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General Chat => Off Topic => Topic started by: Steve Green on 28 February, 2019, 09:01:57 PM

Title: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Steve Green on 28 February, 2019, 09:01:57 PM
Nothing groundbreaking but youtube seems about as toxic as lead in paint (well even more than it was before)

Recently uploaded/recommended (unless I log in) has Yaxley Lennon videos moaning about censorship - and no apparent way to block that channel or content.
Like having a TV that randomly tunes to the arsehole channel.

I could just about bear it in when it was some tedious prick banging on about Star Wars/Doctor Who/Star Trek/Whatever, but there is a limit.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: The Legendary Shark on 28 February, 2019, 09:05:37 PM

It's not all bad - you can find Kenny Everett, Roobarb and The Wombles on there too!

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Funt Solo on 28 February, 2019, 09:15:50 PM
Never look up any Jordan Peterson videos: you'll get flooded with hundreds of suggestions for "Jordan Peterson easily destroys snowflake SJW".

It's all about destruction and domination and subjugation.  Yuck.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Professor Bear on 28 February, 2019, 09:23:21 PM
You have to curate the recommended for you list by clicking on the options pull-down menu - the three little dots on the corner of the video you want to stop appearing in your recs - and choose "not interested" and when prompted "tell us why", select "not interested in this channel".  Do this a few times and YT will stop recommending you such videos - at least until you or someone on your computer or device looks at such videos again.
I did this a while back and now I follow like 200 different communist Youtubers that got recommended to me - when the algorithm starts working for you, it really starts working for you.

YT does some very awful stuff to the point I pretty much defend the algorithm now because it's far from the worst concern.  Nonces using kids' videos to share nonce porn links, for example, or YT's demonetisation strategies that constantly impoverish the users that made the service the social media hub it is now rather than the place you went to find copyright-infringing uploads.  YT has many problems, but the algorithm one is at least fixable.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Pyroxian on 28 February, 2019, 09:27:24 PM
My recommendations are mostly music videos, film trailers and retro-game streams. Oh and it recommends I should pay them £2.49 to watch the 'Dredd' movie. but I already have it on blu-ray so, no.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Steve Green on 28 February, 2019, 09:47:26 PM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 28 February, 2019, 09:23:21 PM
You have to curate the recommended for you list by clicking on the options pull-down menu - the three little dots on the corner of the video you want to stop appearing in your recs - and choose "not interested" and when prompted "tell us why", select "not interested in this channel".  Do this a few times and YT will stop recommending you such videos - at least until you or someone on your computer or device looks at such videos again.
I did this a while back and now I follow like 200 different communist Youtubers that got recommended to me - when the algorithm starts working for you, it really starts working for you.

YT does some very awful stuff to the point I pretty much defend the algorithm now because it's far from the worst concern.  Nonces using kids' videos to share nonce porn links, for example, or YT's demonetisation strategies that constantly impoverish the users that made the service the social media hub it is now rather than the place you went to find copyright-infringing uploads.  YT has many problems, but the algorithm one is at least fixable.

That only works if you log in though doesn't it? It doesn't stop the shite popping up if you're not logged in, and no way that I can see to control it.

Yeah, I hadn't even got to the other major concerns yet.

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: The Legendary Shark on 28 February, 2019, 10:45:25 PM

But... The Wombles, guys - the fucking Wombles!

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Funt Solo on 01 March, 2019, 04:57:08 AM
(https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/abzYen9_700bwp.webp)
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: The Legendary Shark on 01 March, 2019, 09:41:44 AM

:D

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: shaolin_monkey on 01 March, 2019, 01:11:03 PM
The trick is to ignore every part of the front page except the search bar.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: pauljholden on 01 March, 2019, 01:39:37 PM
I imagine the life as a youtube censor isn't unlike the life of a facebook censor, and while we're complaining about lead in the air, those poor bastards are mainlining the crazy...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: radiator on 01 March, 2019, 04:11:54 PM
I read an article the other day about a 'bold' and 'radical' new initiative to combat the spread of fake news (or 'far right propaganda' as I call it). Their plan? To add a little caption under suspect news articles suggesting that they might nor be factually accurate. Yep, go home lads, you nailed it!

Personally I'm of the opinion that the government needs to step in and the big tech giants need to be heavily regulated and/or broken up and/or nationalised. There's too much at stake. They already wield far too much power. Facebook alone is a total disaster.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Steve Green on 01 March, 2019, 04:17:19 PM
The actual Tommy Robinson channel came up as a recommendation.

I'm not sure whether that's a blanket thing or some bit of dogshit that I've trodden in on twitter or facebook or something else on my internet travels.

That this ringpiece is high profile enough to get banned from facebook etc and youtube are still promoting him is unbelievable.

I agree - regulate the fuck out of these companies.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: The Legendary Shark on 01 March, 2019, 04:45:23 PM

I'm not sure that putting politicians in charge of deciding what is and isn't true is entirely the best idea...

