Youtube’s recommendation algorithm pushes people to watch ever more extreme content

Youtube’s recommendation algorithm pushes people to watch ever more extreme content

“Soon I noticed something peculiar. YouTube started to recommend and “autoplay” videos for me that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content. … What we are witnessing is the computational exploitation of a natural human desire…. YouTube leads viewers down a rabbit hole of extremism, while Google racks up the ad sales.”   Regardless of topic, Youtube’s recommendation algorithm  recommends videos containing more extreme versions of whatever it is you just watched. This makes sense from a…

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Protests seldom about “object of the protest” but about the protestors?

Protests seldom about “object of the protest” but about the protestors?

Protestors shut down a speaker at an event that is local to where I live. I am not familiar with the speaker or the protestors and their issues but I found this description of interest: Protests are seldom really about the object of the protest. They are about the protesters, who seek attention for their organizations, their causes, their ideologies, and themselves. And they are about achieving a certain kind of emotional release, bordering on frenzy. The scheduled talk by…

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Who spreads fake news on social media? You do.

Who spreads fake news on social media? You do.

As noted here and in the next post, below, fake and false items spread faster on social media than truthful items. Based on widespread news reports, you’d think that bots and the Internet Research Agency were the primary cause but look again: When they looked at who was spreading the wrong stuff, they found it was ordinary users of social media. “We conclude that human behavior contributes more to the differential spread of falsity and truth than automated robots do,”…

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The Doomsday Clock is a propaganda tool

The Doomsday Clock is a propaganda tool

We’ve all seen news quotes like this one: Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight on Thursday amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change. Source: Doomsday Clock ticks closer to apocalypse and 1 person is to blame The Doomsday Clock is a propaganda tool that allegedly represents how many minutes we are from Armageddon and the end of life on earth. It works as propaganda through its ease of understanding, and its appeal to authority (it’s…

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90% of all Youtube views go to the top 3% of Youtube channels

90% of all Youtube views go to the top 3% of Youtube channels

The top three percent of channels got 64 percent of all views in 2006. A decade later, the top channels took 90 percent. The median views per video has plummeted to 89 in 2016 from 10,262 a decade earlier Source: Almost No One Is Making a Living on YouTube | NDTV Gadgets360.com There is now so much content on Youtube that it is very difficult for new channels to get noticed unless they have a promotional budget, outside connections, or…

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Facebook tracks everything; I downloaded my FB dossier

Facebook tracks everything; I downloaded my FB dossier

I downloaded the dossier that Facebook created on me. The dossier contains a list of all Android apps I had on my devices. I deleted the FB app a long time ago so it is a snapshot “in time”, in my case. Their dossier shows that Facebook has shared my contact information with hundreds of organizations, many of which I have never heard of. The dossier includes every personal message sent and received – ever – using Facebook messaging services,…

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Interesting example of how propaganda messaging lives forever and is recycled

Interesting example of how propaganda messaging lives forever and is recycled

The senator [Sanders] from Vermont says 40 percent of guns are sold without a background check. The Washington Post notes the figure came from a small survey in 1993/1994 before major changes in gun laws. The latest data indicate it is 13%, not 40%. But remember, the first propaganda message someone hears is the one that sticks – undoubtedly this figure has stuck with Sanders for a quarter century. Source: Bernie Sanders resurrects a ‘zombie’ claim on gun sales without…

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Double Double Double Cross propaganda

Double Double Double Cross propaganda

A UCLA student journalist reported a story using a photo of a sign in front of a student housing home that said “No Blacks Allowed”. Russian trolls picked up the photo, extensively edited, and then posted it on a Russia run propaganda group called Blacktivist, to emotionally target members of the group. The FB group had 360,000 “Likes”, which was more than the Black Lives Matter group itself. But Blacktivist was a fake group designed by Russian trolls to racially…

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Culture of outrage promotes idiocy

Culture of outrage promotes idiocy

Or as a friend points out, a culture of idiocy promotes outrage! Face palm. A U.S. flag is flying above the flag of Norway. In our political climate, a Norwegian flag, with its blue-and-white cross, was mistaken for a Confederate flag. Questions ensued in the Greenwood neighborhood. Rebecca Morris is a well known author of crime novels that have been on the New York Times Bestseller list. She reported the flying of the “Confederate Flag” to the newspaper and because…

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