Searching for "Antarctica" on YouTube returns conspiracy videos | Hacker News Reader

Searching for "Antarctica" on YouTube returns conspiracy videos

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23 pointsApocryphon14 comments

Certainly those videos are more watched than other videos on Antartica (from shear clickbait factor alone), but also, most content on Antartica is in the form of copy-written documentaries that legally shouldn't be on YouTube, so there might be some bias in that direction as well.

I also wanted to learn about the Scottish destiny stone after watching an episode of 10 Minute History and every single YouTube result was one about conspiracies, quasi-religious mysticism, and a very bait-and-switch religious film masquerading as a documentary.

I gave up and went to Wikipedia.

Unanswered detail: what videos did he previously watch from the same Internet-facing IP address?

Yep. With all the tailoring and tracking Google does, there is really no information you can glean from the results of a search other than "Google thinks you'll spend time watching these videos that translates into ad revenue". And given all the publicity they're getting now, it's hard to fault the algorithm for doing what it was meant to.

I just tried it myself, and am getting similar results. I also doubt Google does much personalization based on IP—Addresses, considering they are often shared, and often changing.

> I searched "Antarctica" in a signed-out browser with cleared cache and cookies

Are you suggesting Youtube serves content based on IP as well as account and cookies?

I noticed the same thing trying to find videos for my kids by searching “moon landings”.

Lots of alternate viewpoints represented in those search results.

Searching for almost "Anything" on YouTube returns conspiracy videos!

It may well be the worlds largest stultification factory invented right after Facebook and religions. That's not a conspiracy, just the result of human nature and incentives.

It can also be used for tremendous enlightenment, if handled carefully.

The question might be: why would anyone make a good, neutral, facts-based video about, for example, Antarctica ? Making a video takes a lot of effort. So if someone puts in that effort, there is probably a strong motivation behind it. Very likely 'selling' a product or idea. So most 'free' videos on youtube are probably biased in some way.

Seems they want to do something about it https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/25/youtube-to-curb-conspirac...

Getting to Antarctica is hard. Unless you are of vast private means or have spent a decade with a government science organisation in a G7 nation, Argentina, Chile, China or Russia then you are not going to get there. There is no commercial activity there and tourism doesn't happen. Even TV crews usually go with some government science trip.

Consequently Antarctica is ripe for people saying silly things without having a clue about what is really happening there. Add to the mix satellite imagery. It is very easy to misread satellite imagery. Even basic things such as clouds take a while to understand. Imagery of Antarctica is much like looking at clouds from the ground when bored (or on drugs), the pattern matching algorithms of the brain can see anything including pictures of Jesus Christ on a piece of toast in a cloud.

Then there is the matter of proving that things said to exist don't exist. If some conspiracy theory claims that the U.S. government has all these pipes and facilities laid out deep under the Antarctic ice and 'here is the satellite imagery to prove it' then you are in 'god does not exist/homeopathy' belief territory. Believers won't accept that their beliefs are bullshit. That is the problem with beliefs instead of facts.

To be frank I enjoy watching conspiracy theories very much.

Maybe the conspiracies are real. The icewall is real.

YouTube has become the internets cloaca.

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