Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

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You have to filter it manually for them. There's no other way, though in a year or two we might start to see products backed by true multimodal models that are actually worth looking at.

I don't mean to seem blunt or rude. I don't actually have kids, so even if I were inclined to judge, I've no basis. But just looking at what YouTube has been doing over the last couple of years, even as a premium subscriber and so never seeing ads - I mean, it's terrible, it's as if it is actively trying to drag me down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole, in the sense that I might watch a half dozen videos today about simulated jet-plane gunfights in DCS, and tomorrow I'm seeing recommendations for what I only recognize as "Intro to 5G Covid Conspiracy (CONT 101, 3 credits)" because I have studied the subject. I report these videos and they stop coming, until the next time.

It isn't as though there is a game here on the other side of which for there to be an adversarial mind, but there are times when it feels enough that way - when I'm half asleep, perhaps, and most especially - that I just don't even open the app or website entirely, but listen to an old podcast episode instead because those at least I can trust. (I pay subscriptions or buy copies; anything 'ad-supported' is a hard stop. I prefer people just say outright 'this is what I have and what I think it's worth, let's see if we can make an honest deal' because I am an American.)

I am seriously considering hosting a local Invidious instance, or similar, and terminating my now about ten-year YouTube Premium subscription. Ads are a technical problem that I was happy to pay a few bucks a month rather than however many hours to solve. I did enough years of sysadmin work for a living that I no longer enjoy it even slightly, so that's no small trade for me to consider. But now I'm really looking hard at what that money's going to, and by the sound of things lately, I'm among the least enthusiastic of such critics.

Kind of weird, because I use youtube premium, a LOT. I don't get anything political, or conspiracy theory. I do get WAY too many wood working suggestions, AI tech, and astrophysics stuff. However, these are at the expense of the other channels on topics that I've subscribed to, like body weight fitness, health nutrition, some music stuff.

The YouTube alg is obviously broken. By broken, it's optimized for monetary profit. I get tired of specifically having to search out my other channels that I subscribe to, that I'm contemplating giving up Premium, and only using it on an as needed basis, since I need to search for my workout channels anyway.

I don't even know how it makes sense for it to do what I see it doing!

It isn't as though I would be asked to pay more or less either way, and I can't imagine the ad placements on that malignant pareidolia slurry are worth as much as on actual content: I recall reading that Premium distributions to creators are scaled to predicted revenue on the ads that would've been shown - or actual revenue? I don't actually know they don't auction the slot as normal, and it would make a lot of sense if they did. In any case, I would think that would tend to make the slop worth less to try to divert me into, because whether or not I actually see those ads, they're still going to only sell to fringe psychos and so sell for much less than when I'm watching the LPs and stream VODs that are the vast bulk of what I actually do watch - nothing highbrow I grant, but nothing I or anyone else need be embarrassed to be seen with, either: just plain old 21st-century light entertainment you can sell razor blades or home loans next to, no problem.

I can't model it in my head in a way that doesn't have YouTube hurting itself massively with this, and though it's titanic enough to survive like that for decades, it won't last forever. It would help explain all the new revenue streams we see them lately and somewhat desperately adding. But a really convincing just-so story is always first and easiest sold oneself, and maybe there's something here I'm missing.

My theory is that brain-dead slop gets more view time.

Similar to the theory that Netflix movies are optimized to be mediocre without a satisfying ending because it keeps you unsatisfied enough to keep watching something else

Think of it: challenging satisfying content is like a plate of fresh fruit or veggies. You can only spend so much time consuming it before you're full.

AI-generated viral conspiracy SHOCKING FACE content is like chocolate-coated salted nuts for your brain: no fiber, you can consume unlimited amounts for an infinite amount of time (which means watching aaaaall the included ads)

Well sure, obviously, superstimulus is superstimulus, what I'm saying is I think the engagement maximizer must be running totally unclutched from reality and I think it's started burning down YouTube because it can want nothing in the universe save to transform all matter and energy into wonderfully, infinitely rewarding eyeballs. You know, the classic failure mode.

I guess we've just found what the "paperclip maximizer" will really be maximizing... one AGI paving the universe with infinitesimally short synthetic MrBeast videos, and another one doing the eyeball thing.

