment related to cars and guns (e.g. demo ranch and whistlin diesel).

I recently (like yesterday) watched a semi-political talking head discuss the economics of OnlyFans after a friend linked to that particular person's analysis so it'll be interesting to see if the algo tries to drag my content toward more talking heads.

E.g. if you live in a generally pro-gun area I think they be algorithm would probably be less likely to assume that it’s worth showing you political content.

You may simply be that % of the false positive/false negative that is a cost of doing business.

I mean - the alternative to this is having Google employ all the out of work journalists and editors and manually curate lists for people. I think the cost of losing a few people is vastly lower than hiring that many people, in each culture and country around the world.

I know recommendations are based on many factors that differ between us (such as location), but I can't reproduce that behavior. If I watch hickok45 or Paul Harrell in an incognito window, I get recommendations for more of their videos along with a few from Demolition Ranch, Forgotten Weapons, and other gun channels. I see no political videos in the recommendations.

I’m using AppleTV, but not logged in. It’s possible that it takes some time for that to happen.

Also, I watched a Jerry Miculek Video yesterday, and got no political stuff, so it’s also possible that the algorithm has been improved or they have specifically acted to break this association.

Sure, but to assume that you _probably_ hold conservative beliefs due to having an interest in guns is way more often the case than not. Same is true in an opposite way if you watched some video on abortion rights.

Only in the crudest statistical sense. For example the fastest growing demographic of gun owners is black women, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.

And that’s exactly what the complaint about these algorithms is.

I’m simply pointing out that the algorithms do in fact steer people towards polarizing content, that is not what they would have otherwise chosen.