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Comment by c7DJTLrn | Hacker News Reader

Putting aside recent allegations, it's disappointing what has happened to Russell Brand's YouTube channel. I watched some of his videos a few years ago and they were interesting discussions of the news with a particular emphasis on questioning everything which I see as a healthy habit. Inevitably though, the algorithm steered the videos to become more clickbaity, divisive, and frankly crazy. He probably saw that outrage-bait videos were getting double the views. YouTube's algorithm plays a massive part in what goes into people's heads and they should be held more accountable.

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Audience capture is a scary thing: https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capt... (a particularly sad and grotesque example).

I think it's something we're all vulnerable too.

It's important to be aware of the incentives you're allowing yourself to operate under.

A little tangential maybe, but it reminds me of this book review I really liked: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/books/review/herman-wouk-...

the algorithm steered the videos

More accurately, the algorithm gave Brand incentive to change his videos. "The algorithm" can't steer the video directly; it needs to influence the content creators. It's the conscious decision, following incentives, of these people to change their content. And while we can understand why they may have done it, that doesn't make them blameless.

Does the creator influence their audience, or does the audience influence the creator?

His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts.

Part of me wonders whether this was calculated once he knew that a major expose was circling. I have zero evidence for this, but you can see the logic. Court a following that is sceptical of everything, and that will see an investigation by the 'mainstream media' as obvious evidence of some deep state conspiracy. You now have an army of cheerleaders, and an alternative renevue source, ready to wage war with.

He pulled an Elon.

Elon Musk also came out as an alt-right troll when he was tipped that an expose about sexual harassment of a flight attendant was coming his way.

It's a point of no return. They know they'll never be accepted in polite company again, so they go rude.

that's an incredibly concise way to put the phenomenon, thanks for wording it so well.

there should probably be a name for it.

Whether the allegations are true or not, I'm curious: how much of Brands content have you watched?

Elon Musk has greatly accelerated green energy innovation through EVs, battery technology, and solar. Are these actions appropriately described as "alt-right"?

When people today talk about Elon Musk's political views they mean his sudden right-wing radicalization in 2022 that happened exactly when he was tipped off about sexual harassment allegations coming his way.

Nah, it was caused by his kid turning trans.

Yup it was the ultimate _red pill_. There have been many such cases none ever so public.

Maybe reality is more nuanced than the binary choice you’re asking it to be reduced to.

e.g. Musk’s companies have done great things in the areas of EVs, batteries, and (most of all) space launches.

…and…

Some of his public-facing behaviour (especially on Twitter) is disturbing, and may be described as ‘alt-right’.

(It’s also disturbing that this has to be spelt out; yet here we are.)

Futuristic technology has certainly been right wing for as long as that has been a concept. Looking to history, some of the most incredible technological breakthroughs any of us can think of, came from what is considered the most extremely right wing society to have existed.

Elon Musk is, first and foremost, a government leech and will follow the free money.

The Twitter Files revealed pretty definitively that government censorship was taking place.

Caring about free speech does not make you alt-right, despite mainstream media’s attempts to paint him as such.

Elon and co’s have done more for progressive causes than basically all other companies combined.

How's that?

I think Elon was always what I'd call "silicon valley libertarian" at best. Nothing he's said or done is really all that surprising, if you go back and look at the things he said and did 10 years ago.

Agreed. EVs and solar are generally considered "lefty" (unfortunately), and I can't think of anything he espoused outside of that which could be considered "liberal".

Interesting idea. It's possible Andrew Tate played this card as well.

I cannot see how the army would be of any use in the eventuality of the major expose. There was this other person with huge following among scepticals of everything (sorry I don't remember the name exactly) who got a huge fine recently. I don't believe justice would look the other way, if anything, it may be attracting scrutiny with attention.

Sure, it just a theory. I had thought several times in recent months how odd his transformation had been though, and this is one possible cause of it.

playing devil's advocate here for a moment : having that 'army' would eventually be useful if say you knew an exposé was on the way because they may become an exploitable market once the mainstream throws you to the wayside over the allegations.

the 'army' can be fed some insider-flavored tripe : "THEY are using this to get me.", "Of course this comes out when i'm trying to expose the truth", etc etc.

So, in other words, the 'army' isn't directly useful against the allegations necessarily, but as a fall cushion once those allegations and possible criminal charges land and alienate the rest of the 'normal' public from you.

Alex Jones/Sandy Hook comes to mind. In some warped sense, the criminal allegations and justice pursuit towards Alex Jones with regards to his comments regarding the Sandy Hook shootings cemented him as a 'victim of the system' for a lot of his adherents; much to the dismay of everyone else.

