Study of YouTube Comments Finds Evidence of Radicalization Effect (techcrunch.com) 265
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: 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 federale 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.
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. Per the paper, they analyzed 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels -- broadly classifying the videos into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and the Alt-right -- and using user comments as a "good enough" proxy for radicalization (their data set included 72 million comments). The findings suggest a pipeline effect over a number of years where users who started out commenting on alt-lite/IDW YouTube content shifted to commenting on extreme far-right content on the platform over time. The rate of overlap between consumers of Media content and the alt-right was found to be far lower. "The researchers were unable to determine the exact mechanism involved in migrating YouTube users from consuming 'alt lite' politics to engaging with the most fringe and extreme far-right ideologies -- citing a couple of key challenges on that front: Limited access to recommendation data; and the study not taking into account personalization (which can affect a user's recommendations on YouTube)," reports TechCrunch.
"But even without personalization, they say they were 'still able to find a path in which users could find extreme content from large media channels.'"
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. Per the paper, they analyzed 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels -- broadly classifying the videos into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and the Alt-right -- and using user comments as a "good enough" proxy for radicalization (their data set included 72 million comments). The findings suggest a pipeline effect over a number of years where users who started out commenting on alt-lite/IDW YouTube content shifted to commenting on extreme far-right content on the platform over time. The rate of overlap between consumers of Media content and the alt-right was found to be far lower. "The researchers were unable to determine the exact mechanism involved in migrating YouTube users from consuming 'alt lite' politics to engaging with the most fringe and extreme far-right ideologies -- citing a couple of key challenges on that front: Limited access to recommendation data; and the study not taking into account personalization (which can affect a user's recommendations on YouTube)," reports TechCrunch.
"But even without personalization, they say they were 'still able to find a path in which users could find extreme content from large media channels.'"
Of course it has to concentrate on the far right (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't be radicalized to far-left ideologies after all.
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Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly - you're sucking down the kool-aid so fast you think Trump is a nazi put into power by russian hackers and is going to steal the 2020 election. He's such a threat that he needs to be impeached immediately- except we'll wait a month to turn the impeachment over to the senate because the case is so rock solid that it's going to be obstructed there. In fact, if only we can call some more witnesses now that it it's in the Senate you'll really see how evil Trump is! Not that it matters anyway because we'll just impeach Trump again until we get the answer we want.
But yeah - tell me again how the left in the US is a bunch of amateurs. oh yeah - they certainly ARE acting amateurish.
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical DNC definition of radicalization: "anyone who points out DNC wrongdoing".
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I have been radicalized. Only, I did that by not changing while the public consensus of what is sensible has gone off the rails.
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump's own people are saying that he witheld military aid he'd previously given to Ukraine because he wanted Ukraine to help him politically. When this whole shitstorm started their argument was 'there was no quid pro quo', which is obvious BS because he froze the aid, and only released it after it came to light in order to try and hide his guilt.
If this was tried in an actual court this would be the most clear cut case ever. But it's not tried on an actual court, it's being tried in a political body, where republicans (remember, the same people who tried to impeach a president over a blowjob) have no entirely abandoned the 'there was no quid pro quo' argument and moved on to full-on batshit insane partisan mode of 'so there was quid pro quo but so what'. I mean look at this so called argument by his lawyer:
So they're now admitting there was indeed quid pro quo, but saying that it's not impeachable.
It's basically arguing that the president can do anything to get him elected as long as he believes it's in the public interest. You know which systems of government used to work that way? Monarchies. The argument boils down to a Nixonian 'when the president does it, it's not illegal'.
Watching this unfold from abroad has been amazing: the republicans used to make a lot of noise about limited government and checks and balances and whatnot, but that's all gone now. They're now actively working as a team to basically set a historical precedent which states that so long as you control the Senate and the presidency, the president is basically above any and all laws and can do whatever the he wants, and if he gets impeached the senate can just block all witnesses, ignore all the evidence, and acquit him, who gives a fuck about the constitution or the rule of law. I mean if the sides were flipped and it was the democrats pulling this sort of bullshit the republicans would have their heads exploding. But since it's their guy, they happily fall to their knees and declare: 'All bow to Donald the First, protector of the Realm!'
