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Old 22nd October 2020
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Default How social media algorithms promote conspiracy theories

From The Online Trap of Tales :

Quote:
Trust in government and media is declining.

This is partly because thanks to the algorithms of social media, designed to capture our attention for as long as possible, a large group of people are being sucked into a parallel reality built on conspiracy theories.

The longer people spend in this "Trap of Tales", the more they will be open to radical ideas they didn't have before.
Please note that is a fragment from a popular Dutch television show. It has has English subtitles that you can turn on.

You may still not understand some of the minor jokes, but the main point will be understandable for those who don't live in the Netherlands and don't understand Dutch ;-)

Some hints:
Den Haag (the Hague) is the city where the Dutch parliament is located.
Mrs Arib is the Madam Speaker of the Dutch Lower House of parliament.
NOS is the national Dutch broadcast company.
"Lange Frans" is a Dutch rapper.
Mark Rutte is the Dutch prime minister.
"Forum voor Democratie" is a populist party with 2 seats in the Dutch Lower House
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Last edited by J65nko; 22nd October 2020 at 01:03 AM.
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Old 28th October 2020
gustaf gustaf is offline
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Wow. "Lock her up!" Pizzagate. Fake news. 9/11 was fake. How do these people explain what you (don't) see when you visit New York City? (I don't want to know).

Obama?? Orders late-night junk food so he can prey on children???

Public assassination plots against elected officials??

So...this is the culture the United States is exporting to the world...thanks to Donald Trump.

Quote:
I did a little test. I removed all my cookies, installed a new browser and opened a new YouTube account...Within three clicks I went from corona tests to conspiracy theories about the attacks on the Twin Towers, via a video about pedophile networks.
This explains the wierd YouTube suggestions that appear even with all the ad blockers, cookie blockers, and tracker blockers I can install or enable--and I'm not even conducting any experiments to sniff this stuff out.

Anybody know of a way to block this toxic nonsense?
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Old 28th October 2020
frcc frcc is offline
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I call it the "power button"
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Old 30th October 2020
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Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
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Last year I watched a 4-part documentary about ancient Egypt on YouTube. I had "DID ALIENS BUILD THE PYRAMIDS?" type of recommendations after that for months.
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Old 30th October 2020
e1-531g e1-531g is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gustaf View Post
Quote:
I did a little test. I removed all my cookies, installed a new browser and opened a new YouTube account...Within three clicks I went from corona tests to conspiracy theories about the attacks on the Twin Towers, via a video about pedophile networks.
If you have 10 choices before every click then you have up to 100 possible different recommendations after first click, up to 1000 possible recommendations after second, and up to 10,000 possible recommendations after third click. That is called exponential growth.
Yes, I know in practice it is less, because the same recommendations are popping up several times during surfing YouTube, but it is still a lot of opportunities.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
Last year I watched a 4-part documentary about ancient Egypt on YouTube. I had "DID ALIENS BUILD THE PYRAMIDS?" type of recommendations after that for months.
Was it conspiracy theory video or debunking video?
Anyway you can go to that video and click dislike button or go to YouTube history and YouTube search to remove entries.
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Old 30th October 2020
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blackhole blackhole is offline
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While "social media" can function as a platform to spread outright b/s and conspiracy nonsense, it can also throw actual facts, actual conspiracies and dirty deeds into the mix with said nonsense and the result is that a real scandal or conspiracy may be only considered a "theory" - and as a result get buried, as "bad news" often is.

There is a thin line between preventing the spread of utter b/s and censorship.

While some may not believe that for example aliens built the pyramids or that that the earth is flat, they may believe in e.g. a chosen deity or in ghosts or in the value of horoscopes - and that's all perfectly reasonable to them, as many of those have become social norms and they won't face any stigma.

It's all about perspectives.

I choose to remain a sceptic, of corporations, governments, authorities and those spreading misinformation of all types.

To me "social media" is low signal to noise ratio, before you even get into the profiling, surveillance, data collection or "psy ops" aspects, so I don't participate.

If someone had said 20 years ago that the WWW would be effectively controlled by a handful of giant US based corporations, specialising in profiling, data collection, fingerprinting and telemetry, etc - they would have been called a "conspiracy theorist".
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Old 10th November 2020
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Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by e1-531g View Post
Quote:
Last year I watched a 4-part documentary about ancient Egypt on YouTube. I had "DID ALIENS BUILD THE PYRAMIDS?" type of recommendations after that for months.
Was it conspiracy theory video or debunking video?
Anyway you can go to that video and click dislike button or go to YouTube history and YouTube search to remove entries.
To be honest I didn't watch it, but the way it was set up sure sounded like it was conspiracy theory.

I got another one today (see attached image); that "Evidence for Ancient High Technology" sandwiched in the sidebar between all the bona fide science stuff is just a load of nonsense; I got this "recommendation" after watching a bunch of PBS videos.

I watched as much of that as could stomach; there is a lot of pointless waffling and fannying about, but it seems to be about how ancient civilisations had powered circular saws and the like to build the stone stuff architecture that they did, and also something about how they're tens of thousands of years older (much is about how "mainstream archaeology" is unwilling to accept the "clear evidence" rather than actually providing information). While the word "electricity" is carefully avoided ("powered" is often used), there is another video with some experiment about the electrical conductivity of different types of rocks which is supposed to mean ... something.

The entire thing reminds me of Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" from 1995; I read it when I was 12 or so, and on its own it's actually pretty convincing, but once you learn a bit more about things you realize it's actually leaving out a lot of stuff and relies on various logical fallacies. Yet for years, I believed there was something to it.

Years ago I accidentally stumbled on some "holocaust debunking video", back when YouTube and Google Videos were essentially unmoderated. I was rather interested in hearing what these people actually believe and how they could deny such an incredibly well-documented truth, so I watched a bunch of videos. If you watch *only* those videos then ... it sounds pretty convincing, and it's not like these videos are laced with neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism, or the like.

At any rate, the entire thing is complicated; do I want to prevent these people from writing their books and uploading their videos to YouTube? No, not really. But I also think it's undesirable and harmful you get recommendations for them after watching a few science videos. I don't really know what to do with this.
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File Type: jpg Screenshot_2020-11-10 When We Took Over the World.jpg (475.4 KB, 43 views)
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