YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant

bloomberg.com

61 pointspetethomas5 comments

>…Fully 81% of all parents with children age 11 or younger say they ever let their child watch videos on YouTube. And 34% of parents say their child watches content on YouTube regularly.…

…

>…Some 81% of YouTube users say they at least occasionally watch the videos suggested by the platform’s recommendation algorithm, including 15% who say they do this regularly…

https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/11/07/many-turn-to-youtube-...

I have Youtube Kids on my mobile phone, the recommendation engine only recommends child-friendly videos - Blippy, one of the millions of videos where people play with toy train sets, Wiggles, etc., it hasn't yet recommended a Neonazi video (however it doesn't care for language, often recommending Spanish or Russian kids videos). It's very useful for when I need my toddler to be quiet for 10 minutes or so.

I love YouTube's recommendation system. It's the only platform that can truly continue to deliver me a variety of things to suit my varied interests, and is the only mainstream platform online that I can reliably find liberal political positions represented. The entire rest of the primary internet hubs are basically just collectivizism: conservativism vs identitarian leftism.

I love YouTube.

Some of what's in the article seems to contradict what YouTube's product chief said in a recent interview.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19523415

The chief contradiction I see - The product chief claims youtube has been taking this problem seriously, while this report implies youtube has ignored the problem for some time, going as far as to avoid searching for videos to claim plausible deniability. According to the bloomberg article, YouTube was aware of the "bad virality" problem for sometime, but it was never addressed.

A summary:

Let's protect people from the ideas and content we think is bad to provide a better platform for our advertisers, then blame our focus on revenue as the reason for why we didn't focus more on censoring the content our advertisers and corporate leadership find offensive, so that we can continue to generate ad revenue, which we call "responsible growth."

This article is littered with fascist ideation. Like this line:

> “YouTube should never have allowed dangerous conspiracy theories to become such a dominant part of the platform’s culture.”

So, this "dangerous" information needs to be removed, since it's apparently harming the public who are assumed to be unable to think for themselves. The same public, who, apparently, likes conspiracy theories.

>“The primary goal of our recommendation systems today is to create a trusted and positive experience for our users,”

But what if you had a positive experience and were enjoying the way the algorithm populated new and unusual conspiracy videos? Sorry, you're out of luck. But hey, Google is making sure you get "trusted" information now. What a relief!

>The company’s lackluster response to explicit videos aimed at kids has drawn criticism from the tech industry itself.

The lackluster responsibility in parenting has resulted in explicit videos being aimed at kids by an algorithm that is incapable of discretion.

An algo that, apparently, works so well that humans need to modify it so we don't popularize popular content we find offensive.

It doesn't matter if information is true or false. YouTube's stance on "objectionable" content with a holier-than-thou-you-can-trust-us-to-filter-content-so-your-toddler-can-mainline-garbage-without-your-input is outrageously disgusting.

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