Money, PR, astroturfed protests, moral support. This can be true even for people in prison in legally non-controversial cases of murder. Quite a few serial/mass killers have fan clubs. I don't mean true crime nerds who happen to be interested in a particular villain, I mean literal fan clubs that write regularly, put money in the prison commissary account, recruit other fans and so on.

It’s pretty simple. If you have to be masculine and assertive in any way now you have to cowtow to the insane right because the left is a hostile space for regular men. The right welcomes you with open arms and basically shields you from any consequences for past wrongs. There is no middle. You can get away with just about anything on the right now with no repercussions.

You can downvote this all you want but you know there is more than a modicum of truth here.

I'd argue that Aba & Preach do a good job of staying in the middle, for an example of YT content creators. They tend to shit on red pill extremists and champagne socialists with equal aplomb.

Just listened to them and it’s not bad. Who else?

Better Bachelor? He's a MGTOW guy but pretty mild-mannered in his message. Talks about dystopian big tech and gender relations issues but isn't a foaming-at-the mouth loon.

Jimmy Dore? He's a hardcore leftist but spends most of his energy attacking corrupt and/or incompetent Democrats and the eternal-war monoparty fueled by the Military-Industrial Complex.

Honestly I've cut down my consumption of sociopolitical commentary a lot in the past year. I feel like most of the channels aren't saying things I don't already know, and having lived outside the US for 10+ years, don't directly affect me much.

I'm a regular man and currently feel a lot more comfortable within the milieu of mainstream liberals.

I honestly have no idea what people are on about when they say stuff like this about "a hostile space for regular men". Like, I just literally have no clue what you mean, no idea what in the world you might be talking about.

You know, regular men. Regular men who want what the 1950's was advertising. Loyal housewife, dinner on the table when you get home from work, reading the newspaper on the recliner totally undisturbed, kids not getting in the way of the sports broadcast or asking questions or requiring time commitment, leaving for the pub for hours with no notice, every-other-weekend fishing trips with the boys.

You know, regular men, who surround themselves with a family consisting of humans expected to behave like loyal-to-the-death dogs. They've earned it, and fo' fkn sho' they goin' collec'.

Regular men dammit! I can't say it any harder.

This but unironically.

You know, regular men. Regular men who want what the 2020's was advertising. Neurotic "partners", Soylent on the table after you lock your work laptop, reading reddit on the sofa totally undisturbed, anti-natalist so kids not getting in the way of the Twitch broadcast or asking questions or requiring time commitment, leaving for your bull for hours with no notice, every-other-weekend Antifa riot with the fellow cucks.

You know, regular men, who surround themselves with no one but are still self-absorbed-to-the-death. They've earned it, and fo' fkn sho' they goin' collec'.

Regular men dammit! I can't say it any harder.

His channel went from 500k to 20 million viewers when he went off the rails. It could all have been an elaborate 4D chess gambit or alternatively he could just like money and attention.

He discovered who his audience is and, rather than recoil and amend his ways, leaned into it.

> His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts.

An observation of mine going back to the 90s when I was a kid and liked listening to the radio: Talk show hosts would always lure you in with something that sounds reasonable, and use it to segue into a topic that sounded absolutely nuts.

That overall trend into insanity sounds like taking the exact same concept and doing it over a much longer timeline lol. That way they've established themselves in the community as a trusted 'podcast' source, and once they have an audience they start blasting crazy shit with hopes that at least some people will listen and consider it "thought provocative"

Can you give an example of what made his videos “totally nuts”?

If you have to ask I don't know what to say. Look at anything from literally the last few years. It's basically Info Wars / Alex Jones.

No, it just shows you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve watched his videos, it is nothing like Alex Jones. I knew you wouldn’t be able to back up your claims.

As I said, if you need to ask why his recent videos are unsound and you've watched them all, then I'm not sure what more I can say. It's going to be hard to have a fruitful discussion and your tone underlines that for me.

If it makes you feel better to think I don't know what I'm talking about then I can live with that.

All I’m asking is for one example of what he’s said that’s “totally nuts”. You’re the one that made the claim, and now you refuse to back it up. Perhaps instead of believing clickbait headlines, you should actually watch his videos and decide for yourself whether they are actually “nuts” or if you’re being lied to.

Depressingly for me, I once admired him, so I'm familiar with his output. I went off him a good few years ago as I felt he was becoming incoherent even then. I then watched a few of his recent videos in horror. The shift was quite extreme and I wonder what happened. This article sums it up perfectly. There are many good examples right there and I've (unfortunately) watched a few of the videos alluded to. Graham Hancock, the great reset. Seriously?!

