And who decide what's a conspiracy ?
After all, we were regarded as paranoid lunatics wearing tinfoil hats about the NSA surveillance, until PRISM came out and it became obvious we weren't.
So is the Israeli attack on USS Liberty during the Six-Day War still a conspiracy theory? I guess not, because there's a Wikipedia page. But it was denied for many years.
USS Liberty, Israel continues to deny they did it intentionally and that there was any pressure to cover up.
But alleged activities of Israelis during the early years? That remains highly controversial. I do see a Wikipedia article about Irgun (Zionists) bombing the King David Hotel, however.
The conspiracy crowd is migrating to BitChute en masse, so this will add more fuel to the fire.
The real "conspiracy theories" tend not only to be against evidence, but also aren't things real human organizations are capible of pulling off. I can tell you that if a UFO really landed at a US military base, it would be on 20 different Facebook pages within an hour, secrecy be damned. Let alone keeping the thing secret for decades.
From the linked opinion piece in the story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po...
"YouTube leads viewers down a rabbit hole of extremism, while Google racks up the ad sales."
So the big question is, why not demonetize them? Removing all ads probably has a pretty significant impact on the algorithm already.
Why doesn't YouTube do the right thing? Stop making money on extremists? It seems like doing that would auto correct the problems.
Is someone who promotes a keto diet on YouTube an extremist following your logic? (considering they'd be pretty far outside the "common view" both of the population at large and of the medical community)
I imagine the videos of that keto guy wouldn't look too "advertiser-friendly" to Coke or McDonalds.
I, for one, hope YouTube actually follows your suggestion. The sooner the better. Then it can finally turn into GrandmaTV (its ultimate slow-motion goal, probably), and everyone will start leaving it, following their favorite creators to more decentralized and more censorship-free platforms like d.tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHxHTPDrwVM
I see an ad for a video game beside the video on this page.
https://i.imgur.com/eV5Vz5Z.jpg
I'm sure I could find plenty more examples.
Also what in particular is wrong with this video? I don't have time to watch the whole thing. I thought the controversy was over "crisis actor" conspiracy theories especially. Which accuse victims of notable tragedies as being paid actors. And that sometimes result in them being harassed and mocked. And most of those videos are very quickly deleted from youtube as it is. Videos even mentioning their names or debunking the conspiracy theories are getting removed too.
I'm not sure if anyone really cares about random conspiracies about how much the CIA hates Julian Assange. Which may very well be true and doesn't offend anyone.
Well, Google. Its their website. They are going to do whatever they want with it.
Sure. Try selling me that one.
> Wojcicki did not specify how many conspiracies were on the company’s initial list, but suggested it would expand over time. “What I like about this unit is that it’s actually pretty extensible,” she said. The company could show additional alternate sources of information under controversial elements in the future, she said.
Part of the problem is that it's really trivial to make something appear to be controversial, especially in the age of "balanced reporting" where both (multiple?) sides are given equal exposure even if one is deep in crackpot realm. Even things like "10/10 scientists agree" are prone to foment controversy -- why are all these scientists agreeing, who's paying them?
When we see a crackpot on TV, we see cheap amusement. A slow news day. A good idea (balance) gone horribly wrong.
But for those who believe the crackpot, it's validation. He must be an authority on the subject, why else would the BBC be talking to him?
We're so hell-bent on fairly representing both sides, that we start to forget that the counter to a fact, is a falsehood. Two political commentators may have contrasting viewpoints. Two sports pundits may have differing opinions on who the next transfer should be.
But the counter-point to actual fact is fiction.
People in general didn't care much more than they care about PRISM, but they didn't think it was unlikely.
YouTube also needs to fix search so that results are not full of computer-generated spam results. It's very surprising how poorly YouTube has been developed. The search is still embarrassingly bad after over a decade.
Wikipedia admins with most patience and energy to participate in edit wars. Wikipedia admins also decide who else becomes a new Wikipedia admin and who gets banned, so once a group of people with same opinions gets a majority among the Wikipedia admins, their opinion becomes fixed as the official "truth".
Automatically adding Wikipedia information to YouTube videos will only increase the importance of the edit wars.