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Steve Green on 01 March, 2019, 05:10:10 PM
Some people believe the earth is flat.

Being wrong isn't limited to politicians.

I avoid the politics threads for this very reason Sharky, so I'll leave it there - having that prick turn up as recommended has wound me up enough, I'm not going to waste my time trying to argue a point with you here, I've seen how that goes on the other thread.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: The Legendary Shark on 01 March, 2019, 06:36:56 PM

Fair enough.

Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Professor Bear on 01 March, 2019, 09:29:27 PM
STEVE GREEN ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHES ANARCHIST SJW COMICS NERD INTO SILENCE
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Funt Solo on 01 March, 2019, 09:39:46 PM
PROFESSOR BEAR GOES NEXT LEVEL ON MSG BOARD NERDTARDS
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Hawkmumbler on 02 March, 2019, 10:39:20 AM
Have I slipt into a mirror universe? Let me check out some YT videos on the subject aaaand it's just anti-jewish conspiracy theories.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: MacabreMagpie on 30 March, 2019, 10:41:29 AM
My nephew (12 at the time) managed to become a moderately successful 'YouTuber' a few years back. One of his clickbait gaming vids went viral and he'd gotten over 100k subs before his account was terminated for shitty practises (clickbait, fake giveaways etc).

The problem is that being a YouTuber is now the thing that a lot of kids his age aspire to and, being at that age where you experiment with your creativity by copying, many of the "YT celebs" they all follow pass on their shitty clickbait habits so they don't have any concept of why it's a problem. He views it as like playing a game, whereby getting as many views/subs is the only goal.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: IAMTHESYSTEM on 30 March, 2019, 11:18:55 AM
I listen to a lot of those old Science Fiction Radio shows like X-Minus One, the Escape series and the CBS Mystery hour on YT. Some excellent stories are to be found there like 'No Contact', Issac Asimov's 'Nightfall' and 'The Abominable Snowman' with actor Wiliam Conrad no less. There are of course dark things to be found on so open a public forum. Youtube is awash with chilling vids that claim the only way to save Western civilisation is to abandon Democracy in favour of an Authoritarian state like Russia's, conspiracy nuts who believe everything is a conspiracy against them and various scurrilous toadies promoting dodgy cults. For all its faults if you stick to your interests, YT has a lot to offer, though its grim parts are bleak indeed. They used to show the uncensored versions of various atrocities with soldiers happily posing with the blown apart bodies of civilians or shooting them down without mercy. They seem to promote a more censored version now with the gory bits blurred over.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: auxlen on 15 May, 2019, 05:25:37 PM
I hate hyperbole...' DESTROYS' effectively means 'eloquently rebuts differing opinion' but I guess nobody clicks on that...
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: radiator on 15 May, 2019, 06:52:18 PM
Youtube video thumbnails are absolutely hilarious. It beats the hell out of me why someone would be more likely to click on, say, a review of a digital camera if the thumbnail is of a guy holding up said camera and gurning in a comically over the top way, but here we are.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Hawkmumbler on 16 May, 2019, 12:06:52 PM
Am I the only one who's suggestions have been flooded with those computer generated asset animations and Indonesian toy unboxings?

I had heard these absolute blights on the creative platforms had been doing the rounds for a few years now but suddenly i'm getting them suggested up the posterior....
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Hawkmumbler on 07 June, 2019, 10:14:11 AM
Has anyone mentioned Cinemasins and their utterly woefully inadequate approach to either film journalism or comedy? Honestly despise these berks.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Tiplodocus on 07 June, 2019, 11:12:27 AM
It's a joke that wears thin very quickly... especially when you realise they might not actually be joking "ironically" about many elements  and are just really unobservant or lacking comprehension and interpretation skills.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Tiplodocus on 07 June, 2019, 11:13:05 AM
I still laugh at HONEST TRAILERS though.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Hawkmumbler on 07 June, 2019, 11:19:17 AM
It's the aggregate and scoring mentality taken to a hellish extreme. Ebert has a lot to answer for and he wasn't even that great a critic either.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Frank on 07 June, 2019, 07:13:02 PM

The New York Times, June 4, 2019


Christiane didn't think anything of it when her 10-year-old daughter and a friend uploaded a video of themselves playing in a backyard pool.

A few days later, her daughter shared exciting news: The video had thousands of views. Before long, it had ticked up to 400,000 — a staggering number for a video of a child in a two-piece bathing suit with her friend.

"I saw the video again and I got scared by the number of views," Christiane said.

YouTube's automated recommendation system — which drives most of the platform's billions of views by suggesting what users should watch next — had begun showing the video to users who watched other videos of prepubescent, partially clothed children, a team of researchers has found.


