The Making of a YouTube Radical | Hacker News Reader

The Making of a YouTube Radical

nytimes.com

65 pointsviburnum144 comments

> Google Brain’s researchers wondered if they could keep YouTube users engaged for longer by steering them into different parts of YouTube, rather than feeding their existing interests. And they began testing a new algorithm that incorporated a different type of A.I., called reinforcement learning.

> The new A.I., known as Reinforce, was a kind of long-term addiction machine. It was designed to maximize users’ engagement over time by predicting which recommendations would expand their tastes and get them to watch not just one more video but many more.

It saddens me that so many of our smartest engineers are working on stuff like this.

Those aren’t the world’s smartest engineers.

I don't see whats wrong about suggesting videos to users that they like to watch.

Well, it catches people in thought-bubbles.

But the idea with this algorithm was to expand peoples interestes. That should work against locking people into bubbles.

"Get outside your bubble of rational reality and consider this crazy conspiracy nonsense..."

Same.

There is this pessimist view that Google is evil.

In my life, Google is the single best entity I'm aware of. Incredible amounts of free stuff that makes my life better.

Any addiction to their platform has been due to bliss.

Should have named yourself "totallydontworkatgoogle."

For one, it lowers their intellectual curiosity and makes them lazy consumers in a feedback loop of their current preferences...

Second, it always adds an algorithmic/editorial spin on the suggestion, so it's worse than them picking things up for themselves...

I see it from both sides. I love browsing youtube and finding relevant suggestions, I can kill hours of time clicking and watching. However I sometimes feel like a victim of some kind of manipulation. Youtube has incredible power to persuade you down certain paths (in the pursuit of maximizing # of views).

I think there is a difference here compared to other platforms: they slowly nudge you down paths of interest and you willingly oblige in watching it. And if you have lost interest in a subject, don't worry, it will pop up on your home page sooner or later, dangling it above your head "still interested? come over here, click on me!".

Sure I paint a sinister picture, perhaps it is exaggerated, but I truly believe that google knows more about me than everyone that I know personally, and maybe even myself. That is scary. If they combines all this information across their platforms, they are in possession of an incredibly accurate profile of myself. If they use this profile to suggest videos, I suppose it may not be as harmful as I have stated, but what if they were to use it for other purposes in the future? This is my greatest fear.

> It saddens me that so many of our smartest engineers are working on stuff like this.

Does it sadden you if it's instead worded as

"The entertainment platform worked on improving their promoted content selection to prevent users from getting bored".

Really, we can have a discussion about ML algorithms running wild and achieving far different results than intended, but trying to exploit every angle for the sake of the "evil, greedy people" narrative feels very dishonest.

> "The entertainment platform worked on improving their promoted content selection to prevent users from getting bored".

This summary crucially omits that the platform's goal was not to prevent users from getting bored, it was to make more money. They were optimizing for time spent watching ads, not user experience.

I'll refrain here from passing judgment either way, but it's an important clarification to make.

So now the idea is to make it so that the only algorithmic pathsways to information are to the sanctioned ideas? That's dangerous! Basically, in 2019, you don't have to burn books. The powers that be can bias the power of discovery and viral spread towards the ideas they like and away from the ideas they don't like. You don't have to suppress, just make the ratified ideas orders of magnitude louder. Or, that was the theory. Now they have to resort to mislabeling and mass deplatforming. This mental control scheme is failing just like the Soviet's control over official media failed: People will eventually see through the manipulation and stop believing it.

That's not to say that damage won't be done in the meantime. What's driving society crazy isn't some single percentage slice of economically disadvantaged under-educated fringers with theories just about everybody knows are crap. What's driving society crazy is the meddling in the free market of ideas. It's the breakdown of discourse itself. It's all of the perverse incentives to communication and other manipulation perpetrated by big tech firms that may or may not be monopolies. It's the meddling with people's speech by entities that aren't governments, but have more power and more tech savvy than most of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

These big media/technology companies have been amplifying outrage, amplifying outrageous behavior, bubbling people into echo chambers to further amplify the outrage, and aiding and abetting the toxic mislabeling of ordinary views and formerly protected forms of discourse -- which just adds even more amplification in the form of outrage.

The problem is not the single-percentage fringers without access to economic power, the halls of power, and the ear of those who control the newest forms of media technology. They are merely a symptom. Look instead to the politically skewed access. Remember: power corrupts!

