YouTube Alters Algorithm To Promote News, Penalize Vegas Shooting Conspiracy Theories (usatoday.com) 373
An anonymous reader quotes USA Today:
YouTube has changed its powerful search algorithm to promote videos from more mainstream news outlets in search results after people looking for details on the Las Vegas shooting were served up conspiracy theories and misinformation. YouTube confirmed the changes Thursday... In the days after the mass shooting, videos abounded on YouTube, some questioning whether the shooting occurred and others claiming law enforcement officials had deceived the public about what really happened...
Public outcry over YouTube videos promoting conspiracy theories is just the latest online flap for the major U.S. Internet companies. Within hours of the attack, Facebook and Google were called out for promoting conspiracy theories... Helping drive YouTube's popularity is the "Up next" column which suggests additional videos to viewers. The Wall Street Journal found incidents this week in which YouTube suggested videos promoting conspiracy theories next to videos from mainstream news sources. YouTube acknowledged issues with the "Up next" algorithm and said it was looking to promote more authoritative results there, too.
At least one video was viewed over a million times, and Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein writes that "I've received emails from Google users who report YouTube pushing links to some of those trending fake videos directly to their phones as notifications." He's suggesting that from now on, YouTube's top trending videos should be reviewed by actual humans.
Public outcry over YouTube videos promoting conspiracy theories is just the latest online flap for the major U.S. Internet companies. Within hours of the attack, Facebook and Google were called out for promoting conspiracy theories... Helping drive YouTube's popularity is the "Up next" column which suggests additional videos to viewers. The Wall Street Journal found incidents this week in which YouTube suggested videos promoting conspiracy theories next to videos from mainstream news sources. YouTube acknowledged issues with the "Up next" algorithm and said it was looking to promote more authoritative results there, too.
At least one video was viewed over a million times, and Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein writes that "I've received emails from Google users who report YouTube pushing links to some of those trending fake videos directly to their phones as notifications." He's suggesting that from now on, YouTube's top trending videos should be reviewed by actual humans.
Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with suppressing conspiracy theories, and promoting "authoritative" sources, is that it makes real conspiracies even easier for the authorities to cover up.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but the problem with not is there are about an infinite number of conspiracies, compared to what actually happened.
If you simply go by numbers, you'll wind up with nothing but conspiracies.
Actually scratch that, it's a simpler, bigger problem. Ever since the mid 90s the job of search engines had been to find relevant stuff in a sea of junk. If you don't suppress irrelevant stuff, you get overwhelmed with utter irrelevancies. You know like when porn sites simply copied the dictionary on to every page so that whatever you searched for, the porn site would match.
Same problem. No one wants naive string matching since it's far too easily gamed.
So, search engines have the incredibly difficult task of finding more or less what users want out of a sea of bullshit. They aren't going to be perfect, but if you don't suppress anything, you'll get nothing but porn like the bad old days.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:3)
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It is a difficult problem. I think the suggestion in the article that top ranking posts be reviewed by a human (while that is no guarantee) is good. Theories that challenge the official narrative (usually false, but occasionally true) are nothing new, predating the Internet age. The main difference is the speed at which such theories can be d
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
The American revolution was started by memes like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If the British Empire had had the ability to censor memes and political speech that Google/FB etc have, they'd have been able to stop that.
You can see they're very keen to keep people in their walled garden by the way gab.ai got pulled from Google Play for 'promoting hate speech'. Aka 'allowing speech Google can't control'.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
And how is Google no longer promoting a video the same as them controlling free speech? You can still find the videos if you search for them. Google is no longer advertising them at the top of their list. If they blocked them, then you might have a point .
Here on Slashdot, we get into the same thing here when they claim that mod points are censorship.
And who wants to be interrupted by notifications about kooky end of the world/NASA moon landing hoax/perpetual motion/heat your house with 1 tea candle and a flowerpot/ bullshit except other kooks?
This is just an attempt to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons effect, where the lowest and least destroy the commons.
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Here on Slashdot, we get into the same thing here when they claim that mod points are censorship.
That's not what the word "censorship" means I would say. All posts are visible if you want to see them. If you don't want to see them, that's a preference. It's not censorship.
