You Tube didn't reply to questions from Tech Crunch? Why, that's shocking. You Tube customer service is the finest ever, hands-down. Must be something temporary or they're short-staffed due to the flu.Research presented at the ACM FAT 2020 conference in Barcelona today supports the notion that YouTube’s platform is playing a role in radicalizing users via exposure to far-right ideologies.
The study, carried out by researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, found evidence that users who engaged with a middle ground of extreme right-wing content migrated to commenting on the most fringe far-right content.
A March 2018 New York Times article by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci set out the now widely reported thesis that YouTube is a radicalization engine. Followup reporting by journalist Kevin Roose told a compelling tale of the personal experience of an individual, Caleb Cain, who described falling down an “alt right rabbit hole” on YouTube.
Their paper, called “Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube,” details a large-scale study of YouTube looking for traces of evidence — in likes, comments and views — that certain right-leaning YouTube communities are acting as gateways to fringe far-right ideologies.
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We reached out to YouTube for a response to the research but the company did not reply to our questions.
The company has tightened its approach toward certain far-right and extremist content in recent years, in the face of growing political and public pressure over hate speech, targeted harassment and radicalization risks.
It has also been experimenting with reducing algorithmic amplification of certain types of potentially damaging nonsense content that falls outside its general content guidelines — such as malicious conspiracy theories and junk science.
It's impossible to visit You Tube and not fall into an "alt-right rabbit hole", isn't it? Happens all the time. I'll be watching an AC/DC video and then, just like Hillary says, those Dark Web Right Wing Videos fly by, you don't know what you really just viewed, you don't really remember what it was, can't find it again, and then free-fall into unintended depths of "alt-right rabbit holes".
I haven't read Switzerland’s Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil study, but I'm betting it's pretty junky science, both capricious and arbitrary.
Oh, yeah - who's Zeynep Tufekci? Here ya go.
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