Look at the magnitude of how crazy society's gotten in the past several years. Who has the wealth, algorithmic/technological power, and reach to do all of that? The answer's simple. Look for the tickers with the multi-billion dollar valuations!

All society needs to fix things, is to actually have Free Speech and a level, non-manipulated free marketplace of ideas.

This article just included Milton Friedman in a collage that seems to imply he was a conspiratorial, racist, misogynist? For those who might not know who he was, here is is Wiki entry. [1] He's a nobel prize winning economist and more or less critical reading to understand the logic behind much of our current economic processes, without casting judgement on the rightness or wrongness of said systems. He died 13 years ago. I am, for once, at a loss for words. That is just so unbelievably idiotic.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Yes, most likely they are trying to label him as far-right as well. Remember they support Marxism which is against a free economy.

That along with them including Philip DeFranco (even though he's not mentioned in the article) made me lose interest in whatever they were trying to say through the article. I don't want to get on a political debate here on HN but Phil is more left leaning or at least that's the impression almost entirety of his audience gets from watching his videos.

I honestly think that this article is more about trying to take down independent but huge following journalists/creators than it's about shining light on radicalization. This could be because of these independent creators are taking away too much of these huge media company/newspaper's profits.

While there are lots of "far right" channels out there, the majority of of the channels shown as screenshots have nothing to do with the "far right" or conspiracy theories.

Looks like their main crime is being conservative.

I just scrolled down the screenshot section where it showed the videos he watched in one time period, are you really trying to say Stefan Molyneux, Paul Joseph Watson, thunderf00t and a lady complaining about "cuckservatives" aren't "far right" or conspiracy theorists?

I haven't watched Stefan Molyneux or thunderf00t, so can't tell.

I've watched a few Paul Joseph Watson videos. I've also watched Shapiro, Milo, and Peterson, recognized from the screenshots shown. You can agree or disagree with the positions they take (e.g. Milo plays the extravagant provocateur for laughs and money), but where are those "conspiracy theories"?

Of course in these days, everything is labeled a "conspiracy theory" too. I keep the term for things involving the illuminati and aliens.

Regular corporatist interests and politicians conspire all the time -- the more open version is called lobbying.

Heck, politics is all about conspiring (including very covertly spy-shit, Nixon-Watergate like) against other parties and ideologies...

> Stefan Molyneux, thunderf00t, Paul Joseph Watson

I can see how Stefan Molyneux and Paul Joseph Watson make people very uncomfortable (heck, they often make me feel uncomfortable, particularly Molyneux), they are certainly "extreme", for current mainstream definitions of the word.

But then again, FTA:

> “When I found this stuff, I felt like I was chasing uncomfortable truths,” he told me. “I felt like it was giving me power and respect and authority.”

I've watched some of these guys videos, and I believe anyone claiming that they do not have at least some valid perspectives worth discussion is being intellectually dishonest.

> Unlike most progressives Mr. Cain had seen take on the right, Mr. Bonnell and Ms. Wynn were funny and engaging. They spoke the native language of YouTube, and they didn’t get outraged by far-right ideas. Instead, they rolled their eyes at them, and made them seem shallow and unsophisticated. “I noticed that right-wing people were taking these old-fashioned, knee-jerk, reactionary politics and packing them as edgy punk rock,” Ms. Wynn told me. “One of my goals was to take the excitement out of it.” When Mr. Cain first saw these videos, he dismissed them as left-wing propaganda. But he watched more, and he started to wonder if people like Ms. Wynn had a point. Her videos persuasively used research and citations to rebut the right-wing talking points he had absorbed. “I just kept watching more and more of that content, sympathizing and empathizing with her and also seeing that, wow, she really knows what she’s talking about,” Mr. Cain said.

"persuasively used research and citations to rebut the right-wing talking points he had absorbed" - the right-wing talking points that also used research and citations. That's the thing about propaganda and statistics - it's a double edged sword.

> I've also watched Shapiro, Milo, and Peterson, recognized from the screenshots shown. You can agree or disagree with the positions they take, but where are those "conspiracy theories"?

I too noticed the subtle guilt by association. I wonder if the commonality of this tactic ever adds fuel to the fire of conspiratorial thinking.