And who wants to be interrupted by notifications about kooky end of the world/NASA moon landing hoax/perpetual motion/heat your house with 1 tea candle and a flowerpot/ bullshit except other kooks?
Yes, people who want to believe in them can still find them. I'm surprised no one has alleged that it must have been a reverse false flag. That Google wants you to believe a conspiracy by promoting, thus you shouldn't believe. Or that Google promoted it then removed it to encourage you believe so you shouldn't believe. "Truly, you ha
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Here on Slashdot, we get into the same thing here when they claim that mod points are censorship.
That's not what the word "censorship" means I would say. All posts are visible if you want to see them. If you don't want to see them, that's a preference. It's not censorship.
We see a lot of this these days, when people have a one way version of free speech, where they will say any old outrageous thing they want, then get much butthurt when people disagree with them.
Free speech does not mean that only the biggest asshole is allowed to talk, and everyone else is forced to listen. reading slashdot a level 2 and up is the only thing that makes it useable at times. But the people who have the severe psychosexual hangups about anal sex and intercourse with somoene's mother can sti
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Unless we get a hold on this stupidity, the next step will be calling for the death of the others.
It's basically already happening [gawker.com].
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Unless we get a hold on this stupidity, the next step will be calling for the death of the others.
It's basically already happening [gawker.com].
While that seems a little tongue in cheek, I'll accept it. I'll note that it calls for arrests, not killing deniers. Regardless, it is monumentally stupid. Just so we are completely fair and balanced balanced I'll give a link on the other end. http://www.danablankenhorn.com... [danablankenhorn.com]
Or conservative touchstone and purveyor of truth Andrew Breitbart: http://www.thenewcivilrightsmo... [thenewcivi...vement.com]
Re:Avoid it? You're building the goddamn road to i (Score:4, Insightful)
Avoid it? You're building the goddamn road to it!
Nope. Humanity has several groups of folks, and allowing those who allow their sociopathy and perversions to dominate because they are mistakenly assuming they are anonymous is a fine example of the tragedy of the commons. While these bits of human excrement are busy acting like the assholes they are, yet way too cowardly to act that way if they were to meet whoever it is they are messing with in person, the actual legitimate participants just go away. Then a group is left with nothing but the trolls and kooks, who lose interest because after ruining a group, they need their new fix.
My best example is the usenet groups. If I might use an example, the rec.radio.amateur.antenna group at one time had some world reknowned experts that you could learn from, and have a conversation with. It was priceless.
But after teh trolls and kooks came on board, some idiot that thinks antennas work by shooting off bits of themselves, and they guy who wants to go into great detail about how they want to fuck the expert's dead mother ended up chasing the experts away. They didn't need that sort of abuse, no matter how much you want to hand it out, AC.
So now we have closed groups, some of which I moderate, which simply don't put up with that. If the AC wants to be a necrophiliac, or believe that hurricanes are God's diarrhea, they can, just not on my watch.
That's why Slashdot's moderation system allows the AC to be as disgusting as they wish. They are not squelched. Unfortunately, in more tightly focused groups, we don't have time for that. Don't like it? Too bad.
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Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:2)
Actually no (Score:4)
Now, you can argue that you still agree with the message and that we're better off now than we would have been under British rule (I woulda like the NHS), but make no mistake, the Revolution was about as grass roots American as the Tea Party [time.com] was 200 years later.
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How do you define "good and fair common sense"?
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" The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."
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For some, though I question that premise.
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what about idiotic left wing conspiracies? ..or are those considered "good and fair common sense" and therefore allowed?
Regardless of what bias they'll end up peddling, I'd rather not have Oracles of "good and fair common sense" controlling discourse.
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when the idea that the government was spying on everyone, recording all their phone calls, cataloging everything, and going above and beyond the constitution with impunity was just a conspiracy theory?
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No, conspiracy theories lack evidence, period. There is no requirement that they are FALSE theories, since without evidence you have no way of knowing. You know, like it was before Snowden showed us how deep the rabbit hole went.
