SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Source: Technology Review
A new study [PDF] suggests what we've suspected for years is right: YouTube is a pipeline for extremism and hate.
How do we know that? More than 330,000 videos on nearly 350 YouTube channels were analyzed and manually classified according to a system designed by the Anti-Defamation League. They were labeled as either media (or what we think of as factual news), "alt-lite" intellectual dark web, or alt-right.
[...] The alt-right is what's traditionally associated with white supremacy, pushing for a white ethnostate. Those who affiliate with the "intellectual dark web" justify white supremacy on the basis of eugenics and "race science." Members of the alt-lite purport to not support white supremacy, though they believe in conspiracy theories about "replacement" by minority groups.
[...] The study's authors hypothesized that the alt-lite and intellectual dark web often serve as a gateway to more extreme, far-right ideologies. So they tested that by tracing the authors of 72 million comments on about two million videos between May and July of last year. The results were worrying. More than 26% of people who commented on alt-lite videos tended to drift over to alt-right videos and subsequently comment there.
[...] The team, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, also found evidence that the overlap between alt-righters and others who dabble in intellectual dark web and alt-lite material is growing. The authors estimate that about 60,000 people who commented on alt-lite or intellectual dark web content got exposed to alt-right videos over a period of about 18 months. The work was presented at the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Barcelona this week.
In a statement, YouTube said it's working through these issues: "Over the past few years ... We changed our search and discovery algorithms to ensure more authoritative content is surfaced and labeled prominently in search results and recommendations and begun reducing recommendations of borderline content and videos that could misinform users in harmful ways."
A spokesperson added that YouTube disputes the methodology and that it doesn't take into account more recent updates to its hate speech policy or recommendations. "We strongly disagree with the methodology, data and, most importantly, the conclusions made in this new research," the spokesperson said.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Friday January 31 2020, @10:15PM (4 children)
What a piece of shit, they stole nothing they were there first. Yet thousands of years later they still have scum like you wanting to kill them off. No wonder they try to raise the alarm at all possible opportunities it continues without end all the time. There is not a day goes by without it in this world.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @11:21PM (2 children)
Well damn! You sure gave us a good reason to evict the Europeans from the entire American Continent, North and South and everything between!
(Score: 5, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 31 2020, @11:30PM (1 child)
You gotta admit...Europe wasn't sending their best and brightest. They were sending their poor, their terrorists, their violent people, their rapists, and I assume some of them were good people too. But maaaan...they were violent as hell, they wouldn't integrate and assimilate into the local culture, they wouldn't learn the language, so whaddya expect?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:43PM
...said the smug Englishman to the Aussie.
The Australian replied: "And now we make you line up for a visa..."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday February 01 2020, @09:51PM
>What a piece of shit, they stole nothing they were there first.
No they weren't, if it is the promised land they were not there first. Or does YHWH promise you a land already yours? that would be peculiar.
Or you mean "first" in some arbitrarily defined time? that's cool, so a guy born in Rome or in the balkans can claim the land of Roman or Alexander the great's empires?
You have the right to the land you defend. If you enter a territory you are the invader. Do Israelites have the right to the territory they conquered, or rather terrorized the brits out of? of course they do. But they are the invaders and their justification for invading is logically incompatible with the Jesus guy being the Christ, so also the definition "Christian zionist" is rather oxymoronic.
Account abandoned.