You can disagree with me if you want, but I've assessed his recent output, and to me it's a confusing mess of half truths, baseless conspiracies mixed in with the odd insight. He's not a good thinker. He's all over the place.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/russel...

This is what I suspected you meant by "totally nuts". The thing is, if you get all your news from the establishment, you think these things are totally nuts.

When you go beyond corporate-backed news and listen to a variety of independent journalists and commentators, you start realizing over time that some of these things that sounded crazy at first may actually be legitimate, and it's not from reptition - it's from how things in the world unfold. You start seeing evidence pile up over the months, you start seeing the lies of corporate media, you do start questioning everything.

So saying something like Fauci should be in jail would have sounded nuts before, doesn't sound nuts when you've seen the evidence pile up over time.

The question I always ask people who are inline with the establishment is this: Which INDEPENDENT journalists do you follow that align with what you think? I never get an answer.

Fine, well let's leave it there. I can see it's pointless trying to convince you.

Like I said, If you have any independent journalists you think I should check out to get educated, then I’m all ears.

I can give you dozens no problem.

The Trump methodology.

I love this one and it was all over Reddit.

Russel Brand, at least 3 years ago, started becoming skeptical of the mRNA vaccines, the profit motives of pharma companies during the pandemic, and the concerning drift to authoritarian thought police all to build an “army” to combat allegations from over ten years ago by multiple women who happen to have some a tv interview but haven’t yet gone to the police.

Masterful!!!

It can’t be the war stuff right? Because he’s always been fervently anti war without much thought other than blowing up people is always bad.

Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist, has been writing about this issue since half a decade now: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po...

> the algorithm steered

He steered. We should not remove his agency for the content he wrote, said, recorded, and uploaded.

Google engineers steer the algorythm, which steers Russel Brand, which steers his followers, which steer.. Google in return?

No, the algorithm (more accurately, the audience) did the steering. His agency did allow him to reject the direction.

Is it even "the algorithm" or is it simply just how people prefer to click crazy shit? We see it with news and pretty much anything else where clicks equal money.

"The algorithm" and/or the people behind it noticed that if User1 watches VideoA and then we show him B-C-D, he stays on the platform for 10 minutes.

BUT when we showed a User2 the videos X-Y-Z (after videoA), then User2 stayed "engaged" for 3 hours. And the new sequence was just established.

The 'machine' is constantly doing A/B and other tests, and it learns, adapts, and continues. The machine just learns what people like and feeds it to them. We can't blame the machine for giving the users what they want.. can we? :)

Some of "the algorithm" is a person at youtube making a concious decision to make "the algorithm" prioritise, for example, longer videos.

I think the algorithm simply suffers the same problem as googles search algorithm: it was gamed years ago. I usually have to block a dozen or so of crazy or low effort content farms for every type of content I watch on youtube and after that the recommendations seem mostly acceptable.

> Inevitably though, the algorithm steered the videos to become more clickbaity, divisive, and frankly crazy.

"The algorithm" didn't force him to go off the crazy deep end. He chose to do this himself. Don't absolve him or that decision.

I think it's more like, he knew this was coming out and it was going to make him look bad, so he preemptively decided to modify his audience to consist of people less likely to leave him once the news did break.

"I think it's more like, he knew this was coming out and it was going to make him look bad, so he preemptively decided to modify his audience to consist of people less likely to leave him once the news did break."

The accusations mainly seem to be from around a decade ago (give or take). How long do you have him down "modifying" his audience?

I personally think ... well I don't know the bloke at all, only his public persona. However we are seeing an outrageous pseudo trial by media (all of them) and ill-informed public "opinion" before he is even in the dock facing his accusers. How on earth can he face 12 unbiased jurors with this bloody nonsense going on?

Perhaps we should adopt a professional approach to trying crime, involving trained magistrates instead of the old school "12 men and true" bollocks. The jury system doesn't really cut it these days in the face of your and other shrill accusations. I gather that the Netherlands does that, for example.

The accusations are older, but they picked up a lot of steam recently to the point I'm sure he got a bunch of media inquiries asking for comment. That's what tipped him off that it was about to become a big deal and triggered his rightward shift (the accusations had never previously been a big deal affecting him).

> the algorithm steered the videos to become more clickbaity, divisive, and frankly crazy. He probably saw that outrage-bait videos were getting double the views. YouTube's algorithm plays a massive part in what goes into people's heads and they should be held more accountable.