"The government is listening to everything!" was a conspiracy theory until that exact point - when we got the evidence. It wasn't false.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
I find that most conspiracy theories not only have a lack of evidence but they also ignore lots of contrary evidence. Or they start to delve into increasing complex scenarios to try to explain away any contrary evidence.
For example, the leading conspiracy about Vegas is that it is a false flag operation perpetrated my multiple shooters from multiple locations. Their evidence: multiple points of light from a few videos and what sounds like multiple gun shots sources.
Common sense would say multiple shooters, multiple locations would require multiple rooms. Yet the next morning only 2 windows were shot out from adjoining rooms. Not multiple rooms that had their windows shot out. Their explanation: they were replaced in the middle of the night secretly. Replacing windows that are 150-200 lbs each that required people to cling to the outside of the building in the middle of the night while avoiding being detected by law enforcement is a far more likely to them. Also the hotel and staff are in on the conspiracy because they are hiding the "other rooms" which would be full of gun powder smoke and smell and shell casings.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that most conspiracy theories not only have a lack of evidence but they also ignore lots of contrary evidence. Or they start to delve into increasing complex scenarios to try to explain away any contrary evidence.
Cherry picking the evidence. Conspiracy theories are full of that. You can see both of these in the moon landing hoaxer's arguments.
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"And then we decided to... pull it."
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
The other shooters would not have to be in other hotel rooms they could be on roof tops or other elevated places.
The shots from the videos that the conspiracists cite allege other rooms in the Mandalay not the rooftop or other hotels.
Are the number shell casings found in hotel consistent with the shots fired.
The number would have to be in the hundreds from each room. So far only 1 room with hundreds of casings has been found.
Authorities are trying to identify the number of shots fired including the ones that missed their human targets. There will be a through search to recover shell casings from other possible shooting sites.
There are no other sites unless you want to believe that the hotel and law enforcement are hiding them. Unless you want to believe that heavy windows were replaced secretly in the middle of the night.
In the end, why would someone lie about one vs multiple shooters? What is accomplished by diminishing the number of shooters?
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Let me just open by saying I don't think there were multiple shooters. However:
The number would have to be in the hundreds from each room. So far only 1 room with hundreds of casings has been found.
You can recover casings, if you plan ahead. There's equipment you can just buy off the shelf for the purpose.
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You might have suspected before Snowden, but he provided the proof that was necessary to take it from conspiracy theory to urgent threat.
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That's not what "knew" means. You strongly suspected, to the point where you were convinced it was certainly happening, but you did not have proof.
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"The government is listening to everything!" was a conspiracy theory until that exact point - when we got the evidence. It wasn't false.
Except that wasn't a conspiracy theory. 5-eyes, STASI, KGB all did that and it was well known back in the 1970's.
Conspiracy theories aren't the lack of evidence to make it true. A conspiracy theory is whether or not multiple people have conspired to make it happen "outside of the norm" of what's expected. Let's look at pizzagate which is a favorite of some people as a "but it's alll fake, all the way down". It's not that pedophilia doesn't happen(it does), it's not that there haven't been massive rings(th
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No, conspiracy theories lack evidence, period. There is no requirement that they are FALSE theories, since without evidence you have no way of knowing. You know, like it was before Snowden showed us how deep the rabbit hole went.
"The government is listening to everything!" was a conspiracy theory until that exact point - when we got the evidence. It wasn't false.
It did not take conspiracy minded folk to understand what any technology was capable of what. It dies not take a paranoid mind to understand that a system that is insecure in nature and by design, like the internet, is going to be of interest to authorities when stupid people think it is somehow secure. Snowden just gave details.
I suppose a good example of this inability of people to understand the implications of actions was Sputnik. Most Americans and the world were busy worried about national prestige,
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
And a stopped clock is right even twice a day.
If I keep making insane claims, at some point in time it's likely that I'll even be right. An easy proof: Think of a number between 1 and 1000. Is it 344? No? Ok, let's try again. Think of a number...
If we play that game often enough, I will guess it. Ain't that amazing? I knew what your number was!
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Conspiracy theorists are guessing a number between 1 and 500 trillion. So no, they never get it right before they die, and they don't co-ordinate to make sure they never pick the same number twice.
