YouTube Algo Is CAUSING The Problem
YouTube's behavior is ... to be expected commercially, but it's NOT NOT NOT OK.
Algorithms on social media sites are the digital equivalent of the ammonia added to tobacco during cigarette manufacturing in order to make nicotine even more addictive. And we’ve got some hard evidence of that to review today.
Attention Conservation Notice:
When you read this, hear it in my yelling voice. There are some hard facts to go with the fury. Up to you if you want to see the particulars.
Quality Content:
Here’s another wonderful daily video from China Update. Tony’s work is great, I watch this every day.
YouTube Bullshit:
Scroll forward to the 8:14 mark in the video and listen for seventy seconds and Tony describes YouTube wiping its semi-incontinent behind all over his channel.
8:14 But first up, I wanted to discuss a matter just quickly here.
8:19: Regular viewers have already heard this before, but it's worth repeating.
8:23: I appreciate that some viewers find the provocative nature of thumbnails and titles a bit of a turn off.
8:30: I also dislike them. Indeed, if you look back in time, the first almost two years of the channel had very neutral looking thumbnails, and I wish I could just use these plain thumbnails and titles going forward.
8:43: Unfortunately, YouTube demands that minimum click-through rates are met, otherwise the channel is punished.
8:50: I have experimented a few times now with more sober thumbnails, and these have resulted in approximately 60 to 80% reductions in views, with YouTube even not showing the videos to subscribers who have hit the notification button.
9:04: As such, I've had to lean into the more provocative thumbnails and titles.
9:09: However, despite this, my promise is that the content in the videos themselves will always remain sober, grounded, and fact-based.
9:17: I hope that you can appreciate and understand the situation I am in, and I myself appreciate that understanding.
9:24: With that said, let's move through the rest of the video.
Tony is a sober, sensible analyst. I would vastly prefer bland thumbnails unless there really is something astounding inside. Instead YouTube is forcing THIS on us:
Let’s review: DANGER, COLLAPSE, WORSE THAN FEARED, VERGE OF COLLAPSE, NOW IN TROUBLE, (XI PING DENIAL), TERRORISTS, USSR ALL OVER AGAIN (COLLAPSE), STARK WARNING, OMG GOTTA DISCUSS THIS NOW, CHINA BANKRUPT, A VERY BAD SIGN …
And on and on and on this over the top click bait bullshit THAT YOU TUBE IS FORCING ON THE CREATOR AND THE AUDIENCE, NEITHER OF WHICH PLACE ANY VALUE ON HYSTERICS.
Systematic Insults:
The methods for the social media companies are the same as they are for casinos and big tobacco. Give a variable payout, make the flow of content and rewards a bit irregular, so we get that same squirt of dopamine a baboon gets when it finds a nice juicy grasshopper while foraging. Make it over the top, make us angry, make us fearful … make us so familiar with being angry and fearful that we can’t relax … and that’ll keep us doom scrolling.
My YouTube experience was made tolerable by a browser extension called BlockTube. I like wildlife documentaries. You search for “baboon leopard” and you’ll get fifty channels where they’ve photoshopped some improbable shite into a thumbnail, made off with content from an actual creator like BBC or John Downer, and then it’s crappy music and/or a low quality voiceover. I hammered every one of those I saw for every genera I like and my feed was pretty clean.
A few months back YouTube decided that self-directed quality control had to go - ad blockers and related tools were no longer allowed. The Adblock guys figured it out and I’m not bombarded with bullshit before/during videos, but my precious block list is no longer updated.
The Joe Rogan Experience:
I don’t care for Joe Rogan, he’s another shitheel polarization entrepreneur whom I had blocked long ago. YouTube unblocked him. I’ve repeatedly employed Not interested, Don’t recommend channel, and Report. But like a case of genital herpes that flares every time you meet someone interesting, I keep seeing his fat lying face in my feed.
What would my experience be if I weren’t a grumpy old autist with technology skills who will not put up with crap? I’m gonna guess it might be … disgusting … radicalizing, even.
Conclusion:
If our democracy is to survive, the harmful behavior of social media sites and their algorithms will need to be treated with the same loving kindness we show casinos and cigarette manufacturers. Nobody under the age of eighteen, warnings on everything, monitoring content, and if the games are rigged they get sanctioned, then it’s shape up or shut down.
We’re seeing an attempt to do that right now with TikTok … which Trump seems to feel he needs in order to put on the appearance that he’s won in 2024, despite the fact that it’s a de facto organ of the Chinese Communist Party.
More broadly, the Christian Nationalist minority, who are utterly dependent on social media manipulation for the disinformation their insurrection needs, will treat any attempt to protect this country as a 1st Amendment violation.
The Supreme Court case that sets bounds around speech that may lead to violence, Brandenburg vs. Ohio, was argued in early spring of 1969. The first packets on the internet were passed two days before Halloween that year. Like the 2nd Amendment, laid down when a fast rifleman could get off two shots a minute, the 1st Amendment protections in the Brandenburg case law predate a dramatic increase in “media firepower”.
The United States needs something akin to the United States Information Agency if we are to survive in the 21st century. I’m not sure we can do what is needed, unless there is the collective will to confront the Christian Nationalist threat to our democracy.