I'm a YouTuber, and I want to be very clear on the above.

I know I would get way more views (and subscribers, and money) if I did more stupid clickbait stuff. But I don't want to, that doesn't make me happy. Also, professionals should not do that out of being professional.

A house painter would make more money if he did a rush job, and a TV reporter would get in the news more if he told blatant lies on live national TV. Just because a person can make more money short term doing something, it doesn't mean they should not take 100% of the blame for doing it.

I could very easily make videos of doing highly illegal stuff, which would likely get a zillion views. Am I then less responsible for doing it?

I see what your saying, but your examples don't quite work.

A reporter telling lies would presumable be called into their managers office and told to shape up or be fired. A painter doing rush jobs would get bad reviews and no referrals, and eventually stop getting jobs. Those behaviors are not incentivized.

A youtube creator milking the algorithm is rewarded for this behavior, with more views, more ad money, etc.

Are we really surprised that people are doing what they are incentivized to do?

I think my examples do actually work well, in that the painter and the TV reporter ARE incentivized, short term to do those clickbait things, in exactly the same way YouTube creators are.

In all cases, reality will catch up to them, and in the long term they will be punished for what they did in the name of short term gains.

What's the long-term reality catch-up mechanism in the social media space?

In this and other examples, getting deplatformed and losing your sources of income.

They already made millions - it doesn't work.

And in fact, Google and others profit from this carnage.

Through neglect, passive sabotage, and active direction, our society degrades to the point that NO ONE can make clickbait content.

> YouTube Blocks Russell Brand From Making Money Through Its Platform

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/arts/russell-brand-youtub...

That's a consequence of him being a [alleged] rapist. It's not a consequence of him publishing nonsensical and pretentious conspiracy theory videos.

A reporter telling lies with plausible deniability, like a manipulative headline clarified in the middle of the article, is actually expected. Some Youtubers at least are scumbags for real money

The painter example makes sense since his customers are his users, so the incentives are aligned.

The journalist is not like that. His users are the readers, but his customers are the advertisers. And if he is lying and gaining clicks and ad engagement, he is more likely to be called in by his boss for a promotion than a scolding.

> A reporter telling lies would presumable be called into their managers office and told to shape up or be fired.

I can't help but read this and feel like you must not be familiar with the UK press, particularly the tabloids. The UK tabloids make shit up all the fucking time with next to zero consequences.

For a more US centric take you might want to read Ryan Holiday's book "Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions Of A Media Manipulator". He goes into specific detail about his time when he was in charge of marketing for American Apparel and how he got US media outlets to write completely bullshit stories for him and others clients like Tucker Carlson to get publicity. There's hardly anyone doing proper fact checking at a lot of these publications anymore, especially on smaller stories, because their print revenues have collapsed since the internet and they're desperately trying to stay afloat.

> A house painter would make more money if he did a rush job

If the way to find a painter is to use the yellow pages, and the order inside the yellow pages is by the time the to finish painting, most of the jobs will go to people that make a rush job, thus pushing painters into that direction.

The difference between questioning everything and rejecting everything from the mainstream is an important one which Brand and many others seem not to understand.

if you have a modern bar for accuracy, you require evidence. when you require evidence, because you've spotted a ton of lies in the media, most of it gets rejected.

we did not ask for untrustworthy media, algorithms, exploitation and bribery dictate that.

Oh, I think he understands. Constantly criticizing mainstream media for low standards while having far lower standards yourself is the kind of thing that you have to put significant ongoing effort into rationalizing.

Consumers of alt media can do it thoughtlessly. Producers? I'm not convinced.

> ... having far lower standards yourself ...

How are we measuring that? Firstly, as a nitpick, the mainstream media these days is Russel Brand. He has an audience comparable to a group like CNN. Possibly slightly larger.

Secondly, the quality of the podcasters is generally better on net than the big media companies. They tend not to be gung-ho all-weather war supporters for example. People like Brand might get a lot of details wrong but have more coherent takes on big issues.

Thirdly, and related to secondly, the podcasters tend to take less money from big entrenched interests in the military-industrial complex or big pharma. They rely less on being spoon fed access to powerful people. It is easier to follow their incentives and style than work out what a media company is trying to push this week.

I would question your third point in the spirit of doubting narratives. This is the podcasters' narrative, but intuitively a podcaster has less scale and therefore is much cheaper to be incentivised towards specific narratives.

Oh, sure. It costs nothing to buy off a single podcaster. There are blatant shills all over the place.