Sheesh, what a terrible argument.
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Your agument against isn't much better.
Consider that even though the odds of winning a large lottery is something on the odds of 1:127,000,000* yet people still win the big jackpots fairly often.
So claiming that the odds are against something happening are astronomically against it occurring doesn't mean that it doesn't happen surprisingly often.
* last probability I remember hearing, it's probably even worse for some, better for others.
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is that it makes real conspiracies even easier for the authorities to cover up.
Because Watergate was made public by conspiracy theorists, right?
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Watergate is heavily overrated. Nixon had so much enemies that it didn't require any courage to go up against him. Proof is that Bob Woodward was part of it. You can't get any more establishment than that.
Re: Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Google's soft censorship move does suggest that Google thinks the conspiracy theories may be true. Look throughout history - loony wingnuts don't get censored. Censorship is reserved for political dissidents.
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Are there any real conspiracies for which the whistle was blown by a non-mainstream outlet and the story was not very quickly picked up by a mainstream news source?
Honestly curious about this. I can't think of any offhand, but it may be possible.
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I don't know what 'conspiracies' are really but I think I can make the sweeping statement that most of what the mainstream reports about official enemies(Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Trump, Venezuela , Brazil, and other southern american countries) is always heavily compromised(it's usually plain rubbish), and the best way to find out is alternative sources. It can appear in the mainstream, but in such a low key manner that it passes unnoticed. The joke, or should I say the rule is that you have to rea
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The problem with policing ideas is that once you start, you will never be able to stop. And once youtube decides to become a podium for just the enlightened elite, rather than everyone, it will lose all value, and become just another controlled medium, like television or the newspapers.
Of course most of us already predicted this back when the phrase 'fake news' was first heard...
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It started with a legitimate algorithm to stop the engine from making a loud banging noise at cold start by adding more fuel at cold start only, and it ended in a conspiracy to defraud the testers.
This will do exactly the same.
First it seems legitimate to spare people the countless lunatic (as opposed to realistic) conspiracy hypotheses, but soon the filter will grow and will be used for political and other purposes.
Probably duri
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I wonder if this algorithm would have labelled Watergate a conspiracy theory, or a story of the CIA helping overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, or Iran Contra, or stories about the CIA forcing local law enforcement to look the other way for cocaine lords who were funding right-wing dictators in South America, or a story about Muslims training in secret to fly planes into the World Trade Center.
Conspiracy theories are always nutters until some turn out to be true (or at least have a basis in truth). An
it's also hard to convince believers (Score:2)
I personally know several people who have been swept up in the recent "9/11 was an inside job" craze (it's 2017 - why the hell is that even still a thing?) and it's impossible to have a rational conversation with them about it... because if you don't completely buy in or tr
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The weakness is in the use of 'conspiracies'. You can call every 'discrete' (as opposed to open) powerplay a conspiracy and then there are an awful lot of conspiracies, because wherever you look there are powers sneakily scheming and competing to get their way.
What is clear is that the mainstream messages are now promoted at the expense of the independent/alternative sources. This happens with youtube, google, facebook and will happen with every major player.
If you look at conspiracies as typically structur
Re: MODERATORS & GOOGLE ARE CENSORING POSTS... (Score:4, Informative)
Someone said bump fire? :D
3d Print your own Bump Fire gadget!
https://mega.nz/#!Vjp1XaDR!0YL... [mega.nz]
Pic of gadget
https://i.imgur.com/bZuDcZq.pn... [imgur.com]
See it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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bullets don't kill people physics kills people ban phyiscs
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There's a purpose behind placing videos on YouTube besides the daily headlines.
YouTube is as good a place as any other as all others could do the same as google. Google is demonstrating a pattern, a history, of manipulating results.
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Manipulating results? They made the results, invented out of whole cloth. Are you under the impression there is some kind of laws of physics in web searches?
