I'm really not interested in constantly being recommended opposite viewpoints to mine. I'd constantly be getting climate denial content.
Most conspiracy theories I never look into, but the 5G one made me wonder how stupid can you be. So when they thought they had enough evidence to convince a judge and sued the Dutch government, I opened the evidence they supplied and read through it.
I've spent hours and hours trying to figure it out but there just isn't logic to it. It's all misreadings, misinterpretations, misconceptions, etc. Their references were false as well (saying the WHO claimed X in a paper from year Y, complete with a link that leads to a blog post about it but doesn't link the source, and the WHO site has no publications on that topic in the given year; turns out they had a paper about that topic one year later but it doesn't support the claim at all).
Yesterday I was looking something climate related up and came across a Belgian site, seemed like a newspaper, that denies the whole thing. Confused, I opened it and read a bit to make sure they were really calling it a hoax and I hadn't misunderstood. Yep, they did. They pointed to 500 scientists from around the world who signed something saying we should be less political about it and base it more on science, and then that science should include the uncertainties in their reports because all the climate models are super uncertain, and that it turns out the heating is going much less fast than previously claimed. I mean, all proper papers disclose uncertainties. And yes, we should be more science based and get the fuck on with decarbonizing. Then as for it not being so bad (it not going as fast), it's going super fast, I don't know where they got this.
No, I'm really not interested in this kinda garbage. For me the Youtube recommendations are straightforward: I click a video about maps, next I get more geographic analysis videos recommended to me. I'd rather not that someone feels obliged to make it insert opposite content (what's opposite to maps, flat earther stuff? Or just unscientific blabbering when what I'm mainly watching is objective/sciency stuff?).
Or do we want to only insert opposite viewpoints to those who believe in conspiracy theories? Who decides what's real and what's not? Why have the conspiracy theory content on the site at all if we know it's false? Can we not find the root of the problem: the people who make these videos, where do they get their info and misconceptions from?
I wouldn't take 'opposite' too literally in the black and white sense, I mean providing means of a counterweight or 'something in the other direction(s)' of where the algo is leading you to. Especially so for recommendations. Try private mode on Youtube and see if it's easy to reconstruct your recommendations. I remember the basic 'seeds' of mine, but not how it ended up.
I just think if content is factionalised there should be a means to de-factionalise it.
I'm sure with these engines the scoring is multi-dimensional anyways so the concept of opposite is a bit more fuzzy than "recommend the opposite of stuff I search for and interact with"
Can you give an example? Because if flat earther stuff isn't "'something in the other direction(s)' of where the algo is leading you to" when it's leading me to a video about maps (like Mercator view distortion or so), then I don't know what is.
I'm not that musically orientated but going into the 5th decade of my life there's been a few genres that were flavour of the moment. I might enjoy a beer one night and look through some old songs. That doesn't mean that on a daily basis going forward I want "more in that direction", i.e. I don't want to close the doors on other music and get recommendations based on what I did one day.
I think in your example that any (say YT) algo would flag flat earth videos as more conspiratorial and less scientific. Even though the content is about the same "thing", there'd be more facets/dimensions to that thing than it simply being the geometry of the Earth, i.e. the profiles of people who watch such things. There's the history of the Earth's geometry, alternative projections, people who have travelled it, etc etc.
Most conspiracy theories I never look into, but the 5G one made me wonder how stupid can you be. So when they thought they had enough evidence to convince a judge and sued the Dutch government, I opened the evidence they supplied and read through it.
I've spent hours and hours trying to figure it out but there just isn't logic to it. It's all misreadings, misinterpretations, misconceptions, etc. Their references were false as well (saying the WHO claimed X in a paper from year Y, complete with a link that leads to a blog post about it but doesn't link the source, and the WHO site has no publications on that topic in the given year; turns out they had a paper about that topic one year later but it doesn't support the claim at all).
Yesterday I was looking something climate related up and came across a Belgian site, seemed like a newspaper, that denies the whole thing. Confused, I opened it and read a bit to make sure they were really calling it a hoax and I hadn't misunderstood. Yep, they did. They pointed to 500 scientists from around the world who signed something saying we should be less political about it and base it more on science, and then that science should include the uncertainties in their reports because all the climate models are super uncertain, and that it turns out the heating is going much less fast than previously claimed. I mean, all proper papers disclose uncertainties. And yes, we should be more science based and get the fuck on with decarbonizing. Then as for it not being so bad (it not going as fast), it's going super fast, I don't know where they got this.
No, I'm really not interested in this kinda garbage. For me the Youtube recommendations are straightforward: I click a video about maps, next I get more geographic analysis videos recommended to me. I'd rather not that someone feels obliged to make it insert opposite content (what's opposite to maps, flat earther stuff? Or just unscientific blabbering when what I'm mainly watching is objective/sciency stuff?).
Or do we want to only insert opposite viewpoints to those who believe in conspiracy theories? Who decides what's real and what's not? Why have the conspiracy theory content on the site at all if we know it's false? Can we not find the root of the problem: the people who make these videos, where do they get their info and misconceptions from?