Why is youtube suggesting aggressive actions against protestors?

Danterious@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 507 points –

I made sure to remove cookies and not sign in so I think these are the base suggestions made by youtube.

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The YouTube algorithm is biased towards content that encourages further engagement, anger causes that, and right wing propaganda is designed to make people angry

Yup, content consumption algorithms almost always seem to push ragebait, clickbait, and other low quality results.

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Because the algorithm caters to nazis.

Not that the algorithms caters to nazis, but because they would have flagged Republicans as hate speech. As a resultn algorithms designed to combat hate speech, racism, white supremacy, and neo-nazism were atered down.

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-white-supremacy-gop-politicians-report-2019-4

LOL if the algorithm can't tell republicans from nazis and they back down when republicans complain... the result is that it caters to nazis hiding among republicans because the goddamned GOP shelters its nazis

This is the reason why all corporate media has become the dumpster fire it is (not just social media). They use negative emotion like fear and anger to promote engagement. So all you get as a viewer is stuff that gets you fired up. The quality of journalism is so low now they're fabricating stuff to engage the viewer. Then there's no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

To be fair, the 80s were known for having commercials earlier in the day for the channel's newscasts that stoked fear. "5 items in your kitchen could kill everyone you've ever loved. Tune in to STFU News at 6 for more information."

"Then there’s no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar."

Literally Fox News Entertainment when brought to court over Tucker Carlsons bullshit...

"We're not news we're Entertainment™©®, no reasonable person would believe what Mr.Carlson is saying is true." So they don't need to have any integrity whatsoever...

Because these machine learning algorithms only put out what they learn so that they can target the right videos to people. In this case, I think people were searching Youtube for these kinds of videos, so Youtube's algorithm suggested them.

Nah they want you to be shocked and start watching. Called engagement, makes money by upsetting peoples emotional state so they become nervous, unhappy, angry etc.

That's not antithetical to what the other person said. It is both true that the algorithm does what it think people like and also that bad things get high engagement. The issue is that bad things aren't accounted for and filtered out appropriately

Because outrage and violence generate "engagement"

LORD ALGORYTHM HAS SPOKEN

I was looking for Captain Marvel movie content way back when it came out and accidentally clicked on one of those pitiful right-wing, woman-hating nerdbro videos and my suggestions suddenly became quite heavily peppered with similar horrible content. It feels the same thing doesn't happen with non-conservative content quite so much. I wonder if there's just so much right-wing and liberal content that the algorithm's percentage calculations don't know how to compensate for this sort of political nuance, or is it something more insidious?

I'm trans, watch OneTopicAtATime and similar pro-trans and pro-gay channels and still get recommended Matt Walsh somehow.

It's probably what people have searched for before. I mean why would anyone watch peaceful protest videos on youtube?

These are meant to rile you up so you hate-watch them so you stay on the site longer, but they have an unintended side-effect of subtly luring people against protesters and into the realm of 'SJW FEMINIST GETS OWNED!!!'.

"Subtly"

They usually don't know they're being radicalized, its obvious to outsiders who see them though.

Did you change your IP address as well?

At any rate, google shows things to people that other people are looking at, as that's how it's algorithm decides what is popular or not. So, the conclusion that can be drawn from this, is that most people that search for videos of protestors, are looking to see them get owned. If you consider internet demographics, this should not be that unusual, really.

most people that search for videos of protestors, are looking to see them get owned.

Not necessarily so. YouTube are after engagement. As the mantra goes; comment, like, share, and subscribe. Sometimes that means showing people what they want to see, sometimes it means getting them hooked on a short term dopamine loop, and sometimes it means making them fight

They're after views, that's always the end goal. More views=more revenue. It's the youtubers that are after engagement, because engagement is a good measure of something that will get a lot of views and thus gets pushed by the algorithm.

