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YouTube Recommendations for 'Alt-Right' Videos have Dropped Dramatically, Study Shows:
Google has made "major changes" to its recommendations system on YouTube that have reduced the amount of "alt-right" videos recommended to users, according to a study led by Nicolas Suzor, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology.
During the first two weeks of February, alt-right videos appeared in YouTube's "Up Next" recommendations sidebar 7.8 percent of the time (roughly one in 13). From Feb. 15 onward, that number dropped to 0.4 percent (roughly one in 250).
Suzor's study took random samples of 3.6 million videos, and used 81 channels listed on a recent study by Rebecca Lewis [.pdf] as a starting point. That list includes voices like Richard Spencer, an American white supremacist, but also includes more mainstream voices like Joe Rogan, who does not self-identify as alt-right but often plays host to more extremist voices on his podcast (including alt-right figures such as Alex Jones).
The drop appears significant, but it's difficult to figure precisely how that drop occurred. We don't know if YouTube is targeting 'alt-right' videos specifically or if the drop off is part of broader changes to YouTube's recommendation system.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday March 15 2019, @08:25PM (4 children)
De-platforming is fake news, or essentially meaningless.
It's difficult for people to put what the Internet is into perspective. Google is at most providing what amounts to private property whereby people can "visit" and peruse content. Just like a 7-11 can refuse service with "No shoes, no shirt, no service", Google can refuse service for similar reasons. They are a private company, and never waived those rights. Does a person have a right to enter Disneyland, set up a soapbox, and espouse their politically charged views? The answer is clearly no. They do have a right to do so on public property, which by nature, is owned and operated by the public. "We The People" would never restrict the content of a soapbox speech, although in practice, that has very much happened in the past too for topics like Communism and Socialism. Those topics have been deliberately construed to be the same, when anybody over the age of 50 damn well knows that Socialism != Communism. People were not so much de-platformed as they were harassed. For anybody that knows the history of unions and protesting is aware of how they were suppressed too, and often labeled Communists, Socialists, and anti-Capitalists which translated into anti-American. Yet, all of the success and prosperity enjoyed in the 50's and 60's was precisely because of high union participation.
Before Internet based platforms for mass discussion and dissemination of information, you had publishers that could publish your books, public (and private) venues to hold your conferences and speeches. Stopping it usually required pressing the owners of the private property to disallow the events, of they made the bureaucracy create so much difficulty with proper permits that it effectively stifled speech. Yet, at the end of the day, free speech still existed in public spaces.
What the real argument is about here is exposure and money. Internet platforms allow the views being espoused to reach far and wide beyond the soapbox on a street corner, and unlike the soapbox, offers several different methods of monetization. It's the difference between forced listening and free speech. The minorities in this case (the Alt-right and White Nationalists) are complaining because their voices are being silenced in the places that are in the majority occupied by people who find those views utterly repugnant. They can't go back to pre-Internet spaces because they know that practically nobody is listening there anymore, or the amount of people exposed for their recruitment and conversion to their views is far less. It would require a lot more time and organization to put a White Nationalist on every street corner prepared with a soapbox and talking points. Time is money, and they don't make any that way either. That, quite understandably, pisses them off :) Well, fuck them. We don't want to hear their shit, and Google and the others are private companies, and as such, will pander to the groups responsible for the majority of their revenue. Total shocker, I know. So Alex Jones isn't as nearly pissed off about the lack of exposure as he is about the lack of monetization of said exposure. He's in it to make money, not espouse views hoping that we will change for the better as he understands it.
Nobody has free speech rights with an Internet platform, because it is in it's entirety, a private venue.
