WEBVTT - How YouTube Became a Perpetual Nazi Machine 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.520 M hmm, what severing my tumors. I'm Robert Evans hosted 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.680 Behind the Bastards, the podcast where you tell you everything 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:12.559 you don't know about the very worst people in all 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.600 of history. Uh. Here with my guest Sophia, co host 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.440 of Private Parts Unknown, and we're talking about how it's 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:20.680 bullshit when doctors won't let you keep the pieces of 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:23.480 your body that they take out of you. That's really frustrating. Yeah, 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.880 that's like the least they could do for you. It's 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.680 an infringement of your civil liberties. Like that tumor or 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:30.680 whatever is still a piece of you, and you deserve 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.560 to like go get drunk on a farm and shoot 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.000 it with a shotgun if that is your choice. A. Yeah, 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:38.920 I wanted to just keep it forever to kind of 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.519 always like pointed to it and be like, yeah, I 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:44.360 beat you a little bit, and they won't let me 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:46.480 fucking do it. They wouldn't let me keep my my 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.919 breast cancer tumor and my chemo port, which I'm like, 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.239 that's that was part of me for a year. You 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:58.480 why that's so frustrating? Like, Okay, this this message is 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:03.880 going out to Sophia's doctor. Kudos on the cancer curing 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.399 blah blah blah, dick move not letting her keeper tumor. 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:12.000 And I'm I'm very angry about this. Uh, please write 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:16.120 a campaign, listeners, just contact my doctor at I'm just 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.880 We're gonna make not important to make Sophia's tumor in 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:27.240 her legal possession again. It's gonna be Hardia's tumor Sophia's again. Yeah, 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.000 there we go. Well, today's subject has nothing to do 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:36.200 with tumors cancer. Other than that, you could argue today's 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:41.479 subject is a cancerous tumor metastasizing in the body politic 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:47.960 of our nation. Wow, talking about YouTube, that's a beautiful 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.040 metaphor for a website that most people just use for 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:57.200 jerking off. Hey, jerking off and not paying for music. Oh, 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:01.520 that's true. That's true. There's one other thing, jerking on 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:07.279 YouTube tutorials. It's useful for jerking off, makeup tutorials, free music, 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:11.840 and of course filling the world with Nazis. Again, as 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.399 a Jew, I love to hear that. That's the aspect 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:17.680 of YouTube we will be talking about today is it's 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:22.960 it's Nazi reinvigorating aspects. Now, it's so fun to leave 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.120 the former USSR because it's not great for the Jews. 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:29.440 And then get here and then Donald Trump becomes president 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:32.920 and you're like, Okay, that's a great that's a good joke, 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.880 that's very funny. And then the Nazis spread through YouTube 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:41.520 so they're just everywhere, and you're like, Okay, well, I 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.440 guess I'll just live in fear forever. I will say 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.120 one of the best things that, like the few things 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:49.600 I actually got out of college was taking Holocaust studies 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.079 courses and coming to like the dawning realizations like a 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.200 kid who was raised and like a Republican household, where 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.400 like everything you heard about the Holocaust was how awesome 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:01.200 it was the American soldiers stopped it, like like reading 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.560 about history and coming to like the gradual realization like oh, 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:09.680 it's always sucked to be Jewish everywhere, like everyone's killed 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:11.880 these people, Like, oh my god, like it was he 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.760 didn't start with the Nazis, Like reading about like what 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.079 happened in the in Czarist Russia, the Nitsky massacre which 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:23.040 killed like seven thousand people, and like, yeah, this ship 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.880 has not been good for us for a long time. 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.239 And now we're talking about digital programs. Yeah, exactly. It's 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.280 just nice to know that you cannot escape the Nazis. 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.000 Yeah yeah, that is the message YouTube has delivered to 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.360 all of us, along with allowing me to listen to 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:46.680 old Chris Christofferson concerts for free. Um hey man, brotherfucker 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:50.040 made some great music. All right, I'm gonna start with 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:56.160 my prepared remarks, if that's okay please. March two, sixteen, 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:00.440 Microsoft unveiled a new chat bot to these serried denizens Twitter. 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:05.720 The bot was an experiment in what Microsoft called conversational understanding. TAY, 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:08.680 the chat bought would engage in discussions with real people 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.559 and learn from them, evolving and changing from its interactions 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.720 just like real people do. Yeah yeah yeah. As they 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:18.680 released Tay into the wild, Microsoft said they hoped that 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.560 Twitter users would be happy to engage it in casual 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.360 and playful conversation. Tay entered the world at around ten 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.599 am Eastern Standard time. At two am the following morning, 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.640 less than twenty four hours later, it tweeted this Bush 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:35.560 did nine eleven and Hitler would have done a better 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:37.839 job than the monkey we have now. Donald Trump is 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.479 the only hope we've got. It just took that little 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:48.440 time to learn, but you knew was a bad move. 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.599 When they opened it up, you knew it's kind of America. 