This is how republics fall. It's happened numerous times before and it'll happen again, and there's nothing special about the US that makes you guys immune to it. The framework that's there to protect you from tyranny is the constitution, and the american constitution is a fine document, but it's just that. A document. It's not a magical talisman that does anything on it's own, it requires the politicians to actually adhere to the ideas and principles contained within it for it to work. As Schiff put it: "No Constitution can protect us if right doesn't matter any more." When men abandon any and all principles and the rule of law to further their own political goals at any cost, the slide to totalitarianism has begun. I mean, my history lessons taught me that you guys specifically had a revolution and a war to get rid of this kind of bullshit, but I guess nothing really matters anymore, so long as your side is on the throne. The idiocy of this mentality is beyond mind boggling, but I mean, it makes sense, you have to be a literal idiot at this point to think that Trump's serving anybody but himself.
Have fun with your newfound love for monarchy man, and remember to bow low to your ruler, for his is the absolute power!
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Nope. [nytimes.com]
The situations are not comparable in the slightest, because Biden nor Obama for that matter did not gain any political benefit form themselves by pressuring to fire a corrupt prosecutor for whose firing there was widespread support in the west.
Re: Of course it has to concentrate on the far ri (Score:4, Insightful)
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As other posters have said, his acquittal is one step closer to a monarchy. And many Republicans are cheering and prodding him on, every step of the way. It's a sad day for democracy.
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence the label of 'useful idiot'.
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Left / Right is the wrong paradigm, what really matters is how much politicians are willing to protect citizens from corporate abuses and how much they stand up to corporate lobbying and how bought they are. Neither Democrats or Republicans are much good in this respect.
Here in the UK we have a politician who would look out for people's interests, he's on his way out after constant media assassination even from those purportedly on the left.
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
"and evil mens ideologies that tell us if we only blame the WHITE MALES, or the Christians, or the non real Americans, or whatever, that we can "take our country back."
Again - you're sucking down the kool-aid. cancel culture, metoo, blue checkmarked twitter brigades, colleges banning speech that upsets people but demanding people attend speeches that "punch up" for their own good. This is all a result of "education" - not for critical thinking but for "rightthink".where the masses have been led into such a tizzy that even ardent leftist feminists are attacked as TERFs for not holding the correct viewpoint - IE "simple ideologies"
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The problem is that you're using language saying in all cases [wikipedia.org] X is true. The parent post, on the other hand, is using language saying there exists [wikipedia.org] cases where Y is true.
It's easy to disprove the former, and easy to prove the latter. If you're wondering why more people don't agree with you when you put forth such an argument, this is part of the problem. Also, I want to be clear that it's not limited to either side in this debate. People on both sides need to stop saying "everyone on the right/left think
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And that's all you have on your side: imagination. Imaging people who simply disagree with you as evil nazi boogeymen. Give your head a shake and let the programming fall out. You might see the world through your own eyes for a change.
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Its interesting isn't it, that there seems a clear association between the rejection of hard right ideologies and education.
That's not exactly what the PP said. "It happens on far left college campuses." Not college campuses in general. 'Education' covers a wide range of subjects and includes people with a broad range of political views.
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ts interesting isn't it, that there seems a clear association between the rejection of hard right ideologies and education.
Pretty obviously because the hard left ideologies are what's taught in universities these days. Of course, if you think there's anything "hard right" on YouTube, BitChute will break your brain. I'd love a real alternative to YouTube, but damn BitChute's got to do something about their recommendation algorithm.
ideologies often offer simple answers, in the form of "the enemy", or "the one to blame".
Yup, pretty much any ideology. The Man is keeping you down, or is it the invader? The important thing is that your shitty life is someone else's fault!
It's good when you have an idea, but it's terr
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, it's because of empathy. It's much easier to empathise with someone you know or at least understand. Education brings that understanding and college/university often brings exposure to a wider range of people too.