Still better than cable news. CNN literally hired Clapper as a presenter - you couldn't pull a stunt like that the way most podcasts are structured. There'd have to many opportunities for people to press him on the Orwellean spy system that he helped set up. I don't recall any support for domestic mass surveillance among the US voting public.

Compare that to someone in the CIA buying off Joe Rogan - he might sell out some day, but if he got so bad he was offering softball interviews to the likes of Clapper then he's not going to be able to keep the same pull he does now. People have a distaste for that level of blatant propaganda.

Journalism. Reaching out to involved parties for comment, boots on the ground, making retractions, reserving judgement, citing sources, seeking and contextualizing opposition and/or expertise, making an attempt to prefer observation over interpretation, pushing back on wild claims, etc etc etc.

I was acutely aware of partisan bias in MSM but I didn't appreciate just how much they actually did get right until the deluge of "MSM sux, here's what THEY don't want you to know" replaced it.

You do realise he has a large team of journalist behind him?

If they are doing any of the above, it would be a 180 degree change from the Russel Brand that I blocked from my feeds a few years ago.

So you’re making assumptions of Brand’s content that you haven’t seen in years? What are you basing your assumptions on? What the journalists tell you? Seems like a pretty disingenuous take.

This is a good summary of the threads I'm seeing here.

Just in terms of viewership do you have a specific source for saying his audience is comparable?

I am having trouble finding something reasonable. e.g.

6.58M youtube subscribers 80 million television households as subscribers for CNN

Although these numbers are not really comparable

~700k daily watchers for CNN: https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-cable-news-ratings-... 800k video views for Russel: https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/russellbrand

Although of course video views != daily watchers (one person can watch multiple ones & that number can be juiced)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/business/media/cnn-profit... or https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2023/03/14/cnns-rat... for example - CNN is pulling a viewership of ~400k people and you can see Brand's videos generally averaging above that on YouTube.

I agree this points to a somewhat similar level of reach, but you can't actually compare views to viewership

> People like Brand might get a lot of details wrong but have more coherent takes on big issues.

The dude has a video titled Hawaii Wildfire: Climate Change or Blackrock?

His views are only coherent in the sense that he thinks everything is a shadowy conspiracy, which morons gobble up

A very good concise insight

Don't buy into the bad faith arguments. They aren't genuinely "asking questions," they're trying to bring what they already believe into the mainstream.

AKA https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/JAQ_off

I forget where I read/saw it, but someone once made the point that because there are an infinite number of questions that can be asked, someone is always making some kind of statement based on a conscious decision about which questions to ask, and which not to ask.

I think this is especially true when someone is repeatedly ask the same kinds of questions while simultaneously ignoring lots of other really good questions.

How are you determining what people (strangers) "already believe"?

Talking to them on the internet/real life over the past ten years

To me, that feels like a broad brush and lazy way to shut down any uncomfortable conversation. If you find it works for you, more power to you

Epistemologically you can't be completely sure, but when someone's discourse is habitually interwoven with rhetorical gambits and logical fallacies it's not unreasonable to conclude that they're actually a bullshit artist.

>Don't buy into the bad faith arguments.

the little known super-power : spotting bad-faith arguments flawlessly.

It's amusing they recognize NPCs that uncritically repeat the establishment narrative and question nothing, but don't recognize they are doing the same thing in reverse.

"I Support The Current Thing" vs "I Oppose The Current Thing"

sure, but one does not get clicks for telling people that "the current thing" is nuanced.

It's time to end the YouTube monopoly, too much of this nonsense we have seen in the last few years, it's nothing but virtue signalling and pandering to one side without ascertaining facts.

I think he just found it harder to draw the line at where the lies end and real lies begin..

Can say the same thing about Jordan Peterson, no? Content from 5-10 years ago was interesting. Now I have him muted on X.

I'm convinced that these platforms are a huge driver, if not the main driver of social and political polarisation.

24/7 365 "Breaking News" TV - AKA spin factories - complete with scrolling tickers and a combative talking head format (with programs that may or may not have actual trained journalists, but so-called experts at expressing their biased opinions) is the other huge driver.

That's pretty well understood though, right? If love and fear are primary drivers of engagement and fear is a stronger emotion than love then steering viewers to view things that upset them is in the best interest of the company that earns its revenue from keeping them engaged.

Rapid moral change is the main driver, but internet platforms may have accelerated that.

the money/power/fame are the drivers, the social media platforms open up the search for those things to a much wider audience while espousing the importance.

that is to say : social media isn't innocent, but it's a co-factor in the larger human-dominating infinite search for power and fame.

I think both Peterson and Brand were always these people, social media just allows them to monetise it.

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