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Given Google's recent behaviour, I find it difficult to accept their stated intentions. While this is a very high profile story, think of how many other less public stories they can suppress. Look at the media take on the Boston free speech event and how they claimed it was brave anti-fascists saying no to white supremacists. In fact it was a small free speech group, which had a black speaker and an audience of various races, being surrounded by a braying mob who did such charming things as throwing bottles
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't there. The only way I have to determine what happened is from reports by other people who were there.
I have to evaluate each source. Some have a history of being reliable and publishing corrections when they get it wrong. Those sources don't support your narrative.
In fact, the only sources that do take the position you do are notoriously unreliable. Brietbart, for example, publishes articles that get debunked in their own comments and almost never post corrections.
If you want people to accept your version of events you will need to provide some compelling evidence that established, proven reliable sources are wrong. Sorry, that's reality.
Re:Conspiracy theories aren't always wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Muddying the waters with fake conspiracies achieves almost the same.
Yeah, but at least without some algorithm blocking all of them, I can decide for myself which sources are more reliable than others and which stories seem plausible. And, as an experienced and knowledgeable human, I can make these choices much better than any algorithm ever could.
I hope they will at least allow the option to turn this filtering off. I don't need Google or anyone else telling me what news I'm allowed or not allowed to see, thank you very much.
Present (Score:2)
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I wonder if the killer's motive will be found, but covered up. The govt. probably remembers how much the press about the Oklahoma City bombing caused people to remember/learn about Waco and Ruby Ridge. They're probably none too pleased about the publishing of the Unabomber's manifesto, either.
Re: Present (Score:4, Informative)
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You didn't watch the tv show called manhunt Unabomber.
So you're basing your knowledge on a TV show. A TV show that doesn't even proclaim it to be a documentary but rather reports itself as drama. That is your source? You do understand that "based on a true story" != 100% true right? There are lots of details changed in every "based on a true story" drama.
For example The Big Sick [imdb.com] is based on the true story of how Kumail Nanjiani met his wife, Emily V. Gordon. Parts of the romance are true. Parts are not true. For instance, the comedy romance is set in the prese
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Re:Present (Score:5, Insightful)
You start questioning the "official" media when what they report don't match your own observation.
That's basically one of the things that fell the communist states. People eventually saw that what they're told by media and politicians does not reflect what they experience. They heard that the plan was fulfilled and overfulfilled yet you could buy nothing in the stores. They heard that they live in the best of all words and saw that everywhere else the world is better.
What's keeping our system afloat is that there is no west showing us how we're being bullshitted.
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"People eventually saw that what they're told by media and politicians does not reflect what they experience."
Ever talk to WTC conspiracy "theorist". They will claim all sorts of things cannot be right in the official accounts. Easy example, they claim the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel. Yes, but the heat need not equal the melting point for the steel fail, it only need get hot enough. Once pointed out, they simply move to something else they do not understand.
The basic conspiracy "theorist" works on
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That's the general tactics employed in such scenarios. You can have the same from religious nuts. They'll jump from topic to topic to topic until they finally find one you're not an expert in, then use that to "prove" their claim.
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Because the professional media is progressing in tandem with how progressively worse everything else is. To think otherwise is to be corralled by them and others. The media these days is horrible. I'd want to hear other views, as always.
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I just noticed that people are conflating to demote the view that the mainstream media is letting us down.
The view that any opposing view is conspiratorial is really a tactic to delegitimze.
People need to read the book called The Smear. Chapter 1 will clarify a lot of what happens in government and the media.
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Unless, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course it is CNN or any of the old news outlets, having "experts" speculating for hours.
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Actually it is just more conspiracy on their part, so your claim that they are just rubblizing other conspiracies is just more conspiracy. All they are doing is using their podium to push their narrative in a way others can't challenge.
What we want are facts, even if that results in boring news.
Prior to Edward Snowden all talk about government mass surveillance was conspiracy. Now we know the government used the "you're a conspiracy nut" tactic to delegitimize anyone questioning them.
The mainstream media
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Re: Unless, of course (Score:5, Funny)
Up next on CNN with Don Lemon: Could a black hole have altered the shooter's brain waves?
Re: Unless, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Up next on CNN: Someone who was pointing out an inconvenient fact....and we've lost the feed.
those trending fake videos (Score:2)
They are not critically reviewing any news they get, they want to be soothed into a sleep.