You see the same thing with "concerns" over immigration. They tend to be higher in areas with low immigration because in areas where there is more of it people get to know the immigrants and see that they are actually decent human beings and that all the stuff said about them is mostly BS.
More over the ideology of the left tends to be a bit more complex. It's not just "the man", that's a term referring to a system and the biggest hurdle for left leaning ideologies is usually explaining them. It's a weakness that is very easy to attack because all an opponent has to do is offer a simple but wrong explanation and people will cling to it rather than try to understand something even slightly more involved.
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You see the same thing with "concerns" over immigration.
Those concerns are ... "problematic", to be sure.
More over the ideology of the left tends to be a bit more complex. It's not just "the man"
Right, it's "the patriarchy". Much more smarterer than "the man".
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I'm convinced that most people who complain about people using the term patriarchy haven't even the most basic understanding of what it is. They think it's just men in charge or something.
Which is a great example of telling a simple lie about something which is then very difficult to debunk because it requires an much more extensive rebuttal.
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The patriarchy of course needs no definition, because if you disagree in any way with its oppression, you're a part of it and can be ignored. Ineffable, really.
But the point is, it makes your problems "Someone else's fault", which is comforting ... unless you actually think about it for 5 minutes. After all, if all your problems are your fault, then you have the most power to fix them. This is the problem with all these political ideologies, they tell you not to fix what you do have control over, by dist
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I guess you have no idea how much feminists argue over patriarchy then...
Yes, the "someone else's fault" thing is very comforting and powerful, that's why it's popular with conservatives. Look at Trump for an example - it's all immigrant's fault, and we can do the most simplistic and obvious thing to fix it, build a wall. It's so mind-bogglingly simplistic and wrong, but very easy to communicate.
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Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:5, Insightful)
Radicals on all ends of the political spectrum are vile, that's why it's easy to point to them if you're sitting on the other side and claiming that your political enemy is a Nazi (if you're on the left) or a Stalinist (if you're on the right) and that this is where his ideology is. That's why I personally don't like the one dimensional left-right dichotomy. In their most radical, authoritarian form, both ideologies are despicable.
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Right, left, the ends come together at the extreme.
If you don't want to seem an ideologue, it suffices to say "extreme ideologies" without grinding your axe left or right. But these days it seems to be those "extreme moderates" that get people up in arms, with their dangerous ideas like "free speech" and "national sovereignty". Scary stuff. Next thing you know one of those extremists will be selling a book suggesting "if you want to make you life better, pick some little part of your life and make it bet
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No, there isn't a correlation between education and rejection of hard right ideology.
There's a high correlation between certain courses in universities and hard left ideology that alters the Overton Window so far on a skew that centrist conversation becomes indistinguishable from far right ideology.
You do realise that "the enemy" and "the one to blame" is exactly what the ultra left ideologies of identity politics enshrine as virtue, yes? And agreed, that simplicity is very attractive. I see very little d
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Unlike the right who are not claiming "we're the victim", they just lament how they are being silenced by the media system and how The Truth is getting suppressed, right?
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The right are claiming that their voice is being villified, while the ultra left are being treated as virtuous. There is extreme disparity between the representation of the extremes.
Both should be acknowledged as existing, kept an eye on, and perceived, as used to be, that you'll get the odd loon shouting unsavoury things from time to time (but we all have better things to spend our time on).
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Someone by the name of malkavian lamenting that an odd loon shouts unsavory things... ;)
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Artur Axmann might disagree...
We all have skewed perspectives. (Score:5, Insightful)
In any actually-balanced-and-fair relationship, each participant feels like the other one gives less and gets more. This is a perception bias and nearly all of us suffer from it. I first learned about it from a marriage councillor.
People anywhere in the left end of the spectrum will see no end of evidence of a bias towards the right. People out on the right end of the spectrum will see no end of evidence of a bias towards the left. There is no convincing them otherwise, as their political views distort their perceptions of everything. This is true of everyone.
The world is so big....with so much data, that it will always be possible to create the perception of favoritism with not-very-much filtering.