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:57.159 One of the surprising stories or arcs of the last 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:01.000 decade is Microsoft going from like this evil corporation in 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:05.120 everyone's eyes, like this innocent summer child. Like they never 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:07.640 tried to steal my data, They never lobbied to stop 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:09.960 me from being able to repair my computer. They just 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.560 they believed they could make a chatbot and the Internet 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:14.640 would teach it how to be a real boy and 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.600 a Nazi. And they were so horrified, Like I just 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.239 I can't I can't believe that someone had positive hopes 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.120 for that. I mean, how few people have you met 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.760 in life online that you would think that that was 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.840 going to end up? Well, I think it's because Microsoft's 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.040 team were all old heads. Like it was a bunch 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.080 of guys in their fifties who, like I, didn't know 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.040 the Internet as anything but like a series of technical thing. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.080 They didn't they weren't active Twitter users or whatever. They 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.880 didn't go on the Graham. Well, it's very quickly that 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:47.960 you learned that if you upload a video of yourself 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.640 doing stand up, how many you look like a kikes, 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:55.760 You're gonna get right away. I mean learning curve is yeah, 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.200 and it's it's a learning curve A lot of companies have. 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.520 I can remember back in twos and twelve when Mountain 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:02.520 Dew decided to let the internet vote on the name 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.160 of a new soda flavor, and four chanders flooded it 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:07.560 in before along. The top vote getter was Hitler did 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:12.680 nothing wrong, which is that, I will admit right off 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.080 the tongue, it would be kind of interesting to see 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:21.560 that soda marketed in the seven olive. But yeah, especially 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.120 when you picture the fact that like the Sprite uh, 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:31.320 the Sprites spokesperson is like, uh, isn't it Vince Staples? Yeah? 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.960 I think so. Yeah. So it's not really generally ever 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:40.960 sold by people that are so uncool that they think 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:47.240 renaming soda is some kind of I don't know, forward 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:53.159 thinking movement of their philosophy. Yeah, and it's both of 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.360 these cases, Tay and Mountain Dew's uh new soda flavor 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.320 vote where cases were any If you'd gone to either 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.760 of us in two thousand twelve or in early two 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:04.760 sixteen and said we're going to do this, what do 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:06.599 you think will happen? I think we both would have said. 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.680 I think every listener of this podcast would have said, Oh, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.120 it's gonna get real nazi, like immediately, like it's going 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.080 to turn into a Nazi because that's just what people 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.520 on the internet I think is funny. Uh, and that's 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:20.280 going to happen. But like you know, older folks, people 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:22.920 who you know are focused more on living that life 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.800 of the mind off of the Internet, they didn't anticipate 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:28.520 that sort of stuff, and there really wasn't much of 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.120 a harm ever, you know, in either that Mountain Dew 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.440 contest or in the tay chat bought. Like Tay was 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.320 was a public facing AI, it was never in control 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.920 of something. But the question of its radicalization does lead 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:45.040 to the question, what if another company built an AI 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:48.040 that learned in that way that wasn't public facing, and 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.520 what if that company trusted the AI to handle a 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:56.000 crucial task that operated behind the scenes. And if that 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.080 were to happen, I think it might look an awful 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.440 lot like what we've seen happen to YouTube's recommendation algorithm. 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.000 Um I think I'm not the first person to make 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.320 this comparison that what had happened to YouTube's algorithm over 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:11.280 the last few years is what happened to that chat bought. 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:15.080 But since no one interacts with YouTube's algorithm directly, it 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.400 took a long time for people to realize that YouTube's 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.760 recommendation AI had turned into Joseph Gebel's, which is I 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.640 think where we are right now. Um, so that's what 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:32.560 today's episodes about, yea, I bring. I'm glad that it's 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.000 not about dead babies, because I know you love to 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.040 do that. Ship to me, it does in a little 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.200 bit on a hurting babies. Now, are you kidding me 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:47.240 a bit? Stop getting me here under false pretenses? Stop it. 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:49.720 I feel like at this point, you know, if you're 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.120 coming on behind the bastards, some babies are going to 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.600 get harmed. Okay, I assume sometimes maybe people just murder adults. 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:58.960 That's what I was hoping for coming in today. I 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.959 was like, they're still more adult murder than adult murder. 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.199 But no, we always have to get miners involved. If 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.960 it's me, don't we evans that the murders involved in 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.720 this episode we're all adults. The molest station involved in 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:19.000 this episode involved children so much. That's a step so much. No, 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.320 the Georgia tan One had child murder and child molestation. 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.640 Well now it's adult murder in child molestate, well child pornography. 