This means that they have no right to dismiss credible evidence.
Re:those trending fake videos (Score:5, Interesting)
The "recommended videos" algorithm on YouTube is terrible; it's not a user's fault what comes up there. You watch a single news clip which mentions Trump in its title, and for the next week you'll be flooded with recommendations from channels with names like "RealTruthNews" and titles like "DONALD TRUMP is a LIZARD who is now ROUNDING UP DISSIDENTS!" Every time I watch something random, if I even want to try to minimize the amount of terrible garbage that shows up on the front page, I have to spend the next 5-10 minutes clicking to block channels. And for some reason it seems to forget the blocks over time, too. It's a bloody awful algorithm.
Re: those trending fake videos (Score:2)
Omg thanks for the heads-up!
Another YouTube Hit Piece (Score:5, Interesting)
Recall a few months ago, advertisers were pulling ads from Youtube, complaining that their ads were being shown with videos for extremist content, even though this was hardly new. Around the same time, there was much handwringing about Pewdiepie's allegedly racist antics. Also recall that the RIAA recently complained that they're being severely underpaid by Youtube, despite being one of their highest sources of streaming revenue. I can't help but feel there's some coordinated attack against Youtube, particularly against ordinary people's ability to post videos and have them noticed/monetized.
I suspect that ALL corporations (aside from Google)/trade groups/governments would approve of/look the other way to/assist in such an attack. I can't help but recall the idea that a gradual lessening of online liberty is agreeable to big business as it makes the internet less 'wild west' and more 'safe place to spend money'. Take away the copyright infringement, extremist content, and conspiracy theories, and all that's left on Youtube are funny animal videos, 'how-to's and trailers/music videos officially posted by their creators.
Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO it's more that old media is used to telling people what to think. That's why people get into journalism these days. They abhor that dissenting views can be spread online and that they are losing control over information. So they push for censorship.
Google is perfectly happy to censor its products to push the approved narrative. They're on the same political side as those media companies. The only conflict is a difference in opinion how radical they should be.
Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece (Score:4, Interesting)
>Take away the copyright infringement, extremist content, and conspiracy theories, and all that's left on Youtube are funny animal videos, 'how-to's and trailers/music videos officially posted by their creators.
Spoken like someone who doesn't use youtube for anything not mentioned here. Gaming videos, light entertainment, art (film, tv, book, etc) analysis/criticism/etc, video art, documentaries, and the list goes on. The entire thing about search engines is that the stated goal has always been to filter out BS that pretends to be legitimate. In the 90s that was porn, gambling, and browser exploits that pretended to be real content. Now the bullshit has gotten smarter, so the search needs to adapt.
Re:Another YouTube Hit Piece (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even extremist content anymore. It's pretty much any content that could remotely be considered "offensive" by anyone. No matter what or who, if anyone could have a huwt widdle feeling by looking at your video, you're demonetized.
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High time (Score:2)
I assume they rank based on number of subscribers, thumbs up/down, keywords, related video clicks etc. and for the most part perhaps that's fine. But for news and notable events it is a terrible way to rank results. Search on "Sandy Hook" for example and look at all the nutbar results that appear close to the top.
I realise curating everything is unlikely but YouTube / Google can certainly we
Education is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The K12 system in the US teaches kids to pass tests needed to graduate. They donâ(TM)t teach critical thinking and discernment. Free speech relies on a public capable of thinking critically to discern between a bullshit theory and an alternative explanation backed by evidence.
Corporate censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when is YouTube a news site? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Public outcry?" More like "mainstream media narrative." Way to tip your hand there Mr. Author.
The mainstream narrative (not public outcry) here has been for censorship/alteration of Internet algorithms to prefer mainstream sources.
This seems an undesirable development to any but those mainstream sources themselves. (from big media's point of view:) "Alright Internet... we acknowledge that you have the people's eyeballs now. Let us use what thrall we still have over the people to convince them that we should be the only ones they can trust online."