I continue to believe that one of the biggest reasons that "right wing extremism" is so effective at recruiting is because there are so many holes in official/proper version of reality we're sold.

Paul Joseph Watson was an employee of Info Wars. Like, the whole thing of that site is conspiracy theories? I can't help but feel you're being disingenuous when you question Info Wars members being conspiracy theorists.

And I feel people are being disingenuous when they say Paul Joseph Watson is a conspiracy theorist by association.

I've watched several of his own videos on his YouTube channel. Where are the conspiracy theories?

I found these in about 10 minutes. Don't act like being part of a conspiracy theory website makes calling you a conspiracy theorist is some sort of disingenuous leap. Like the point of the website is spreading conspiracy theories.

A lot of the prison planet blog was deleted it seems, I guess due to his and alex jones' fallout, but here are your links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifIAlft47bM

https://www.infowars.com/obama-birth-certificate-raises-as-m...

https://web.archive.org/web/20180123234120/https://www.priso...

https://web.archive.org/web/20170702085649/https://www.priso...

https://web.archive.org/web/20171226050840/https://www.priso...

So, the kind of "conspiracy" you meant is speculation there is a cover up of a politician's ill health condition in the first video? That has been done time and again by all kinds of politicians and leaders, from the time of El Cid... If that's a "conspiracy theory", then sure, every journalist alluding to something not documented at the time, is a conspiracy theorist. I expected more aliens, illuminati, and lizard people.

The second is merely reporting, on a well known topic of public discussion. A document was requested, it appeared, and there were people raising questions about certain aspects. Should they not be reported? Where's the conspiracy part?

The others I'll give you are conspiracy theory material (though several of those kind of conspiracies (government conspiring, ordering executions, and so on), that a naive US person thinks "can never happen", have been found -- by courts and later evidence -- true in Europe time and again, just ask in Italy, Spain, France, Greece, etc. E.g:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_Fontana_bombing#Officia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigoris_Lambrakis

That said, those are from like 10 years ago or more? I'm familiar with his YouTube stuff and I don't see much conspiracy stuff there.

Thunderf00t just hates SJWs, he's not right wing in the slightest. Stefan Molymeme on the other hand is literally alt-right and believes in race 'realism'.

What's wrong with thunderf00t? I only remember him for anti-creationist videos and exposing Solar Roadways. It seems he's anti-conspiracy theorist if anything.

I've only seen the thunderf00t videos debunking the "hyperloop" nonsense, and they seemed pretty reasonable to me.

A far cry from the conservatives of my time, hence the "alt" label. As the article mentions, how much discussion of a balanced budget is there in any of these videos? Do you think someone like former Senator McCain or Romney would be watching these? It's all about race and sex and identity issues.

Well, modern progressives are a far cry from the leftists of my time too. In fact most of them would sound like lunatics back in the 70s and 80s.

> It's all about race and sex and identity issues.

That would merely be response to the current leftist narrative.

Doesn’t that sound like just the debate/discussion you just asked for, in the very same post? Make up your mind.

Here in Sweden we had the national election last year.

I saw exactly zero news articles which covered the budget. Not a single one. Almost every single topic that bubbled up on national news, in debates, and on social media involved identity politics. Immigration, gender, religion, and then some climate on the side. The only political party in Sweden that still talk a bit about taxes is the one furthest on the left, and that mostly because capital tax has been their consistent talking point for about as long as the party has existed.

Budget and tax policy can easily be changed, but demographic changes from immigration are irreversible, so it is understandable they draw more attention.

I agree, ordinary bigotry is conservative.

Oh, the irony. Saying "bigotry is conservative" - while paying billions of people (a vast right half of the political spectrum) as bigots.

And taking for granted that of course progressives can't be bigots.

There weren't for example any massive pogroms against Jews under Stalin, or the destroying of thousands of years of historical treasures (not to mention millions of people) under Mao. Progressives never call whole swaths of people "white trash" or "deplorables". Leftist students never prevent people who doesn't share their views from speaking, and so on...

The author of this article and the YouTube creators he maligns, are both engaged in what Naval Ravikant describes as a “negative-sum prestige game”. The wealth benefits are nearly zero, and the fame is all negative. Stay in the positive-sum wealth game, fellow hackers; build, create, form meaningful life-long relationships.

I love the scrolling transition at the beginning of this article. It really feels like an excellent piece of internet art.