We see that played-out right here in slashdot comments in nearly every post. People start pointing out all the leftist extremism causing harm, with replies pointing out all the rightist extremism causing harm, each poster feeling like he just one-upped the other. Over and over again these same conversations take place, because nobody ever changes their polarity based on data from random Internet forums. They just come here to feel like they fought the good fight.
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And yet - whose viewpoints are being actively silenced on the internet?
Re: We all have skewed perspectives. (Score:2)
If you don't like riding at the back of the bus, start your own bus company!!
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I'm the owner of most of the TV networks/news outlets in the county. Why should I put out a fair and balanced news feed?
No system is perfect, and the continual appeal to edge cases is just crazy. Appeal to utopia is a logical fallacy!
What should be happening is that people DO accept stuff they disagree with, and that people may have perfectly valid reasons to think in ways other than your subjective opinion about something.
Failing to do that is bigotry, plain and simple.
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Ask the same question, before BET existed, while being black.
The tyranny of the current system is that all communication is being funneled through private enterprise in a manner that cannot be challenged in any meaningful way.
The point of freedom of expression is that people need access to other people or oppression will follow. Couching your logic in the gymnastics of " We can use tax payer dollars to construct a global information infrastructure, that is propped up at every level by injection of govt inpu
Re: We all have skewed perspectives. (Score:2)
The only winning move is not to play.
Re: We all have skewed perspectives. (Score:2)
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The bias that annoys me the most is the one where lemmings agree with their party 100% and anything the other side does must be wrong. People who agree with their party 100% should be a rarity. People need to stop being followers and think for themselves for a change. Then we would have such idiotic terminology as RINO or DINO.
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I first learned about it from a marriage councillor.
That's likely your problem right there. The marriage counselling industry is basically a scam because their paycheck is tied almost exclusively validating the wife, yet you're assuming that it's a neutral and objective third party. Almost all counsellors have been indoctrinated by an ideology in which the source of everything good is named after women (feminism), and the source of all evil in the world is named after men (patriarchy). I recommend you get a second opinion, and interview your counselor bef
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What data? Certainly not the data in this study.
Re: Of course it has to concentrate on the far rig (Score:2)
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How much left wing terrorism is there?
I'll give you the answer: 3%.
https://www.adl.org/media/1248... [adl.org]
People who actually know about this stuff say that left and right wing terrorism cannot be equated. https://www.euractiv.com/secti... [euractiv.com]
That's why the focus is on the far right. It's mostly them committing acts of terrorism. And the far left stuff is mostly a reaction to the far right, so if you fix the far right it will probably go away by itself anyway.
Re:Of course it has to concentrate on the far righ (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'm finding funny in your link is the article's own admission that the legal system is heavily biased to attribute certain things to far right, even when they're not, and a great lack of legal focus on the far left, that are just as dangerous.
So what you're saying is "If we alter the rules, so that the rules classify what we don't like as bad, then we're fully justified in saying that more bad things are happening, therefore we're fully justified in taking very strong action against bad".
This is actually what tyranny looks like.
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Where does it say that in the article? Can you quote the relevant bit so I can respond?
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You mean as the high karma troll farm sock puppets are fired up to quickly +5 things on either side early on to try to steer the conversation?
Re: Of course it has to concentrate on the far rig (Score:5, Insightful)
What is so radical about the Far Left? ...wow.
Their violent reaction to anything that isn't doctrinaire or perfectly in line with their dogma. Their favorite words for people who disagree with them. Their obsession with shutting off speech when it comes from outside their bounds of acceptable thought. Their willingness to destroy other people's property. Their willingness to apologize for and minimize the sins of an ideology that has been responsible for the deaths of somewhere around 100 million human beings in the 20th century.
Does Antifa need to beat people up in the street and set things on fire in order to help the poor? Is their rioting just an outlet for their need to be charitable? Is silencing dissident voices and shrieking 'Nazi!' and 'Fascist!' in their faces really helping to make the world a better place? Does cracking skulls with a bike-lock improve the attitudes of the recipients?