Worse, the news these mainstream companies produce is largely "fake" too, with headlines ever-more tabloid-like, begging for views like clickbait links. Plus, they put a blatant political slant on everything. Hearst famously claimed "I make the news," and he was right. He had editorial sway over what people across the nation would discuss that day, based on what he decided to print.
This whole thing is utter rubbish--a dying mainstream media grasping for relevancy. I say let them die.
wrong promotion (Score:5, Insightful)
20 years ago, that might have been a good choice. These days, not so much.
Yes, the conspiracy theories around that shooting are probably out of control. I checked about five videos of it, 2 handy videos from the grounds, 1 short news blurb and 2 conspiracy videos and boy do these guys need to take less of whatever drugs they are taking.
But (and that's a big butt, in the words of Ben Goldacre) the mainstream media is not exactly an impartial, reliable and thorough reporter of news anymore. Too many real journalists have been cut in the name of profits, too much funding diverted from investigation and background checking, too much power given to click counts and advertiser demands.
I won't trust the mainstream media on anything more deep than the basic facts. Too many stories where I know the backgrounds have been reported incorrectly, or shortened in simplified so much that they are barely recognizable. Too much clear bias has been uncovered by media studies. Too much press releases and press conference statements are parrot-like repeated instead of properly checked before reporting.
Putting less weight on conspiracy theories - good. But it's a step too little. The balance should be tilted against all sensationalist and click-bait reporting, including that of mainstream media. Balance should be up on reporting that includes background information, fact-checking and independent investigations. But hey, that would require some actual human judgement and is hard to put into a couple lines of code.
The reason for conspiracy theories (Score:2, Offtopic)
The only reason conspiracy theories exist is because no plausible story exists to answer all the questions. People don't understand why these things happen and the government typically isn't all too clear about their prevention, response and subsequent investigation.
If the government were fully transparent, it would quell the conspiracy theories. In this case, they should be transparent as to the reason that individual could buy and bring up 400lb of gear, break the window on a high riser and disable the se
Re: (Score:3)
The only reason conspiracy theories exist is because no plausible story exists to answer all the questions.
This is obviously false. Everything about the moon landing is extremely well understood and well documented: the technology, the physics, the fact that it was broadcast live, and samples were brought back, etc. And yet a cottage-industry of conspiracies has grown up around it because people are too dumb to understand the truth or because they do not want to believe the truth.
I don't know anything about you, or which category you fall under, but the questions you are "just asking" (in conspiracy parlance) a
This is just wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Manipulation of this sort is wrong. I'm not into conspiracies but I know this manipulation is just wrong.
If they can do it they will do it to anything that they don't like. What they don't like is irrelevant.
It is no longer youtube when you don't choose.
This is the conspiracy (Score:2)
Capitalizing in events of this nature to implement ways to control what people see or think. To claim that theories that doesn't come from mainstream media are "conspiracy theories" that should not be believed.
Who says.... (Score:4, Interesting)
A Real Conspiracy (Score:4, Informative)
So they are saying ... (Score:2)
This looks like a job for .. (Score:2)
>>> reviewed by actual humans. .. Max Headroom!
Re:Conspiracy theory, or just asking questions? (Score:4, Informative)
Alex Jones's YouTube entertainment channel Infowars is often in the first page of search results for any current news item. The site makes up stories to increase view-count which are later conclusively debunked. They are welcome to use their business model but it should not be promoted as a news source by Google. They absolutely should show up in search results for conspiracies about the news. That would not be censorship, it would be accurate cataloging of information.
Re: Conspiracy theory, or just asking questions? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure real fascism is usually accompanied by leather boots and dark uniforms so clearly... EVERYTHING IS OK.
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That's how Google pushes its leftist agenda.
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Seeing how the NRA is a group of like minded people, I'd say they represent their members quite well.
Many see this: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Being superseded by: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Those of us in the NRA generally see the National Firearms Ac
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AFAIK as I know the majority of NRA members approve of the idea that 'cranks should not be allowed to get guns' but the manufacturers think every threshold for acquiring guns will affect sales.
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Yes PLEASE leave - your a DULT!
Move on to a nice liberal/progressive/racist site promoting BLM the biggest terrorist group in the U.S. right now along with ANTIFA.