Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times? | Hacker News Reader

Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times?

fast.ai

For someone so pissed off about what they perceive as misinformation, there are simple facts here that are just false.

"As background, Mohan first began working in the internet ad industry in 1997 at DoubleClick, which was aquired by Google for $3.1 billion in 2008. Mohan then served as SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years, before switching into the role of Chief Product Officer for Google’s YouTube."

Err when Google closed DoubleClick, he was " Product Management Director for Ad Serving, reporting to Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management." Not a senior exec, not "SVP of display and video ads".

He was promoted to VP in 2009, and SVP in late 2015. I'm too lazy to look up when the other job titles switched.

Seriously, this stuff is just not hard to get right, and if you are going to take someone else to task for misinformation, why are you not doing everything in your power to get it right (especially since this person seems to believe it's so easy).

My best guess is she grabbed this stuff off a linkedin profile or something without bothering to actually try to verify it (which you should, since lots of people only list the job title they left with, not what they had).

I haven't bothered to fact check the rest of the claims, and the article is otherwise interesting, but seriously.

If you are going to try to run someone down, can you at least bother to get the data right?

Is this really the best we can do?

These are minor details that didn't detract from her overall argument. And you seem to have figured out the issue yourself, that she only got it wrong because Neal Mohan is misrepresenting himself on his linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neal-mohan

Really disappointed in this comment. Based on some nitpicking which isn't even correct [1], you're dismissing the entire article. Google's role in spreading conspiracy and hate is serious stuff, and given you're a googler, fairly prominent on HN, and from my past interactions and opinions of you, I expected much better than this.

[1] Not to get into the semantics of this, but when you say "when Google closed DoubleClick, he was " Product Management Director for Ad Serving, reporting to Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management."", that does not contradict text you quoted from the article. So the only claim you have is that the article called him an SVP for time when he was a VP.

It's not nitpicking. I spent a little time after I wrote this fact checking more, and i didn't edit to include the other clearly wrong facts in this article as a way of being nice to the author. Also, because i won't have a lot of time to be on HN today, and people take no response as a sign of "no good argument" instead of "not gonna spend all my time on a forum".

There are plenty of issues here to go around here. Go, try to verify facts yourself.

[1] This is wrong. "Mohan then served as SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years, " Then, as in, the 7 years after the doubleclick acquisition. That is wrong. He was not a VP, SVP, or in charge of display and video ads. He was in charge of one thing for a while, got promoted, and 7 years later, ended up SVP as both.

This shit matters. You are trying to argue essentially they could have just deleted this paragraph. Which I doubt. They are trying to make the point that this person has been a super senior person who has been doing this role a long time who should know better, and they simply haven't been.

If they want to make a correct and weaker argument, awesome, they are welcome to do that.

You don't get to just gloss over it.

Especially when taking other people to task for not apparently knowing something.

I'm going to quote the facts you provided earlier:

When Google closed DoubleClick, he was " Product Management Director for Ad Serving, reporting to Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management." She made no claims about what position he had at DoubleClick. She just said "Mohan first began working in the internet ad industry in 1997 at DoubleClick." This is not an error.

Then, you said: "He was promoted to VP in 2009, and SVP in late 2015. I'm too lazy to look up when the other job titles switched." Meaning, that you correctly point out she should have said "Mohan first served as VP, then SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years." Instead, she said "Mohan then served as SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years"

So, that is 1 minor, incorrect detail in the article that you've identified - an extra "S" onto "VP". What are some of the other "clearly wrong facts" that we should just trust (appeal to authority?) you spotted? If you have no time and are "too lazy," as you say, why choose to spend your time attacking the most minor detail instead of the most egregious and appalling incorrect fact?

Seems to me like you couldn't find much else wrong with the article.

Except... Have it been shown that Google did take action to change their algorithms to describe misinformation, at the cost of a stock market hit in January when they showed it decreased watch time?

I can't figure out what the author is complaining about. They obviously are doing something, enough for it to hurt their own bottom line.

There's probably a wee bit of presumption in connecting the dots like this, but its an interesting set of dots to consider, and I wouldn't mind any supporting links you have on this, opinion pieces or otherwise.

Furthermore, why didn't NYT do more research into whether the executive's statements were actually truthful? They've extensively investigated other tech companies, but I've found their reporting on Google to be lackluster by comparison.

Is there some specific factual claim that the author believes was false, or does "lying" just refer to framing the issue differently than she'd prefer?