It's also a very misleading and dishonest journalism, as many of YouTubers displayed in the final stages have nothing to do with the alt-right.

I read the article and it mentioned that in the past year YouTube started recommending videos from left-leaning creators.

"IN 2018, nearly four years after Mr. Cain had begun watching right-wing YouTube videos, a new kind of video began appearing in his recommendations.

These videos were made by left-wing creators, but they mimicked the aesthetics of right-wing YouTube, down to the combative titles and the mocking use of words like “triggered” and “snowflake.”

famous left wing youtubers are people like Hbomberguy (known for helping trans charities)

famous right wing youtubers are people like Prisonplanet (white genocide propaganda, Brexit)

there's no comparison between the two outside of rise in popularity

Paul Joseph Watson (prisonplanet) is the most conspiratorial of the anti-left, he works for InfoWars. There are plenty of anti-left (a more apt term, as many are liberal/libertarian) that add quite a bit to the conversation. Karen Straughan, 1791L, Sam Harris, Janice Fiamengo, Brett/Eric Weinstein, sometimes Jordan Peterson, Independent Man, Computing Forever, ShortFatOtaku, Asian Capitalists, among others.

sure and there's other tamer lefttube people like Jenny Nicholson, Lindsay Ellis, etc.

I was comparing hard to hard. "Hard left" youtube seem to be great people, whereas "hard right" youtube is utter trash.

One has to stretch "both sides are bad" to great extremes to pretend that the problem is intractable.

>I was comparing hard to hard. "Hard left" youtube seem to be great people, whereas "hard right" youtube is utter trash.

Or you know, that's a version of "everyone I agree with is good, everyone I disagree with is Hitler".

who's your go-to left equivalent of Jordan Peterson or PrisonPaul or Crowder?

site doesn't let me reply but I can't believe you're seriously saying Chomsky and Zizek are the left equivalents of Crowder and Prisonpaul, lol

Let's narrow it down to those two. Who's the left Crowder/Prisonpaul if not Hbomb? And if it's Hbomb, how can you deny he's better than those two?

Equally "bad" you mean (and assuming those are bad)? Cause I don't consider e.g. Jordan Peterson bad, or even really that right. Conservative yes (which is another thing). In terms of classic left/right politics (and not the modern fashion of id politics) I'd say he's more or less a social democrat.

That said, for people on the left I follow, I'd mention Slavoj Zizek, Chomsky, Michea, and others (including authors on Counterpunch, NLR, Mother Jones, etc).

I like my leftists old school, regarding class, colonization, imperialism, and such, and don't care about the US obsession with identity politics (in fact I dislike it). I don't think the US has had many real leftists since like the 60s, and surely none in the mainstream.

>site doesn't let me reply but I can't believe you're seriously saying Chomsky and Zizek are the left equivalents of Crowder and Prisonpaul, lol

You should be able to reply, I think it just takes a minute for the link to appear or so. Can always click on the parent comment's date though to go to a reply page iirc.

That said, I didn't say "Chomsky and Zizek are the left equivalents of Crowder and Prisonpaul". I said those are some on the left I personally follow. I'm not sure what "equivalent" means here. Equivalent in what?

If it's about having polarizing opinions or away-of-centre opinions on things, well, all those mentioned have those.

>Let's narrow it down to those two. Who's the left Crowder/Prisonpaul if not Hbomb? And if it's Hbomb, how can you deny he's better than those two?

I wasn't sure who Hbomb is, so I paid a visit. Seems like someone making dumb jokes from what (in the US) passes for a leftist view. I haven't seen much Crowder (only heard about him through the recent fuss) but this Hbomb is not in my eyes any better than Prisonpaul. If anything, he's more grating.

(Also, better in what? Better person? Better opinions? More agreeable? More hipster-likable views?)

I would nominate folks like Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert, both very effective persuaders who use humor and selective facts to reinforce partisan beliefs in a like-thinking audience.

Peterson and Chomsky I would say are in a completely different league, as they tend to deal in a high-dimensional representation of reality, versus the comically low-dimensional representation that is typically a common denominator of all cultural meme war arguments.

I don't think most of the people I listed are tame, I think they're "hard liberal" or "hard libertarian." One of the problems is that there are really 3 camps in most western countries at this point. There is

1.) the authoritarian left, which prioritizes racial and gendered identity, collectivism, equity, all facilitated by the state.