These are the questions you didn't ask about the far left. It's clear from your post that they would never have occurred to you. You don't see it, or you don't care, but the Far Left are dangerous, violent, criminal thugs whose motivation isn't love for the poor, but hatred of the wealthy.
Re: Of course it has to concentrate on the far ri (Score:2)
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Does this count?
https://nypost.com/2019/07/17/... [nypost.com]
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The far ends of the one-dimensional political spectrum both descend into authoritarianism, with a lack of personal freedom. The only difference is whether a ruthless corporatist system takes advantage of you or a corrupt bureaucracy fleeces you. For those in power it sure is heaps of difference, but for you, well, not so much.
Kinda like the political system in the US, now that I think about it...
I've been "radicalized" by YouTube (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't to say YouTube's all good [youtu.be]. The 1% have been funding all sorts of fun things [unkochmycampus.org] in non-traditional media.
But let's face it, CNN & MSNBC are not liberal [youtube.com]. Sanders called them out multiple times for being anti-single payer since they take tons of insurance company money. If the media has a bias it's an establishment bias [youtube.com], YouTube and other anti-establishment outlets give us all a way out.
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The problem with the extreme lefitst viewpoints such as the ones you link to is that they prioritize ideology above all else. Ideology is important, but pragmatism is equally important. Bernie's too uncompromising to be a good president.
Although I'm not voting for him, I've accepted that Biden will be the nominee. It would be really surprining if the all the data were wrong. I just hope he makes the right decision and brings Stacy Abrahms on as his VP. If anyone know about how to turn out the vote, it's her
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Secular Talk isn't really left leaning. Kyle believes in absolute freedom of speech and strongly opposes political correctness, for example. He describes himself as a libertarian and supports the death penalty.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/... [rationalwiki.org]
Bernie is a little left of centre maybe, depends on the specific policy. By the standards of European politics he is more like a liberal democrat and say a socialist.
So maybe it's more like you have been "radicalized" to the centre ground. Is radical centrist an oxymor
What's wrong with Contrapoints? (Score:2)
Well it kind of is (Score:3, Funny)
Leftism without the economics is libertarianism, not leftism. And that doesn't work. The money ends up concentrating at the top, the rich use bigotry to control the working class, and they turn the working class on the LGBTQ community because it's an easily identifiable "other" that is large enou
Yeah, it does explain that (Score:3)
Also, the right wing fought tooth and nail against all of those things, and managed to kill the Equal Rights Amendment (go look up the women responsible for killing it, she was a far right winger).
Self-reinforcing narrative / "loser effect" (Score:3)
If you're dropping out of society or if society is failing (you), chances are you're going to go for explanations that makes the problem easy to grasp and external. The "intellectual darkweb" (stupid term IMHO) my be something of a gateway drug that leads people into a narrative loop that radicalised them. That's the mechanism that made Hitler big.
A regular person might hear Jordan Peterson and think "OK, that guy say some plausible things but he also is a bit winy at points" whilst someone else might think after a while :"What a wuss. This interweb Nazi talks the real deal and what we must do about it." IMHO it's easy to see how some sorry dropout can go from one to the other in a year or two. It's about encroachment on to what can be said and thought and eventually put into action which radicalises society.
Re:Self-reinforcing narrative / "loser effect" (Score:4, Funny)
I mostly watch educational and kpop videos. The comments on the kpop videos create an echo chamber demanding radicalized cuteness from the fans, to show solidarity with the cuteness of the artists.
The educational video comments are just hero worship, and ignorance-virtue-signaling. "You're so smart, I don't know what you said but it sounded really important!"
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Meanwhile back in reality, the far right calls Jordan Peterson "Juden Peterstein" and say he's controlled opposition funded by Hollywood Jews to keep White men on the liberal plantation.
If your average Boomer MAGAtard is a far right neo nazi, what do you call the people who have nicknamed Donald Trump (that scion of neo-nazism) "Zion Don" on account of his slavish devotion to the state of Israel?
Re: Self-reinforcing narrative / "loser effect" (Score:2)
It's true, the disinherited masses who have seen a precipitous decline in standard of living under the disastrously failed bipartisan economic policies of the last forty years do tend to seek out explanations that go beyond the usual Establishment nostrums.