Claim is pretty straightforward. Mohan blames viewers and takes no accountability for any extremism on YouTube, repeatedly failing to acknowledge the role of autoplay. This paragraph summarizes it nicely:

"Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hole effect on YouTube?” (The “rabbit hole effect” is when the recommendation system gradually recommends videos that are more and more extreme). In response, Mohan blamed users and still failed to give a straightforward answer."

I'm not sure how it is not a problem of the users. The up next recommendation is a product of your past behaviour and aggregate behaviour from other users. If you keep on watching 'wrong think' content then yt is going to keep serving it to you. They basically want yt to censor wrong think from their platform even if this content is engaging with their userbase.

The claim is that conspiracy content is more sticky than other content, and since the algorithm is optimized for stickiness, it's naturally inclined to skew in that direction.

In other words, starting from any random keyword... the algorithm is naturally inclined to skew towards conspiracy videos in its recommendations.

At least that's what the article (and the sources it cites) are alleging.

The article mentions that the "up next" experiments were done while logged out and with a clean watch history. Still, the algorithm eventually arrived at conspiracy videos.

"Blamed users and failed to give a straightforward answer" sounds like more of a framing issue than a specific false claim Mohan made.

One could argue that Bill Clinton's response to whether he had "sexual relations with that woman" is also a "framing issue." (How do you define relations? If you define sexual relations a certain way, Clinton's response of "no" is fine)

This kind of "framing" is equivocation (aka Orwellian double-speak) and the author is correct in calling it out.

One could argue that, but one could also say what the specific lie they think Clinton spread is. He did indeed have relations with her, and tried to trick the public into thinking he didn't.

That second part is what I don't see here. From the author's perspective, which specific facts is Mohan trying to trick the audience into disbelieving? It doesn't sound like he denied that there's extremist content attracting views on Youtube.

I love how quick we are to blame the problem on an algorithm or poor moderation when it is clearly a systemic issue, where by, the demand for such content is driving its popularity which in turn increases the likelihood of suggestion. As a society it's as though we look at youtube through a chicken and egg style of viewing. Did YouTube radicalize society or was society always radicalized but less visible? Either way there clearly has to be some action beyond hiding the problem which can actually address the underlying issue.

The way Youtube suggests videos has been borked in favor of sensationalism and popularity for a while now. It used to be if you were watching "Cooking Steak Part 2" the first suggested video was "Cooking Steak part 3" and the second suggested video was "Cooking Steak Part 1" and the third suggestion was "Cooking Chicken Part 1". Now it's a dead guarantee that not only will the suggested videos not be the next one in the sequence, it won't have anything to do with what I'm currently watching. It's utterly worthless.

Good to know I'm not the only person that has to leave youtube and go to duckduckgo to find the next video of a clearly marked series on youtube.

Or failing that, go to the user page, try to stop the autoplay on time, go to the uploads page, and scroll around until I see it.

I will never cease to wonder what all of the talented programmers at google are actually doing all day.

Working on ways to copyright strike everything.

Gamers with a taste for multi-hour reactionary rants over still images leave them playing while they game with the sound off. If you're trying to maximize time spent watching, the current situation is an inevitability.

I just found this recommended video on my YouTube app homepage: https://youtu.be/WpMRV0r08CI

Uploading channel has 2667 subscribers (I’m not one of them), has only ever uploaded 5 videos, starting about a month ago. All videos are of the same topic. 4 of the videos have views in the low thousands. The recommended one has 2 million.

Content wise, the video is 2:27 long, unedited fixed cam footage. It is true to the title and delivers on its promise.

I have nothing further to add.

does the author just have a problem with "autoplay" vs the user clicking on the videos?

i had to read over halfway just to find out what the google exec said. here is the quote of contention, i think

"“I’m not saying that a user couldn’t click on one of those videos that are quote-unquote more extreme, consume that and then get another set of recommendations and sort of keep moving in one path or the other. All I’m saying is that it’s not inevitable.”"

> More recently, YouTube has been aggressively promoting content from Russia Today (RT), a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet.

The author is a moron.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments or personal attacks here, regardless of how uninformed anyone else is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> YouTube is using machine learning to pump pollution into society. From my TEDx talk.

Ok, but I can't take TED-related content seriously either. At least YT has some redeeming content.

I find it funny how worried the author is about YouTube is promoting "distrust of mainstream media". Not excusing all the crap YouTube will put in one's sidebar, but when we have mainstream outlets like Politico posting egregious and inexcusably racist hitpieces like this (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/24/bernie-sa..., also that title was changed from "Bernie Sanders might still be cheap, but he's not poor" -- I'd have never found out if it weren't for YouTube recommending me the fabulous Jimmy Dore Show who pointed this out), I don't know how you can continue to visit any website deemed mainstream anymore.

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