I agree with you that it's not a great idea to give so much power, money, and influence to private platforms. We also desperately need the art of debate to come back more than anything. Not just the ability to express controversial and/or minority views, but the ability to discuss these things. What we truly need is a mass public space in cyberspace where civil rights can be defended. You can't be deplatformed by law, but at the same time, a public platform will not have "recommended" or "likes" or anything possibly related to endorsement. Nor will it have any kind of monetization present either. Just a search function. If the owner of a video wants more exposure they can enter into a linking agreement with other video owners to share their links, and share links between all of their videos. Monetization would necessarily only occur with private platforms like Patreon.
Beyond a public platform though, there is nothing that can be done against Google being the gatekeepers of what we see. Yes, that is very problematic and quite worrisome, even though the I technically side with most of the views and likewise find Alt-right people to be morally and intellectually repugnant.
Finally, the tiniest of the tiny violins for all of you. I never agreed with, or participate in these social platforms precisely because of the power we give them. I deliberately keep Amazon as less than 5% of all of my purchases because I absolutely know it doesn't help me, or America, when I prop up those anti-American anti-union companies. I support employee owned businesses before all others. So for those bitching about it, get off your asses and create a public platform that deliberately stands up for free speech, and get ready for the storm of CTRL-LEFT bullshit to rain down upon you. It will be up to you to weather it and stick to your principles. I would monetarily support such a space too, and if hosted by a public department of the government, pay taxes for its operation.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 15 2019, @10:12PM
Free Speech isn't the first amendment to your constitution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday March 16 2019, @04:06AM (2 children)
It is exasperating to sit here in 2019 and hear this kind of argument. Have we not spent the last several decades tearing down country clubs that want to exclude Jews and black people? I mean, hey, according to the argument you're stating it's perfectly OK for businesses to discriminate that way because they're private companies.
Please look past these blind spots. If you do this today to people you don't like, you better believe they will return the favor double tomorrow.
It's cute to sit atop three of the most prominent platforms for public discourse, Hollywood, the MSM, and Big Tech, dominated by the Left, and sniff that if conservatives don't like it then they can go right ahead and build their own services. Except, when they go ahead and do that like they've done with Gab and Dissenter, the Left-dominated outlets chop away at the financial services they use to get paid by their audiences and work very hard to get them de-platformed at the basic levels of the Internet.
That behavior is un-American, and, frankly, dangerous. Shit, I'm a progressive and hate Nazis, but this kind of crap from the Left is not progressive, but Marxist-Leninist.
If we don't like others have to say, we answer with vigor. We don't silence them. If we do silence their words, they will answer with fists. Bet on it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 16 2019, @05:08AM
And how did we "[tear] down country clubs that want to exclude Jews and black people"? Certainly not through government regulation/threat of force. When such action has been tried [wikipedia.org], the Supremes smacked it down. Hard.
Because freedom of expression doesn't just extend to expression that you like (cf. NSPA v. Skokie [wikipedia.org]).
And Google's "recommendation engine" is absolutely expression. And given that Google is not a government entity, they can choose (or not) to express themselves however they like (with certain caveats like inciting to riot or credible physical threats).
As to your example in another post (meat and LGBT), if Google chose to do the same for those topics, it would be the same thing.
You say "If we don't like others have to say, we answer with vigor. We don't silence them. If we do silence their words, they will answer with fists. Bet on it."
And I agree wholeheartedly. But demanding that Google act as *we* wish (promoting and defending free expression) and trying to back that up with government action is just as wrong as doing the same to promote censorship.
As for those being "silenced" (which is far too expansive a term for the consequences of what Google is doing), if they choose to "answer with fists," then they will, as they should, be prosecuted. And that goes just as much for those who decry being marginalized/"silenced" for their speech in support of LGBT/vegetarianism/pro or anti-choice stances/etc.
And in the end, just as with any other corporation, Google will act to maximize profit. That's what corporations do. As such, it seems a little silly to call Google's actions "Marxist-Leninist."
They are acting (rightly or wrongly, ethically or unethically) to benefit their shareholders. That's pretty far from "Marxist-Leninist" if you ask me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:17PM
The Left? Hardly. The neoliberal, corporatist, authoritarian left? Yes.