2.) the anti-authoritarian liberal, which prioritizes individual liberty, universality under the law, accountability and self-determination.

3.) the authoritarian right, which prioritizes tradition and national identity.

An extreme person in any of these camps would not result in "great people." I do not think that the left's collectivization of society along racial and gendered lines is "great." I do not think the left's conviction in its moral superiority and subsequent willingness to censor and deplatform is "great." I do not think that the left's disassociation of merit and value in pursuit of arbitrary equity is "great." These are very dangerous things. Radical leftism is responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

I suppose your own bias aside, these roughly map to

- AOC/Sanders

- Obama/Clinton

- Bush/Trump

? I'm not american but it's no contest I'm "authoritarian left", I guess. If "universal health care" is authoritarian, sign me up.

Is it possible that a group/party can offer something you find very agreeable, like universal healthcare, while simultaneously being dedicated to installing unrelated authoritarian policies?

I don't think so. Got any examples?

Any "national socialist" that tried to couple free healthcare with racist ideas about who gets it would be making a mockery of "universal", for example.

There's probably a good reason why health care/women's rights/pacifism/environmentalism all go hand in hand, something to do with compassion and one's idea of where hierarchies come from.

both sides are bad, the US president said so

Comment from the author (which is getting ratioed):

> Hey, writer here. This collage is just a sample from his viewing history. Some far-right, some not.

https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1137392725081219073

The choice of the text scrolling over the collage, however, is the author's / NYT's doing.

> Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction. He turned to YouTube.

> Soon, he was pulled into a far-right universe, watching thousands of videos filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.

> I was brainwashed

If some, in the admission of the writer, are not far right / [insert some other libelous term here], is it fair to label them all as such?

All's fair in love and meme wars, which is what this is. At the end of the day, I think the implicit "one side is using facts and truth, the other is using lies and deceit" narrative is effective, but it also has weakness in that it is a bit lacking in the truth department. I'm not liking the direction these debates are going though.

I'm not a fan of all of those YouTubers, but quite a few of the big ones (i.e. Crowder, Shapiro, Peterson) detest racism, and have openly and many times said that they do not support white supremacy and think Nazis are racist morons. Someone asked why neo-Nazis were attending one of their conferences, and the speaker (Peterson) said he had no idea and wanted them to leave for being idiots.

Doesn't change the fact that NYT still calls them "white supremacist supporting." I think the problem here is that they support some policies which white supremacists, as a group, also like supporting. Just because two groups can agree on something doesn't mean those groups are allies. Also, "white supremacist" is a great slam against someone you don't like regardless as to if it is true.

> but quite a few of the big ones (i.e. Crowder, Shapiro, Peterson) detest racism ...

Yes, but the YT recommendation algorithm doesn't know that, and even if it could know it wouldn't care. It's enough to watch a few IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) videos, the system will assume that you want racist, far-right, etc. content and that's what will pop up in your recommendations and "Up Next" video plays. That's an entirely programmatically-generated "pathway" into the alt-right rabbit hole; it has nothing to do with who the IDW themselves would want to associate with.

Agreed. However, at the same time, this happens with almost _everything_ on YouTube. I bet you 5 Fake Bitcoins that if you watch a lot of Left-leaning videos from NYT, Vox, and others, that you will be in your own rabbit hole.

As a left leaning person, absolutely! I viewed a few of hbomberguy's tamer videos, next thing you know I've got videos with commenters suggesting we bust out the guillotines. But hey, thats what gets the eyeballs and the ad revenue flowing!

"Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. #settlementsrock" - Ben Shapiro

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/25712847277

And he was totally blasted by his own fanbase for it. Everyone might say something, once in a while, too far. Doesn't make it right, but doesn't make him completely wrong on everything.

> I think the problem here is that they support some policies which white supremacists, as a group, also like supporting. Just because two groups can agree on something doesn't mean those groups are allies.

I'm probably going to bleed karma for this, but whatever - I think Trump's campaign had the same problem. I don't believe he's explicitly a white supremacist or that he wanted the support of neo-nazis, if for no other reason than that would be a stupid move politically, but for whatever reason neo-nazis seem to consider him their champion.