Google wants money. Views get them money. Engagement helps predict an offering that will get more views, and thus they should feed it to more people. They're right also, it is an accurate predictor. If we don't want them to do what makes them the most money, that is our responsibility to fix, not theirs.

I didn't change my IP address. I don't know how to do that for free (because I don't have money to pay for a vpn and I don't trust what free vpns do with my data).

If you ever find yourself in a pinch and are absolutely needing a VPN for any reason and are willing to spare a couple bucks, I highly recommend mullvad. They were highly approved of on /r/piracy, and they have all the features top-of-the-line VPNs do: doesn't keep logs, multiple devices per account, servers in dozens of other countries, yadda yadda.

But the reason I liked them most was that they didn't operate on a subscription service. You simply bought however much time you wanted, in increments of months at $5/month, and you used it. Your credit card or paypal was not on file, you simply buy time and ran through it. If you wanted more time, you bought more time. They even accepted cash in the mail, which sounds absurd to me. Whenever I need a VPN urgently, I just chuck them $5 and I've got 30 days time added to my account, and then I do whatever I need to do. Very convenient.

But you're right to never trust free VPNs. They gotta make money somehow, and you know what they say, if they're not selling a product to you, they're selling you as a product.

These people offer a free VPN but it's kind of a side project with the donations they get for other projects they run. I can't think of any other free VPN I would give any trust to.

https://riseup.net/

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It's because people are becoming increasingly violent as political tensions come to a head, and climate collapse drives it onward.

Don't forget that Google suggestions are IP based too. These may not be quite "base" suggestions

It's definitely heavily weighted towards right wing content. Even though it should be less popular. It's like how right wing states always complain about "liberal spending" but then their entire states are subsidized by blue states because their policies are trash. Right wing ideology can't stand on its own without 'training wheels' ie: funding from massively wealthy donors who want to manipulate people's reality.

Because when people start to protest against corporations controlling their lives, Google wants you to see these.

To be fair, protestors blocking a highway, or the busiest avenue, are annoying the most people so they protest n their place. They should block City Hall, or Congress, or the houses of congressmen. Make the life of those assholes difficult, not the lives of thousands of bystanders.

They already do: there are pretty much always protestors at the Capitol. Congresspersons often live in gated communities that can kick people out or not allow entry. How many of those protests are you aware of, compared to those protests that disrupted your daily life?

A protest that doesn't affect anyone is an ineffective protest. Protests are not billboards for a cause, they're an attempt to force people in charge to enact change. One of the ways of doing this is to make their problem is your problem by getting in your way.

Protests that affect bystanders are an attempt to embarrass people in charge by making it evident they're not doing what the protesters want from them.

I agreed with the Reddit protests, even if they affected people that just wanted to browse their communities, cause they were affecting the people in charge. The bystanders, while affected, were not the target.

Ad a counter example, fuck the protestors (supposed teachers but they're just thugs that probably never attended a classroom) that close the railroads/highways in Mexico because they want the government to give more money to their corrupt union (CNTE).

Protestors are not always in the right, and affecting innocent bystanders is an abusive, selfish way to put indirect pressure. I'd feel more sympathetic to people who try to twist a politician's arm instead of my own.

Yeah no I totally agree. I think it is a mismanagement of action both by the protesters and the bystanders. For protesters talking to bystanders they should make it more fun for bystanders to get involved.

Yes, there's a huge difference between "Honk if you support X" outside the White House, and "get angry about X because you're wasting hours in this bottleneck we caused".

Yeah the trucker shit had both it was so annoying... Not even locals. literally brought in on trucks to cause congestion, block traffic and honk.

Yeah it's odd, I support peaceful protests. Sitting in the road and delaying emergency services from saving a life is fucked though. If my kid needed that ambulance I'd run those idiots over too

They are not the base. You probably also need to use a canvas or other fingerprint randomizer.

Edit: why the donwvotes?

What is a fingerprint randomizer?

Edit: By the way I haven't downvoted you.