Thread by @ErrataRob

I'm intrigued by this thread for two reason:
(1) the expectation that any algorithm would make YouTube non-toxic
(2) the irony that searching for "federal reserve" on msnbc.com doesn't give any better videos for high schoolers doing assignments

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1037831503101579264

Though he deserves praise for using "federal reserve" as a measuring stick. More than most topics, it's an excellent measure of political toxicity. It's an otherwise boring, non-political government function that wields so much power as to become political.

The Fed has a fairly boring, predictable job, with most of their decisions done via math.

YouTube and hyperpartisan news sites like msnbc.com have a ton of videos ranging for political/policy op-eds to outright conspiracy theories, about how the Fed should behave.

You can use YouTube for class assignments, but it means learning the skill to know how to identify the partisan search results to find the non-partisan/neutral results. On my search, the 8th result is this neutral, non-partisan video describing the Fed:

There's a bunch of very political videos from news sites, but there's also this non-political/neutral description from CNN. Again, it's a skill needed to recognize the difference between toxic videos with an ax to grind, vs. non-toxic content:

Society is coming to grips with the impact of social-media toxicity. I don't think the solution is to fix social-media so much as to teach people (especially children) to learn how to deal with the toxicity.

This would actually be a good school assignment: find 3 non-toxic videos on YouTube, 3 with an ax to grind on one side, 3 with an ax to grind on the opposing side, and now report on how you've polluted your YouTube account with what they think you are interested in.