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"Intellectual darkweb" is just a brand name designed to make you think you are entering a subversive, secret world where illegal thoughts are whispered in the dark and the REAL truth can be told. Of course it's nonsense, most of it is on YouTube (not even demonetized) and normal web sites you can find on Google.
Study Specifically into Certain Communities (Score:4, Insightful)
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Given that, whats "far right" content? Anything to the right of these leftists?
Re:Study Specifically into Certain Communities (Score:5, Insightful)
Ruben is a former Democrat that became disillusioned with the party, Pool is a lefty that got old and realized that if you stand still the world still shifts beneath you and puts you in a different place, and Rogan probably doesn't fall into any category but is one of those voters that will go to either side depending on the day of the week. Peterson seems to abhor leftists from what I've seen, but he's probably libertarian if you had to put him in some basket. I wouldn't call any of them leftists, but none of them are rightists? righties? on the right by any sane measurement.
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Are you taking issue with their imprecise usage of terms, their view on what is middle vs. extreme, or the idea that any such distinction can exist at all? Are you trying to invalidate everything they have to say merely because of the the expression "middle ground of extreme...". Are you that petty? Of course you are, thus the Obama reference at the end.
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conclusion seeking data (Score:5, Interesting)
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This isn't a peer reviewed scientific paper, it's a study presented at a conference intended to direct further debate and research. That's why it doesn't identify the starting points in as much detail as you want, it's not intended for someone like you who is unfamiliar with the topic. Everyone at the conference knows what the alt-lite is.
"Alt-lite" is a term coined to describe those on the periphery of the alt-right. Some people are further out than others.
Shapiro, for example, has a few fairly hard right
funny how they're not looking at lefties (Score:3, Interesting)
This has been debunked already (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, just last month CNBC (hardly a right wing outlet) reported on research that came to the opposite conclusion [cnbc.com].
YouTube also seems to have forcibly made Fox News the primary recommendation on any video that even slightly leans right.
YouTube (the company/algorithm) is not radicalizing people. If people happen to find far-right content of their own accord through people in one channel recommending it the old fashioned way (posting links), that's a function of an uncensored platform, and would happen on the most vanilla of websites so long as there is no censorship of ideas.
Free speech has never been unlimited (Score:2)
The mechanism is simple. The consumer trusts opinions of others. If they trust opinions of the more extreme then they'll end up consuming extreme material.
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This just in reading Slashdot leads to group-think.
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If the left is boring, safe why waste an hour with a political left national broadcasters fake news?
Get on the internet and enjoy some fun, creative, new US content with no censorship on any side of politics.
If thats what people in the EU like, thats their ISP money, time and effort to invest.
Its funny, creative, on time, not controlled by some gov/NGO/think tank...
Its the users hours to spend on th
Comments radicalizing people?! (Score:5, Insightful)
What we are seeing is humans in their natural environments acting like humans. What we are seeing are the volumes of people that did not go to Yale, Harvard or another $400k school speaking their minds.
We are hearing in real time what has gone on forever. People are fearful, rash, and quick to decide. The internet didn't make people racist. What the internet did was make it so that when two random people communicate, others could listen. It seems that what they are reading, they don't like.
You don't fix the world by banning other people. All diplomacy starts with the most simple greeting ever: 'Hi, my name is...'
--
Hi! My name is (what?) [youtube.com] - Eminem
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You completely misunderstand. The comments are evidence of radicalization, not what causes it.
Radicalization (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure if I took the time I could find these so-called "far right ideologies", but so far everything I've seen that was alleged to be far right or alt right or whatever was simply reasonable criticism of the lunatic fringe left.
I suspect radicalization is a natural development of anything that is an echo chamber and that it has occurred in every media format going back to antiquity - it's just the vastly accelerated with modern technologies. Not long ago the right wing had a shocking lack of self-awareness as to its own tunnel vision, but now it's the left which has turned into its own fundamentalist religion with blind faith replacing even the pretext of principles.
And I imagine the pendulum will swing back in time.