Likely in part it's a combination of his antagonistic (politically incorrect) demeanor and his populist rhetoric, but also (just to put it out there) the Republicans and Tea Party have been sort of low-key courting favor with racists for years, so there were already plenty in the base to begin with, they just needed to find their anti-establishment dark horse.

Even if they're less "white supremacist supporting" as "white supremacist supported," that's still a problem. They still feed on and profit from that element.

Why is this a problem? Is it everyone’s duty to deny “white supremacists” in all things, to make sure you have absolutely nothing in common? If they tended to shave, would it then be the duty of every right-thinking man to grow a beard?

It doesn't matter what those people you list personally believe; the fact is their speech and behavior is de facto functioning as an entry point funneling[1] people into fascist beliefs. If that isn't their intention, they really need to stop this kind of behavior.

> they do not support white supremacy and think Nazis are racist morons

> NYT still calls them "white supremacist supporting."

These are not in conflict; your actions can still support fascists unintentionally. When people point out your beliefs are supporting white supremacists, it might be a good idea to correct the problem. Continuing to defend the problematic behavior is when what might have been unintentional support begins to look more like intentional participation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmRYRRDbuw

>It doesn't matter what those people you list personally believe; the fact is their speech and behavior is de facto functioning as an entry point funneling[1] people into fascist beliefs.

Sounds like "better not let anybody be right-wingers or they may someday turn to fascism!"

Only if "right-wingers" necessarily means someone with fascist beliefs. If that isn't your definition, don't imply that association by making them the target.

(for a more nuanced answer, see [1])

Potentially legally risky as well, given a known attorney/law firm critiqued it on Twitter and said it was totally unacceptable:

https://twitter.com/morrison/status/1137401059419217921?s=11

The most interesting thing about the article is the admission by google that it wages an ai-powered war on humanity. Rather than paperclips, the most likely ai apocalypse scenario consists of an ai that modifies and breeds humans (what it considers humans) to do nothing but watch ads.

It will first breed and otherwise manipulate humans into believing only what the media tells them.

It's going to be hard to discuss the problem here if just mentioning it draws such a vast quantities of spam from the other Caleb Cains of the world.

Why in the world is Philip DeFranco in that collage?

The same as everybody else, they challenge the mainstream media view.

See Tim's video https://youtu.be/ZtYle7Rqn0Q

For much of the article, the author portrays the “left-wing” as a bastion of sanity and moral good, a place where those who have been hijacked by the “right-wing” can be rehabilitated. Only at the very end does he pay passing lip-service to the possibility that there might be danger on both sides.

Is his characterization accurate?

I am having trouble thinking of a way to answer this without being downvoted for either being "too left" or "too right" in my reply. Maybe I'll just try and take a side route: Ideology is one hell of a drug. I like Gary Bernhardt's talk[0] on the subject. He defines ideology as the stuff we don't know that we know. In any event, there are certainly shallow moralists on both sides.

[0]: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology

So long as advertising revenue rules everything around me, I don't see this problem going away. Whether it's addictive right-wing videos or addictive left-wing videos, websites like YouTube will always prioritize "engagement" and adviews over safe and neutral and boring and reliable. Good times...

Quick Question: You are worried about right-ring rabbit holes, NYT.

If I watched a bunch of NYT, Vox, and other such videos, are you _sure_ I wouldn't be sucked into a Left-wing rabbit hole?

Sssh - they don't want you to think about these things.

I think there is a fundamental difference though. At some point the far right will start to promote really hateful messages such as anti-gay, anti-jew, anti-woman, etc. At the far left end, on the other hand, the hate is stared at the capitalist system and public figures benefiting from it.

Far left is just as dangerous as far right. Just google how many deaths can be attributed to far left ideologies (communism, marxism, etc.)

> At the far left end, on the other hand, the hate is stared at the capitalist system and public figures benefiting from it.

Or violence against different thinking individuals.

Think third wave feminists. Antifa. BLM. Berkeley Riots.

Right now, the extreme left is much more dangerous than the extreme right (not to mention the similarly lumped not-so-extreme right), because people like you think they will do no “real” wrongs.

That’s a huge mistake to make.

At the far-left end:

A. Millions murdered based on class: independent farmers [0], intellectuals, defined as anyone wearing glasses [1], entrepreneurs, professionals. Generally anyone perceived as better off than their neighbor was at risk of being labeled 'enemy of the people' by said neighbour and deported overnight into the Gulag [2]. Or executed on the spot.