Ever thus. This is what Yudkowsky and his whole passel of too-clever-by-half puppies lack the nous to realize they are quite correctly afraid of - more specifically, of when it starts happening to things whose destruction for recycling would be a lot more real and impactful than one video website and a few thousand jobs.

Sorry. I don't really have a joke to play that off with, unless it's what always happens when some of the very cleverest people on Earth get together and stop listening to anyone else for too long. Five to ten milliseconds is enough to get that ball rolling, I think, but everything goes faster these days.

War gaming and anything related to war really seems to have a pull into videos that tend to "Hello, would you like to become a Nazi".

My typical viewing on YT sounds kind of like yours. Wood working, AI, Astro, some rebuilding of heavy equipment. That's all fine. It's when you get into any war tech that it quickly spirals off into some rather insane conspiracy crap, even if the videos you watch are just reasonable documentaries.

Eh, I would say yes and no, for a couple of reasons.

First, it definitely isn't just miltech, though you are absolutely correct it is heavily that. That was top of mind for me today, but I would say there is also, for example, "light side" and "dark side" machining/mechanical content. Abom79 and Blondihacks are pure "light side". Zip Ties and Bias Plies was "dark side," though as a fellow Borderer-descended redneck asshole, I am sure that as with many former "Canadian American Patriots," he has smartened up pretty damn fast in recent months. (I wouldn't know; I got fed up with his ignorant, drunk, belligerent, impertinent comments on my government quite a long time ago.) AvE started out light side, lost his way for a while, and lately is with genuinely admirable sheepishness comporting himself so as to suggest embarrassed recognition of his prior excesses. And there are lots I just "don't recommend channel"/"not interested" as soon as I see it. I also see the same for gaming - I like some classic Doom mods that some fascist infants also have strongly stupid opinions about, for example - and from this I conclude that there is something in essentially any genre that could be pressed to support this sort of subtext-to-text transition in at least some stage. I doubt I would observe the same in makeup tutorials, for example, but the days when eyeliner improved my looks lie decades behind me now. And who knows anyway? I haven't actually checked. For all I know, half an hour of that, maybe I start hearing about "DID sfw agere unalived" and the trans-flavored "stranger danger" moral panic of the moment.

Second, miltech and history content on YT does not remotely for the most part constitute "reasonable documentaries," unless you refer to forgotten VHS and DVD transfers that are nearly never surfaced anywhere unless you search for them by name, and when you do, they spin for a glacial age before playback can begin. Not to indict modern "creators" (screenwriters, actors, directors, artists etc) en masse, of course. But few today even strive for the standard that older stuff, made before mere record-high count of eyeballs was taken as the only end, reached as a matter of course.

People do as good a quality of work today as ever, of course. It becomes available for streaming over the web only by accident and happenstance, and if that sounds like what a conspiracist would say, keep reading: sure, you'll find a million people on YT talking about the stupid Nazi UFO sex fantasy, and what the hell good is any of them? No one there will help you decide whether you think, if Lee Atwater didn't die of that damned brain tumor, we could've never ended up with Trump in the White House at all. Few I suspect could even appreciate the question.

> tomorrow I'm seeing recommendations for what I only recognize as "Intro to 5G Covid Conspiracy

A simple trick to see what conspiracy stuff is being pushed in your area is to open yt in incognito, accept cookies, and then watch one or two videos with titles in non-latin languages. Kpop fancams, NHK news, that kind of thing. Then look at the recommendation column. You will see two types:

- "related videos" (similar topic and language to what you were watching)

- "geo-IP videos" (not in the language that you were just watching, but clearly based in your country. These are almost always garbage)

Yeah, I see this as a side effect whenever I drop a YT link into a private tab that I don't want even theoretically influencing what happens on my actual account.

Usually links like that come from here. It's quite eye-opening, like turning on showdead in your profile and just rolling around in the [flagged] [dead] "politics" for awhile.

But you will want to take a shower after, and you should; when Nietzsche said it looks back, this is what he meant, and it will ruin you if you let it. We all eventually become what we pay enough attention to, and we always pay a great deal of attention to what we hate. That's why it's worth so much money to get us doing it.

(I know I'm not saying anything new to you the extremely veteran commenter to whom I reply, of course. But as of course you also know, there are always young 'uns here who hadn't seen it said so plainly yet.)

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