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Compassion does not mean we have to accept their mental instability and sexual confusion as normal. Schizophrenia isn't normal, and recognizing that fact isn't condemnation. We don't have shows on television about Schizophrenics parading around on stage, we don't have Schizophrenic story hour at the library. We don't have classes teaching our children that it's OK to stand on the street corner raving at the voices in your head. Why do we teach our children that someone who is demonstrably broken inside is n
Ever see Reddit? (Score:3, Insightful)
What actually causes radicalization... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What exactly is "the elite"? I hear that term being used but nobody really could offer a sensible definition of it so far. Usually it descends into some conspiracy bullshit pretty quickly.
Re: What actually causes radicalization... (Score:3)
extremism entropy (Score:2)
So is there something like the laws of thermodynamics that apply to extremism ? someone can only get more extreme...
I've heard interviews of people that once held extreme views that seem to have come to their senses, so it's not as if there is no way back. I wonder of these gateways can work both ways and act as on on-ramp to more moderate points of view.
The interviews I've heard generally describe people struggling to maintain a hard line when confronted with reality in the form of finding out someone they
No definition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hit the nail on the head. Here's a better way of saying it:
"If you stand up against the radical left, you're in a group that also has Nazis in it. Because the Nazis also stand up against the radical left. So it's perfectly reasonable, from a strategic perspective, for the radical left to say, "you're against us, how do we know you're not a Nazi?" Well, statistically, I'm probably not. But you could say at least the question is open. It's motivated epithet slinging, because if I'm reasonable, and I'm s
Re: (Score:2)
Hit the nail on the head. Here's a better way of saying it:
It's a more long winded way of saying it, that's for sure. I mean Peterson's general mode of operation is never to use 1 word where 15 (ideally involving lobsters) would do.
Re: (Score:2)
With the exception of "freedom-lovers," the lines between the various groups you listed are becoming increasingly blurry. For example, I'll bet you can't name even one politician on either side who admits that zoning laws rob our freedoms and property rights and perpetuate racial segregation [slate.com].
It's so sad that we no longer allow cities to grow organically like we used to. We've regulated (a.k.a. centrally planned [wikipedia.org]) the charm out of them in order to build entire subdivisions of boring tract homes, the American
Circular Reasoning (Score:2)
Exposure to something means acceptance? (Score:2)
"Research [...] supports the notion that YouTube's platform is playing a role in radicalizing users via exposure to far-right ideologies."
Please clarify that sentence, because the way it is worded would mean that people read or see that ideology and go "hey, they're right". Or, let's put it another way, you can expose me to radical religious nutjob videos all day without me even remotely considering that they have any valid point. You can't get people to support an ideology if they are not inclined to agree
They should study Slashdot next (Score:2)
How YT works? (Score:2)
Isn't this how YT works? Or at least the recommendation system it uses. /. before on how clicking on yt recommendations is like going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.
We've seen posts on
You start out with something rather mild and within 10 clicks you're watching some extreme hardcore stuff.
Alt left? (Score:2)
Biased past the point of meaninglessness. (Score:3)
So, right off the bat the foundations of the study are horribly skewed. What they seem to consider as the center is somewhere out on the left, so even the actual center will appear to be at least center-right, if not more extreme.
They also fail to provide any definition for the range of ideologies they're writing about, giving examples of people or outlets they consider, "alt-right, alt-lite, or 'intellectual dark web'", but apart from claiming (without clear rationale) that "white supremacy" is an ideology present in the "Alt-right", they provide no clear standards. They talk about "contrarian" channels and individuals, identify them as "intellectual dark web", or "alt-lite", but what those people argue against is clearly identified as recent left-wing movements, and many of the "contrarians" are liberals or apolitical. People who would have been considered quite Liberal twenty years ago, but reject current "progressive" movements (Jordan Petersen, Joe Rogan. Really, Joe Rogan. The guy who just endorsed Sanders.).
What they seem to be showing is not right-wing radicalization, but the rejection of new and increasingly radical left-wing ideologies that the authors seem to share and believe are centrist.