B. Millions deported based on ethnicity. Entire populations were moved around USSR in the '30s, including Balts, Poles, Romanians, Tatars or Koreans, based simply on their ethnicity, partly as an attempt to forcefully disassociate them from their cultural legacy.

C. Millions murdered due to breakdown of basic economic structures. The great famine of Ukraine in '32/'33, and Mao's great famine of the '59/'63 stand out as marvels of far left ideology implemented by force in the economic sphere.

All in all, an estimated 100 million people lost their lives in the name of far left ideology [6]. It is repugnant to gloss over recent history and pretend there are no hideous monsters to be found.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#Democrati...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_in_the_Soviet_Uni...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao%27s_Great_Famine

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...

This is off topic since I (and parents) was specifically talking about youtube creators. But sure, lets change the subject for a minute and talk about the general ramification of far left and far right policies.

I could go hat for hat and mention all the murders and genocieds far right regimes have conducted, regimes like Franco in Spain, Pinochet in Chile, etc.

But I could also go through all the disasters caused by capitalism like the Bhopal disaster in 1984, or—the elephant in the room—global warming.

My third option would be to list all the social issues caused by unhindered capitalism, issues like the housing crisis, or the worker conditions in the late 19th to early 20th century.

But all this is conflating the fact that I would be blaming bad policies enacted by ignorant, greedy, or even malicious people in the name of a political or economical ideology, which is to say (at least in the case of Franco and Pinochet) I’m confusing capitalism with fascism, something I see quite a lot in the above comment. My point is that none of these (with the notable exception of global warming) are the necessary consequences of far left or far right policies.

Sure you could take me on this and claim that both far right and far left people are capable of performing horrible things, and you would not be wrong. And then again, I must point out that this is off topic, we are specifically talking about youtube creators, of which you can find numerous example of far right creators spreading hate towards a large generalized public while on the far left you at worst find this hate spread towards public figures that represent far-right ideologies.

You're trying to make a "both sides" argument about this: a "left-wing rabbit hole" is not equivalent to a "right-wing rabbit hole" in terms of content.

There is no cosmic balance between left-wing and right-wing. What are the consequences of the left-wing rabbit hole vs the right-wing rabbit hole? Not all viewpoints are equal or even valid.

>You're trying to make a "both sides" argument about this: a "left-wing rabbit hole" is not equivalent to a "right-wing rabbit hole" in terms of content.

Really? Why? Because conservative/right = bad, and liberal/left = good?

Because the deep-right youtubers are white supremacists?

That's a cyclical argument if I ever saw one - plus adding the weasel term "deep-right".

Yeah, white supremacists are scum. Why mention them though?

We were talking about right/conservative youtubers here (in fact my question asks exactly about right/conservative). Where does the "deep right" come in?

Are the ones shown in the screenshots "white supremacists"? E.g. Shapiro, Watson, Peterson, for a few I recognize. Have they shown any such tendencies?

Or does being concervative/right automatically means one can be labelled "deep-right" and thus "white supremacists"?

What word would you prefer I use? I was trying to avoid painting the right wiht that brush by using it, but I'll not use that term then. The guy in the article watched a lot of Stefan molyneux videos and he's a white supremacist. That's what the article was about, that's why I brought up white supremacists. You go down that youtube rabbit hole and you just get the "race realists" eventually. That's the topic of the article.

I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't there a huge difference between "race realists" and "white supremacists"? Isn't a "race realist" someone who argues that there are significant genetic differences between races while a "white supremacist" is someone who argues that whites should rule over the other races?

The word "significant" is doing a heck of a lot of work there. Statistically significant? Maybe, but even if that were the case, the actual, plausible consequences are really subtle - they're there of course, but most "race realists" like to talk about other things - go figure! "Significant" in an everyday sense? No way - that's so wildly implausible (keep in mind, we're only talking about what the innate difference might be, after screening out all of the environmentally-caused divergence!) that one can safely say that people who argue that this is what's going on, really are just parroting white-supremacist memes. I.e. they might not be white supremacists themselves, but they're ideologically-possessed memebots who are spreading a white-supremacist memetic infection.

Yes, you are right. This is just a re-definition of language so that you can't talk about it without being labeled a white supremacists.

