YouTube Vows to Recommend Fewer 'Conspiracy Theory' Videos

[CAT5 9075]

Thoughts?

Quote

Site’s move comes amid continuing pressure over its role as a platform for misinformation and extremism.
 

YouTube will recommend fewer videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways”, the company announced on Friday, in a shift for a platform that has faced criticism for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremism.
 

The change concerns YouTube’s recommendations feature, which automatically creates a playlist of videos for users to watch next. The recommendations are the result of complex and opaque algorithms designed to capture a user’s interest, but they have become a locus of criticism when YouTube directs people to potentially harmful and false content that they would not have otherwise sought out.
 

The company did not provide a clear definition of what it considers to be harmful misinformation, but said that some examples were “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the Earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/25/youtube-conspiracy-theory-videos-recommendations
https://www.thedailybeast.com/youtube-tweaks-algorithm-to-fight-911-truthers-flat-earthers-miracle-cures
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/25/youtube-is-changing-its-algorithms-stop-recommending-conspiracies
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197301/youtube-algorithm-conspiracy-theories-misinformation

[nekkichi 6043]

SHAME where else am I gonna be getting the lizard people Rothschild teas now????? from BOOKS???????

 

(is there a solid conspiracy theory behind this decision already?)

Edited January 30, 2019 by nekkichi

[Arkady 396]

Damn 1llum1n4t1 L1zard p€0pl€ cl0n€$ h1d1ng th€ r€4l 7ru7h!!

 

(I'm VERY in favor, they should have thought about it like 10 years ago. Sometimes I'm still receiving the random 9/11 cospiracy video reccomendation months after watching one documentary about the day, plus all the customary random cospiracy shit popping up every so often. I don't dare to imagine how reccomendation feeds of people watching one or two by curiosity ends up.)

Edited January 30, 2019 by Arkady

[reminiscing2004 617]

If the aim is to prevent people from buying into conspiracies, they're only hurting their cause by legitimizing that the powers that be are trying to censor "the truth". The conspirators will just take this as evidence of corporate level collusion.

 

If a conspiracy is really nonsense, you don't need to suppress it, because most people will already think its nonsense (as demonstrated by the two posts above me).

[Himeaimichu 1535]

Who wants to bet they're not actually gonna do anything?

4 hours ago, Arkady said:

Sometimes I'm still receiving the random 9/11 cospiracy video reccomendation months after watching one documentary about the day, plus all the customary random cospiracy shit popping up every so often, I don't dare to imagine how reccomendation feeds of people watching one or two by curiosity ends up.)

I often get like far-right conspiracies about ancient peoples recommended to me (basically, videos from people who are trying to marginalise ancient peoples and claim credit for their inventions) because I watched a video on the Ancient Egyptian Language lol. 

Edited January 30, 2019 by AimiGen7

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

If this means I stop getting those "DANGEr Of M*STERBATION" and "15 Everyday things you do WRONG!" videos, good.

[zombieparadise 487]

As a jaded conspiracy theorist myself, it only makes me question them harder. Obviously some of the content 'exposed' is striking a cord with someone somewhere, so the natural course of action is to make it harder to find and say 'it's for your own good'.

If we really begin to think a multi-billion dollar company has the public's best interest and well being at heart, something's off. It's censorship, disguised.

[suji 8317]

no more gay frogs, rip 💔

[platy 3018]

Sounds like censorship to me. Plenty of channels out there spewing misinformation in a harmful way. Those insane life/make up/whatever hacks, for example.