Those who have not read ‘Alice in Wonderland’ can taste how it is to be going down the rabbit-hole through online social media platforms.
In the garb of recommendations, there was a hose-pipe of content thrown, with similar and related content, having an almost limitless supply for the use. With data having gone dirt-cheap, the algorithms went more berserk. And the user just could not say to the ‘recommendation’, after all it is being made by the platform. Came along click-bait videos, with morphed images, fake titles, funny audio backdrop but since they were being recommended by the ‘recommendation algorithm’, these were being trusted by the user as being ‘right’ for them.
After all, how could a ‘recommendation’ be wrong?
Well, Traffic Engagement is the answer!
Brian's hyper-engagement slowly biases YouTube:
1/ People who spend their lives on YT affect recommendations more
2/ So the content they watch gets more views
3/ Then youtubers notice and create more of it
4/ And people spend even more time on that content. And back at 16/
— Guillaume Chaslot (@gchaslot) February 9, 2019
This vicious circle was also observed with https://t.co/XRaKdOQiKz, and it explains why the bot became racist in less than 24 hours.
=> Platforms that use AIs often get biased by tiny groups of hyper-active users.
— Guillaume Chaslot (@gchaslot) February 9, 2019
This AI change will save thousands from falling into such rabbit holes
(If it decreases between 1B and 10B views on such content, and if we assume one person falling for it each 100,000 views, it will prevent 10,000 to 100,000 "falls") 14/
— Guillaume Chaslot (@gchaslot) February 9, 2019
There are 2 ways to fix vicious circles like with "flat earth"
1) make people spend more time on round earth videos
2) change the AIYouTube’s economic incentive is for solution 1).
After 13 years, YouTube made the historic choice to go towards 2)Will this fix work? 11/
— Guillaume Chaslot (@gchaslot) February 9, 2019
Conclusion: YouTube's announcement is a great victory which will save thousands. It's only the beginning of a more humane technology. Technology that empowers all of us, instead of deceiving the most vulnerable.
If you see something, say something.
16/
— Guillaume Chaslot (@gchaslot) February 9, 2019
There was no end to this ‘recommendation’ rabbit hole and it grew only darker and deeper over the period of times, sucking in the sanity of countless of users, many of them, could not just get their sanity out of the ‘hole’.
With their algorithms primed to get more and more eye-balls, ensuring that more advertisements are displayed and hence more revenue; these social media platforms were totally angst against doing anything, which could spoil their ‘economics’.
YouTube announced on 25th January that it would now reduce promoting or recommending videos which has borderline content or is harmful to users, including fake videos and conspiracy theories content. For ex: Videos claiming earth is flat etc
Sincerely a historic move in the attempt to preserve this planet’s sanity and well being.
YouTube, in arguably there is a need to penalise the fake content and conspiracy theories video creators also. Spare the stick and spoil the child, a little bit of stick is always good.
[Source: (YouTube Official Blog)]
