I would like to believe that Biden calling out social media for killing people on Friday might move social media sites to do some little thing to remove anti-vaxx content, but I’ll frankly be surprised if they do anything beyond their current anemic efforts. Their fundamental business model is getting stupid people to stay glued to their sites, and removing anti-vaxx content would mean fewer stupid folks clicking fewer times, so it’s a non-starter.
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NotMax
“The food here is terrible.”
“Yes, and such small portions.”
Emma from Miami
I’m not in any social media but I can testify to the fact that the YouTube algorithm is seriously geared towards clickbait. And that it’s mostly an octopus — about half the results for my searches are reached by throwing long arms in every direction and grabbing.
Urza
Not sure if its an intentional reference, but the book Virus of the Mind which was written in the mid 90s is still quite relevant for how memes propagate as basically living viruses in our brain, and did since at least the invention of language. And how certain memes, such as religion and conservatism, create self defense mechanisms that make it harder to delete them from the mental space.
cmorenc
Another effect of doing so that would also threaten their business model is creating a void for even more sociopathic social interaction sites to comlpete for and drain away the stupid folks that are a main profitable revenue source for Facebook.
prufrock
There is an early episode of the Qanon Anonymous podcast where they demonstrate how fast you can go from clicking on a harmless website to disinformation sites to actual hate sites on Youtube. Here it is:
https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-35-youtube-feat-charlie-warzel
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You Tube algorithm created the Flat Earth movement the very same way Dale is describing; anytime you watched a video on science , flat earther videos would fill your recommendation list. When You Tube cut flath earth out of the algorithm it killed that as a movement.
germy
One thing about the youtube algorithm, it’s never led me to any socialist, progressive sites. Every recommendation is for right wing content.
Major Major Major Major
Sort of feels like YouTube gets a pass because it’s hard to skim.
MattF
Greg Sargent has a good column on how Trump and Republicans are associating antivaxx conspiracies with political conspiracies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@cmorenc: With You Tube is more a sin of neglect; the real money on You Tube is in Make Up and Un-Boxing videos. Conspiracy videos have to small watch numbers for You Tube to be bothered with moderating so You Tube just ignores it and lets the conspiracy theories run amok. And that’s the thing to keep in mind; You Tube can’t be bothered so if there is enough pressure put on You Tube they will pull the plug without blinking.
lowtechcyclist
Dems should introduce a bill stating that, with respect to Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, the Covid-19 virus is an enemy that we are at war with, that getting Americans vaccinated is a major front in that war, and that media sources who either knowingly disseminate false information about the Covid vaccines, or do so failing to have done an appropriate level of due diligence in verifying its accuracy, are giving aid to the enemy, in the meaning of Article III, Section 3.
In other words, such media sources would be committing treason if this bill became law.
germy
Now and then I visit a site devoted to comic books and comic book movies. The discussion forum contains more than a few extremely conservative people. They’d slip in comments supportive of trump, for example, or they’d rage every time a Black actor was cast in a role previously reserved for a non-Black.
One day I saw this reader comment, and I feel like he revealed more about himself and his sources than he knew:
This is a young person, because he often mentions seeing superhero movies from the 1990s when he was a child. But he’s forming his opinions from random online videos that get pulled for… reasons.
MattF
So, seriously, ignore all algorithmic recommendations. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon,… all of them.
ETA: For some reason, my Facebook recommendations tend to be videos of partially undressed women.
Baud
OT
Spanky
@Baud: Transferred to what? I asked myself. Following the link …
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Biden is the LBJ to Obama’s JFK.
Bill Arnold
@MattF:
Also, consider using tracker blocker add-ons/plugins, and making sure the the base browser tracker protections are turned on.
If recommendations are regularly appearing that are even vaguely related to your internet traffic history, your tracker blocking is definitely not good enough.
Baud
@Spanky:
Trump’s election cost that guy 4 years of his life.
opiejeanne
@MattF: Twitter has gotten a lot better in the past six months, and their algorithms never suggest I follow any RWer, even though I sometimes check the profile page of people who are RW.
