Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/29/youtubes-algorithm-overwhelm.html
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Well I guess if reality has a liberal bias, social media is quite the opposite.
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It seems to not be fond of either…
They’re trying to break us out of our echo chambers of reality, man, so we can have an “honest” and “invigorating” debate about ideas.
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Was it the algorithm, or did they pay for the recommendation?
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So when people can hack your algorithm with a cheat code, it ceases being useful.
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I appear to have stopped getting Taylor Swift’s new video recommended to me… after watching Rammstein’s new video - also recommended. I often wonder about what algorithm I have been afflicted with when I get persistent and unlikely recommendations.
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What do people have against baseless disproven conspiracy theories designed to lead people directly away from any kind of objective truth or grounded historical perspective?
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The Rammstein video was a little, avant garde?
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It seems to be censored now.
I’d like to understand the metric a little more. I mean, whatever it is the RT video is a very noticeable outlier, but a count of channels recommending it is a confusing thing to measure to me. Which channels recommended it? Is this a case where a lot of very small conspiracy-theorist channels made their own Mueller videos and RT got the most recommendations because it was a favourite of people who, combined, have less influence than one recommendation for a more-watched video?
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The problem is that these algorithms are based on machine learning, and are therefore completely inscrutable. Nobody can tell you why they made this decision, because there’s no actual reasoning behind it, just some optimization math; best anyone can do is say what they told the algorithms to see as positive or negative.
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Russia Today? You mean the Russian President of the United States, Mob Boss Donny Two Berderers criminal organization?
Asking for a friend.
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thx for the recommendation
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The fix is in at YouTube
I see they feature some test equipment in the video although I didn’t audibly hear where it was used.
Recently I have been enjoying Hainbach’s working with test equipment.
The videos below follows the format of a walk through of the hardware. Then some noise making. Then at the end actually using the device in a composition. The interesting challenge with test equipment is that noise is easy but musicality takes some effort. Although Hainbach makes it look easy.
Hainbach if you find this comment let’s hang out!
I could listen to you talk all day. Beverages on me.
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Once again I’m impressed by how much we are left to fill in the blanks. All referrals and no referents (That’s what happens when…)
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RT is pretty good at presenting whatever message the Putin regime wants to send to the West with a gloss of professionalism and faux objectivity – in this case “eez nah-theeng to see here”.
My guess is that a lot of conspiracy-theorist channels, along with alt-right ones, those controlled by Russian troll farms, and some useful idiots all recommended it/liked it for that reason, and the algorithm interpreted this as popularity in certain right-leaning political affinity groups – those who are antagonistic to liberal democracy. It’s only a guess because we don’t know for sure if the algorithm suggests videos on this basis.
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These “services” are not serving out interests. They have made the internet garbage. They have failed to deliver on their promise. If we want the internet we want these services must be replace. Distribute everything.
There’s something funny going on Google News on my phone the last week. First, it decided that I wanted to read everything that Tucker Carlson said. (Not stories about him, by him.) Blocked the topic of Tucker Carlson.
Then it’s been salting my newsfeed with the most obscure far-right sites. Ones that aren’t news sites by any description. Ones that I happen to know who they are because I track that shit. (But haven’t searched on them in months.)
Hopefully it’s just a strange fixation the algorithm is having on my particular feed. (Last year it decided I wanted to read hockey stories. I blocked Hockey, the NHL down to teams and individual players and it was still coming…)
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