Correct, believing some races are inherently superior does get you labeled a white supremacist because there's functionally not much of a difference between the two.

Barely a difference . Race realism is the same thing, sugar-coated to avoid openly admitting your racism and belief that some races are inherently superior .

NYT is not a left wing outlet. Left-wing mass media, produced by a large capitalist conglomerate, if you think carefully is an oxymoron.

Ummm...NYT is not bi-partisan?

Would you consider New York to be left wing? I would.

https://youtu.be/HWc5_4uKOg8

Molyneux's response to the article.

Lots of grey text in these comments.

It's nothing new, is it? https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... (2014)

How many Tumblr radicals are out there? Both sides are doing it.

personally, i can relate. but where are the Facts? :)

This piece of "journalism" is very biased towards the left. I have noticed that the left has increasingly declared traditional right-wing values as "extremist" or "alt-right" to attempt to whittle down what being right-wing means.

An example of this is abortion. No matter how you feel about it, saying that abortion is murder and should be banned is now, in the NYT's opinion, "alt-right" and "extremist" even though about half of America believes so and this has always been a Right-wing value.

Not only this, but this type of article is why the Right calls NYT "fake news." Not necessarily "fake," but the bias is boldly visible. It doesn't help with media credibility - and then the Left wonders why the Right doesn't take newspapers seriously. For the record, I think "Fake news" is overused - but I do understand, reading this, why the Right loves bashing NYT.

>this has always been a Right-wing value

No it hasn't:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri...

>But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

I will admit that, I was being a little hyperbolic ("always" meaning "last 40 years or so").

Still, it was brewing, as the March for Life did occur right after Roe.

I was struck by the apparent bias of the article. Not until the very end did the author note that the “right-wing rabbit hole” is not the only dangerous rabbit hole to be found on YouTube.

The right has always hated abortion in recent memory, but I think you've gone too far in saying that most conservatives think abortion is murder. Some of the extreme rightists, usually of the religious variety, think that abortion is murder, but rank and file conservatives will probably not tell you that they a woman who gets an abortion(even illegally) should go to prison for life for first degree murder and conspiracy(with her doctor).

Except in those states that have already voted to do so, with a mandate from their constituents. Except for those conservatives.

Notice how none of the heartbeat abortion laws actually set the punishment as the same punishment for murder. So clearly those people do not see elective abortion as equivalent to killing an already-born human.

"clearly"... isn't as clear as it may first appear.

For Example: Plenty of Americans wanted to legalize gay marriages in every state, but proposition 8 lost.

My point: People could very well think that abortion ia the equivalent to killing an already born human, but getting a law to pass takes a majority and I think it's fair to say that America is pretty divided on the issue. To get anything to pass, there will be compromises.

Maybe conservatives feel stronger than the language of the laws that are being passed. Maybe not, but it's anything but clear.

It's easier to say that small extreme groups are exaggerating and then act stunned when trump wins the election. My entire social circle was stunned when he won, because they assumed they knew where conservatives stood.

Prop 8 passed because more people voted for it than against it.

If conservatives control the government, and they all believe abortion is murder and should be punished as such - then they can pass a law declaring that.

If conservatives control the government, and they still can't get an abortion=murder law passed, and need to form a coalition with other conservatives who simply hate abortion but don't think it is murder, then I think that goes to my point that not all conservatives believe abortion is murder.

I think very few right-wingers would agree with that (I'm talking non-religious right). However, they would agree that the abortion doctor should experience prison for being a literal serial killer.

Do you have any stats on the non-religious right agreeing that a doctor performing an abortion should be in prison for murder?

The most interesting thing though, is that the Scandinavian Countries (the leftiest in Europe) have the toughest regulations about abortions - the cut-off term AFAIR is only 12 weeks vs 24 in USA.

Sweden which is the largest Scandinavian country allows it up to 18 weeks with no questions asked, after that you need to apply.

I closed out of the article at the suggestion that the likes of Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin are "radicalizing" anyone. The New York times is such unbelievable garbage.

> When Mr. Cain first saw these videos, he dismissed them as left-wing propaganda. But he watched more, and he started to wonder if people like Ms. Wynn had a point. Her videos persuasively used research and citations to rebut the right-wing talking points he had absorbed.

Good to know apparently none of the right-wing videos used research or citations - only 'talking points'. Or at least it wasn't mentioned.

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