Facebook, otoh, suggests all kinds of “friends” for me to follow, including the HS bully that I blocked in 2016. I usually ignore them, or snort with laughter when I see who they are recommending
Cacti
Republicans largely reject the theory of natural selection.
While their current behavior towards the vaccine might be the single greatest real time example of it in human history.
Oh the irony.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Thankfully, Obama wasn’t shot dead while in office, and hopefully, Biden’s term ends better than LBJ’s, or Raven 2075 will be saying Fuck Biden on Balloon Juice 2.0.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
No, sir. For YouTube once suggested I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones).
Also, sometimes you go looking for something, and you find Spine Song.
Spanky
@Baud: As well as four years of the lives of other detainees who would have been repatriated under Clinton’s Defense Department.
Cacti
@Baud: Glad to see it.
Our tut tutting of other countries’ human rights records kind of rings hollow when we’re still operating an extra-territorial torture prison.
Anonymous At Work
YouTube’s algorithm is better than Google’s “Search + Ads” method. I use Google Search for work (medical research), so I am pretty sure that “Alphabet Inc” thinks I am a 90 year old with leaks from everywhere, pain everywhere, skin like an iguana, and some very unhealthy psychological issues.
Spanky
@Cacti: Hey now! Guantanamo is US territory. Remember the Maine!
different-church-lady
They do not care if people die. They are sociopaths. Sociopathy and manipulation are at the core of social media.
evap
But if the stupid people die from COVID, doesn’t that impact the business models?
Meanwhile, there is a discussion on a faculty list serve about requiring vaccinations for all faculty at the university where I work. Currently, the admin is just “strongly suggesting” vaccination for all employees; those who don’t get vaccinated must get a COVID test once a week. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to require vaccinations, but a faculty member posted some mis-information about vaccines in the discussion thread. Of course, the “facts” and statistics were shot down by other faculty members, but it’s a good reminder about how this stuff can work on even educated people.
MattF
@Cacti: And they are abetting the virus’s evolution as well, which endangers everyone, not just dumb RWs.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: So say we all.
Baud
@Anonymous At Work:
Commenting on Balloon Juice probably cements Alphabet’s view.
Austin Bailey
These social media companies are following in the great tradition of American industries. The have found a way to perfect the model pioneered by the tobacco and petrochemical companies. First, they claim their product does no harm. When that justification doesn’t work, they fall back on “buyer beware” arguments, claiming no ownership over the damage they are doing. At least the other industries had to pay for market/consumer surveys and advertising, not to mention big bucks for political cover – social media companies get all that for free. Social media companies are using our own voluntarily provided information to destroy our country.
sdhays
@schrodingers_cat: I think that’s pretty insulting to Obama. JFK was a pretty middling President, at best. A lot of hype without much substance.
Congress stopped Obama from closing Guantanamo outright, but the Obama administration worked through the processes available to get people out of there, reducing the number from 245 to 41, so that now the end is in sight. Dump is a monster and was happy to keep it open. Biden is just finishing the job; if HRC had been elected in 2016, she would have finished it years ago.
different-church-lady
I see a lot of you talking about the YouTube algorithm as though its based purely on users’ behavior. But I would suspect a huge amount is influenced by paid advertisers. There’s absolutely nothing in my YouTube history that would lead me to content from the Epoch Times, but that shit got barfed up onto my screen on a regular basis during the Trump Error.
different-church-lady
@Austin Bailey:
I’ve said for years Facebook is cigarettes for the mind.
Orwell probably never figured we’d volunteer to build the Ministry of Truth for ourselves.
raven
@Baud: As soon as Biden starts wearing a phony silver star. Fuck LBJ
different-church-lady
I can hardly wait for the “HOW ELSE CAN I STAY IN TOUCH WITH MY GRANDKIDS?!?” crowd to start berating us.
schrodingers_cat
@sdhays: Well no disrespect was intended, and I do agree that Obama was a better President than JFK (he got 8 years instead of JFk’s 3)
Obama like JFK represented promise, it is an analogy for crying out loud.
