Why is youtube suggesting aggressive actions against protestors?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2044512
I made sure to remove cookies and not sign in so I think these are the base suggestions made by youtube.
Google is currently defending itself in the US Supreme Court over a lawsuit that alleges they assisted the terrorist group ISIS in recruiting members after it was found the YouTube algorithm promoted ISIS recruiting videos to young men who later committed a terrorist attack.
So to answer your question using Google's argument: they have so many videos that an advanced search feature is required to make the site usable. Their search feature only suggests things that are popular. It's not their fault ISIS recruitment (or other violent content) videos are popular.
The counter argument is: Google is curating content by displaying things people didn't search out themselves. This is direct promotion by Google itself and therefor it should be treated as if they are the publisher of that content. Anyone publishing violent content should be held liable for it.
Promoting terrorism increases engagement
Yeah, except it gets more complicated than that. Google wouldn't necessarily be promoting it either. As their algorithm looks for popular searches. Terrorism seems to be an overly used word for comparing protests to terrorism.
As an example, I live in a pretty red state. I would consider my self democrat/liberal in this state. When the George Floyd protests were happening a lot of people in my state were referring to the non-protest raids as terrorism. Despite the fact they will all defend the very clear terrorism on the capital as an attempt to save the U.S.
Point being you take the word protest and terrorism. You set it side by side as an exaggeration for literally anything half the the country disagrees with and boom you get popular terrorists searches.
I also don't think Google isn't at fault since their algorithm is designed to continue feeding that kind of content and the deeper you go the more ingrained into content you get and the more insane it gets.
So wait, is Google only suggesting things that are popular, or are they displaying things people didn't search out themselves? How do they prove that in court, do they need to show their source code or something?
I'm not a lawyer and haven't read through the court documents, but from legal commentators it seems that Google provides the general steps for how their algorithms work in plain language for the judges to consider. Even then, the Supreme Court itself has stated they have no clue how technology works so this is difficult for them to rule on
Capitalism
Yeah, what about it?
YouTube makes money by showing ads on videos people watch. If they show people the videos they want to watch, they get to show more ads before someone stops watching YouTube for the day. This incentives YouTube to surface the videos that people will watch for the longest time with no regard for anything but their advertisers' willingness to have their ads played on said videos.
Also it's expensive to moderate a platform so big that one in three humans uses it.
https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/product-features/recommendations/
tl;dw: It's what other people are searching for.
oh god that's terrifying
It's because people usually search for that... one of the many reasons why I lost hope in the human race... people getting their kinks on other people getting beaten up or killed... I mean, it just goes to show you how worse we are even than animals.
I mean I don't think thats the full story. You should try looking at this interactive website.
Yeah, this thing works if everyone around you is not an asshole. It doesn't if everyone is. And even if the copycat or copykitten win in the end, the number of retries is just too tiring, so you just give up and decided to not trust anyone, thus becoming the cheater, same as everyone else.
If it's any consolation, it's only conservatives who delight in the misery of the oppressed. It's not the normal people among us. Unfortunately, there are a lot of conservatives on the planet at the moment. It will take a lot of work and some open, honest discussions about the dangers of conservatism to cure it.
Yeah, I know all that, but I've just given up at this point (look my comment above as to why). I'm just too old for this back and forth bullshit till the end of time. And I don't think things are gonna change any time soon. Unless a global catastrophy plages mankind, nothing is gonna change... like an asteroid impact or something like that. People show their greatest virtues and unite only when faced with grave danger... it's just how humans are, they don't do shit about anything unless all of their friends, relatives, family are in immediate danger.
And even if we avoid this grave danger, things will soon get back to same old, same old. A large chunk of humanity (like over 95%) needs to be wiped out in order for people to take things seriously and shift their mindsets in an entirely different direction... and even then, there is no guarantee that that will last.
I guess it's just often used terms in search?
Or some kind of text prediction (e.g. simple Markov chains or something more advanced) that just "thinks" that this fits?
Engagement. Hate promotes engagement and therefore is very profitable
Because that's what drives the lowest common denominator to view ads.
Have we forgotten about the LA riots?
I would not stop for protestors either.
I haven't. People were justified in their anger, and let that anger out in the way they could. That's why you shouldn't give people a reason to be justifiably angry and instead meet the needs of the people without abusing them. The acquittal of those cops told people that the law didn't apply to law enforcement. If the law doesn't apply equally, why should it be viewed as anything other than tyranny?
Ah, because every protest results in mobs attacking people and breaking things! Nice generalization there.
Presumably because that's what lots of people are searching for.
Otoh, Google giving insane suggestions is sort of a meme by itself so who knows what they use?
Algorithm's designed to promote engagement. Getting angry groups screaming and trying to murder people counts as engagement.
As long as the screaming and arguing happens on their site and drives ad revenue, they don't care about the murdering part.
Good point!
I've written before that I think a lot of these sites intentionally do the Jerry Springer thing.
I wish people weren't angry at the protest but instead at the more oppressive forces of society. Also sorta unrelated but what does Otoh mean?
Otoh= on the other hand
Everyone will have their personal perspective on certain protests based on a number of factors.
A lot of people wanted the BLM riots shut down with lethal force because of the senseless violence and destruction in some cities. Otoh, some people thought they didn't go far enough. Someone whose city was destroyed would have a different perspective than someone whose city was just fine. People might have different views based on their view of the black community and their relationship with the rest of American society.
A lot of people thought the trucker convoy in Canada was a just fight against oppression, but many people thought they were just a bunch of antivaxx confederate Nazis and thought the use of any level of violence was justified because they were disrupting people's lives and they were secretly trying to clone Hitler. There was a broad spectrum of views and they only represented a piece of that spectrum.
Real politics is usually more complicated than just good vs. evil, it's really hard having one set of rules that apply equally and equitably to diverse people.