YouTube had curated the videos from across its archives, at times plucking out the otherwise innocuous home movies of unwitting families, the researchers say. In many cases, its algorithm referred users to the videos after they watched sexually themed content.

Users do not need to look for videos of children to end up watching them. The platform can lead them there through a progression of recommendations.

So a user who watches erotic videos might be recommended videos of women who become conspicuously younger, and then women who pose provocatively in children's clothes. Eventually, some users might be presented with videos of girls as young as 5 or 6 wearing bathing suits, or getting dressed or doing a split.

On its own, each video might be perfectly innocent, a home movie, say, made by a child. Any revealing frames are fleeting and appear accidental. But, grouped together, their shared features become unmistakable.


Researchers set out to test for the effect. A server opened videos, then followed YouTube's top recommendations for what to watch next. Running this experiment thousands of times allowed them to trace something like a subway map for how the platform directs its users.

When they followed recommendations on sexually themed videos, they noticed something they say disturbed them: In many cases, the videos became more bizarre or extreme, and placed greater emphasis on youth. Videos of women discussing sex, for example, sometimes led to videos of women in underwear or breast-feeding, sometimes mentioning their age: 19, 18, even 16.

From there, YouTube would suddenly begin recommending videos of young and partially clothed children, then a near-endless stream of them drawn primarily from Latin America and Eastern Europe.


Any individual video might be intended as nonsexual, perhaps uploaded by parents who wanted to share home movies among family. But YouTube's algorithm, in part by learning from users who sought out revealing or suggestive images of children, was treating the videos as a destination for people on a different sort of journey.

And the extraordinary view counts — sometimes in the millions — indicated that the system had found an audience for the videos and was keeping that audience engaged.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/world/americas/youtube-pedophiles.html



Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Professor Bear on 07 June, 2019, 11:41:23 PM
To be fair to Youtube, it does also platform and magnify far right extremists to balance out the pedophile content.
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: TordelBack on 08 June, 2019, 08:23:43 AM
I know it's shameful victim-blaming, and not relevant to the genuine concerns of the article, but it's worth noting that you have to be 13 to manage your own YouTube account. So those kids were making videos and uploading them on the mother's account, although it may not have been labelled as such, or just lying about their age with her connivance.  I've laboriously vetted all my kids' interminable video uploads (under my account, although in their name) for pedo-friendly content, as well as bullying, meanness and the perennial future-CV-sabotage, and let me tell you it does not strengthen the precious bond between parent and child one teeny bit.  But it's a necessary chore in this 21st C. 

TL; DR: I have to suffer, why shouldn't she.

(See also: every other social media platform).
Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: Frank on 08 June, 2019, 09:13:15 AM
Quote from: TordelBack on 08 June, 2019, 08:23:43 AM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 07 June, 2019, 11:41:23 PM
To be fair to Youtube, it does also platform and magnify far right extremists to balance out the pedophile content.

I've laboriously vetted all my kids' interminable video uploads ... for pedo-friendly content

Not sure fiddler interest is limited to the brief flash of first-grader flesh alluded to in the NYT piece.

The PERHAPS YOU MIGHT ENJOY A HOLIDAY IN THAILAND antics of Youtube's algorithm have made me reassess the ostensibly endearing news that their most lucrative channel is a small boy playing with toys (https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/12/03/how-this-seven-year-old-made-22-million-playing-with-toys-2/#430df8214459).

It's the same (unconscious) process as Red-Pilling white identitarians, MRAs and their counterparts on the Left. It's not making anyone a nonce or a TERF, just amplifying and exaggerating an existing interest to keep them pecking away like pigeons in their Skinner boxes.


Title: Re: The awfulness of youtube
Post by: TordelBack on 08 June, 2019, 10:16:40 AM
Quote from: Frank on 08 June, 2019, 09:13:15 AM
Not sure fiddler interest is limited to the brief flash of first-grader flesh alluded to in the NYT piece.

No indeed, and my ceaseless toil* in this arena is mainly aimed at keeping personal info, locations, schedules etc. off the airwaves.

For the longest while I took genuine affront at not being able to slap pics of my frequently-naturist family in various states of déshabillé on any medium I wanted (my childhood home was festooned with balls-out baby pictures of my brothers and I in baths and on blankets and beaches), reasoning that pervs will perv on whatever pervs can get, so I was fucked (or not) if I was going to give in to the fear of them (when the reality is that abuse is still most likely to come from a known and trusted adult, not a pedo with a van), but as it seems with all things I've gone completely the opposite way, and my social media is largely empty of any images of or identifying info about my kids for a decade now. And anyway, it's not my place to fill their future pasts with curated imagery of my choosing.

This is a fact my far-flung content-hungry relatives regularly berate us about, as they go about documenting the exact times and locations of every sporting event, afterschool activity and playdate my niecephews engage in. 



*I exaggerate for effect.  One sprog is losing interest, the other hasn't developed a strong one yet.