RSA
For most people, I think this translates into not using Facebook at all. (Still good advice, though.) I believe Facebook has removed the persistent “show posts in chronological order” setting for newsfeeds, in favor of their prioritization by popularity (and whatever other secret sauce they want to include).
M31
that’s why in lots of ways Huxley’s Brave New World was more ‘realistic’ than 1984 (yeah yeah realism or prediction were never the goal but still)
HRA
I read that Steve Doocy on the morning show at Fox told people to get vaccinated.
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: Not only do I reject the YouTube recommendations I report the videos suggested as spam.
Background:
Everyone talks about FB but YouTube is just as insidious. Whenever I watch any music videos from India, YT always suggests regime friendly propaganda videos.
RaflW
A friendquaintance on FB who is ostensibly left wing was banging on about how the Biden Admin being mad at social media sites for boosting anti-vax stuff was ‘textbook authoritarianism.’
I pushed back once, which garnered three reply comments, the last of which quoted Glem Gormworld (or similar). I found myself wishing for a “mute this friend for 30 days” button.
RaflW
@HRA: Doocy’s just trying to inoculate himself against potential liability lawsuits.
Helen
@schrodingers_cat: I love that idea. I hope it happens!
bluefoot
@germy: ain’t that the truth. If I watch a video explaining the jet stream, I don’t get suggestions for science, I get suggestions for anti-climate change content. It’s true for everything I look at -that algorithms all lead toward RWNJ content, not the other way.
TinRoofRusted
@Spanky: Radiolab did a whole podcast series on him called The Other Latif. He was set to be released until Trump was elected and has a large family in Morocco who have been fighting for his release for years. Was he a total saint? No. But he did not warrant being sent to Guantanamo in my opinion. Anyway I highly recommend it if podcasts interest you.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat:
More successful and less likely to destroy humanity?
Matt McIrvin
You can tame the YouTube algorithm somewhat by being really aggressive about explicitly rejecting everything you don’t like. That’s how I got it to mostly stop sending me right-wing poop.
My Facebook activity is mostly friends-only posts and some group stuff. The Washington Post also knows I’m a subscriber. I’ve noticed that whenever I comment publicly on the link to one of their articles, I get a torrent of garbage in response–obvious grifters trying to friend me and leaving banal “hi sailor” comments on my few public posts until I block them, mostly. Basically, don’t do anything completely public there.
karen marie
@MattF: I don’t know what you’re watching that the algorithm skews that way for you but I only get food videos and the comedians I like.
patroclus
Even in less than 3 years, JFK was a good President with significant accomplishments. The atmospheric test ban treaty; the ICC rules prohibiting discrimination in interstate commerce in the wake of Boynton v. Virginia and the Freedom Rides which set the table for the Civil Rights Act, which his administration drafted and introduced after the murder of Medgar Evers, the desegregation of the Coast Guard, the withdrawal of offensive nuclear weapons from Cuba in the Missile Crisis, the enlargement of the Rules Committee which made the Civil Rights Act possible and weakened Howard Smith’s stranglehold, the tax cut and a booming economy, the vast expansion of the number of federal judges, many of which later made significant civil rights rulings, the initial prosecutions of voting rights violations which laid the groundwork for the Voting Rights Act, 2 significant SCOTUS nominations , the implementation of the expanded visa programs for foreign students which brought Obama’s Dad to Hawaii, the Peace Corps and a lot more. JFK certainly ranks in the top half of POTUS’s alltime.
karen marie
@Anonymous At Work: I use google a lot for legal transcription that runs the gamut. If the FBI saw my search history they might bring me in for questioning.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
I wonder how much getting the premium version (which is normally ad free) helps with getting better recommendations. I seem to have managed to avoid the worst of the YouTube recommendation stuff. The worst thing it recommends to me is stuff that wastes my time by being interesting.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore: It depends on the topic with You Tube, I watch a lot of ancient history stuff and investiably fraking Ancient Astronauts or the Sumerians were lizard people from the planet Nibuh turns up.
Amir Khalid
@patroclus:
?? Barack Obama Sr was already in the US when JFK took office.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
There you go distracting folks with old history facts… Shame on you!!!
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