YouTube's deep learning AI boosted massively two news channels in the US last month:

➡️Newsmax TV went from 3M to 110M views/month (x33!)
➡️New Tang Dynasty TV (NTD): 6M to 80M views/m (x13)

They both made wild claims of voter fraud. Why does the AI like them?

Thread ⬇️
I already made a thread about Newsmax TV last week (see below), so let's focus on NTD

2/
New Tang Dynasty TV was funded by the Falun Gong religious movement, that got banned in China, and thousands of followers have died under Chinese custody.

This channel existed for years, but its views just exploded last month. Why?

3/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
Today, TDN was one of the most recommended news channel from my dataset from 800+ channels.

Only Fox News and NBC scored higher among news channels
algotransparency.org/index.html?dat…

4/
Here are the type of videos that got massively recommended today:


5/
Here are more examples of videos of NTD that got millions of views thanks to massive recommendations:

6/
So why does the algorithm like to recommend unfunded claims of voter fraud? Let's take one example:

1⃣ "1.2M fraudulent votes?" is a catchy title. So people click. People wait for evidence, and often have to watch the full video.

7/
2⃣ Even if they're not convinced by "the evidence" they often watch a lot of the video. So the algorithm takes it as a signal that it *should* recommend the video to more people.

8/
It's the exact same thing that happened with flat earth from 2006 to 2019, until I confronted Google about it.

Flat earth is now in harmful content and not recommended, unlike baseless voter fraud accusations.

9/

Google needs to invest seriously AI that take into account truth and ethics.

If we don't do anything, we'll live in a post truth world where people are divided into factions that don't talk to each other.

It's not a bug, it's a feature that increases ad revenue.

10/

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More from @gchaslot

4 Nov 19
Is YouTube's algo still taking people down the rabbit hole?

Yes.

Right now, the algorithm is promoting to millions of teens this conspiracy that literally says:

"We ask you to suspend your disbelief and take a journey down the rabbit hole" (1:37)


1/5
It's on a channel called "After Skool", so clearly targeting kids/teens.

It was so massively recommended that it reached 1 million views in few days

2/5
One of the top comments is revealing:

"Hey YouTube? What's this doing in my recommendations? If I didn't have a basic understanding of science and the ability to recognize logical fallacies this could've sent me down the path to conspiracy paranoia"

3/5
Read 5 tweets
1 Nov 19
Thread

I discovered that a Chinese anti-American conspiracy theory was promoted by the millions by YouTube's AI

@OliviaGoldhill reported on it, and @YouTube reacted to our findings

1/
Right after publication of the article, @YouTube added a warning on the Chinese video that it's "inappropriate for some users"

For who?

NBA officials😂?



2/
Why hide this video? If anything, people should be able to discover that this is the official Chinese propaganda line.

Why did this video get millions and millions of free ads? Was it truthful, or just efficient at gaming the up-next algorithm? 🧐

3/
Read 13 tweets
4 Oct 19
In the current context, which YouTube channel is particularly promoted by YouTube's Artificial Intelligence?

A Ukrainian channel that copy-pastes Fox News videos

Read that again, but slowly. 1/

algotransparency.org/?date=03-10-20…
That channel did >2M views in the last few days. It was an increase of 3,080.6% month-to-month.

It's now called "BREAKING NEWS"

Full stats:
socialblade.com/youtube/channe…

2/
It was called "Florans UA" before the 30th of September.

Note that the channel describes itself as Ukrainian, but we can't be certain it's Ukrainian. In any case, it's performing exceptionally well.

3/
Read 7 tweets
14 Jul 19
Thread

My first op-ed in @WIRED: how the AI feedback loops I helped build at YouTube can amplify our worst inclinations, and what to do about it.

wired.com/story/the-toxi…

1/
Earlier this year a YouTuber showed how YouTube's recommendation algorithm was pushing thousands of users towards sexually suggestive videos of children, used by a network of pedophiles.

YouTube bans sexual videos. What happened?

2/
At YouTube, we designed the AI for engagement. Hence, if pedophiles spend more time on YouTube than other users, the job of the AI will become to try to *increase* their numbers.

3/
Read 24 tweets
22 May 19
.@coffeebreak_YT shows how the trending tab is heavily biased towards TV channels, spoiling native YouTube creators

Let's try to investigate why this happens. 1/
Having worked at YouTube, I know they don't intentionally bias algorithms, but they can pick a metric and not investigate enough to see if it creates bias.

Here's my theory about it. 2/
In order to show something in trending, they probably check that the video doesn't offend people. This seems reasonable. 3/
Read 7 tweets
21 May 19
Thread

One of my favorite YouTuber @veritasium (5M subscribers) explains 3 problems creators face:

1/ They are constantly chasing the algorithm
2/ Clickbait is the key to virality
3/ Users don't see videos of channels they subscribed to
1/ Creators having to chase the algorithm is a disaster for independent ones, because it gives bigger companies a huge advantage (e.g., TheSoul publishing company creates 1,500 videos per month)

BTW my site algotransparency.org helps small creators hack the AI
2/ Clickbait being the key for virality creates a race to the bottom where YouTubers have to design their videos for clickbait

It doesn't have to be that way. I'll demonstrate it by creating an alternative by the end of the year that provides *provably better recommendations*
Read 5 tweets

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