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.880 Will you let me live a life full of just 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.360 adult murder? You know what, Sophia, I'll make this promise 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:36.240 to you right now over the internet. When we do 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.320 our one yearly optimistic episode about a person who's not 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.000 a bastard this upcoming Christmas, I'll have you want us 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:46.319 the guest for that one. Fuck yes, I can't wait. Um, 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.840 And hopefully the irony of that episode will be that 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:52.880 very shortly thereafter we'll find out that person is also 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.360 a bastard. Yeah, it'll be the story of the person 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:59.600 who saved a thousand kids by killing nine hundred. Still 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.439 it like net game that will be exactly your pitch 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:08.360 when that happens, I'm already googling. Yeah, you're like, how 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.640 can we let's get back to YouTube. As I write this, 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:14.240 the Internet is still reeling from the shock waves caused 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:16.800 by a gigantic battle over whether or not YouTube should 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.720 ban conservative comedian And I put that in air quotes 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.960 Stephen Crowder. Now, if you're lucky enough to not know 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.000 about him, Crowder is a bigot who spends most of 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:27.400 his time verbally attacking people who look different than him. 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.400 He spent several months harassing Carlos Maza, who makes YouTube 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.440 videos for Vox, calling Maza a list be queer, and 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.320 a number of other horrible things. Uh. Crowder has not 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.240 explicitly directed his fans to attack Carlos in real life, 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.520 but Crowder's fans don't need to be told to do that. 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:44.400 When he directs his iro at an individual, Crowder fans 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:49.880 swarm that individual. Uh. Carlos is regularly bombarded with text messages, emails, tweets, etcetera, 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.880 calling him horrible names, asking him, demanding that he debates 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.360 Stephen Crowder, telling him to kill himself, doing all the 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.440 kind of things that sociopathic internet trolls like to do 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.680 to the targets of their I now Carlos on Twitter 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.880 asked YouTube to ban Crowder, and he pointed out specific 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.480 things Crowder had said and highlighted specific sections of YouTube's 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.000 terms of service that Crowder had violated. UH. YouTube opted 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.920 not to ban Crowder because Crowder has nearly four million 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.880 followers and makes YouTube a lot of money. UH. There 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:22.360 has been more dumb fallout. YouTube demonetized Crowder's channel and 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.120 then randomly demonetized a bunch of other people so conservatives 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.760 couldn't claim they were being oppressed. And it's all a big, gross, 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:31.200 ugly mess. But the real problem here, the issue at 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.160 the core of this latest eruption in our national culture war, 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.440 has nothing to do with YouTube's craven refusal to enforce 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:40.400 their own rules. Stephen Crowder would not be a figure 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.880 in our nation's political discourse if it weren't for a 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.160 series of changes YouTube started making to their algorithm in 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:51.080 two thousand ten. Now, YouTube's recommendation algorithm is what you know. 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:53.320 It recommends the next video that you should watch. It's 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.400 why if you play enough music videos while logged in, 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.520 YouTube will gradually start to learn your preferences and suggest 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.400 new music that often you like. It's also why teenagers 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.080 who look up the Federal Reserve for a school report 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.280 will inevitably find themselves recommended something that's basically the protocols 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:13.240 of the Elders of Zion with better animation. Oh my god, yeah, yeah, 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.720 it's it's both of those things. Well, but the animation 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:20.240 is good, Okay, playing some money behind that anti semitism, Yeah, 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:23.400 it's a it's it's it's a mixed bag. On one hand, 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.640 I learned about the music of Tom Russell, who's a 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:29.120 musician I very much enjoy. Now. On the other hand, uh, 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:35.720 there's thousands more nazis so really pretty even exchange, I say, yeah, 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:41.240 fair mix, Yeah, it's good trade. Yeah. Now, I do 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:45.200 really like Tom Russell's music, but that's not the important thing. 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.160 Is Tom Russell not be offended? Okay, let's make sure 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.880 he's fine. Yeah. Now. YouTube's recommendation engine was not always 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.760 a core part of the site's functionality. In the early 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:57.920 days of YouTube and two thousand six or seven, or 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:00.600 eight or nine, most of the content was focused around 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.480 channels a lot like television. People would search for what 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:05.520 they wanted to see, and they would tune into stuff 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.560 they knew that they liked. Unfortunately, that meant people would 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.360 leave YouTube when they were done watching stuff. I'd like 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:13.400 to quote now from a very good article in The 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.840 Verge by Casey Newton. He interviewed Jim McFadden, who joined 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.240 YouTube in two thousand eleven and worked as the technical 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:23.120 lead for YouTube recommendations. Quote. We knew people were coming 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:24.720 to YouTube when they knew what they were coming to 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:26.880 look for. We also wanted to serve the needs of 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.080 people when they didn't necessarily know what they wanted to 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.080 look for. Casey goes on to write, I first visited 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:33.839 the company in two thousand eleven, just a few months 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.600 after McFadden joined. Getting users to spend more time watching 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.040 videos was then, as now YouTube's primary aim. At the time, 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.080 it was not going particularly well. YouTube dot com as 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.960 a homepage was not driving a ton of engagement. McFadden says, 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:48.040 we said, well, how do we turn this thing into 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:52.120 a destination? So YouTube tried a bunch of different things. 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:54.640 They tried buying professional gear for their top creators to 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.880 increase the quality of YouTube content, but that just made 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.319 YouTube more enjoyable. It didn't make this service more addictive. 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.600 So in two thousand eleven, they launched lean Back. Now, 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:08.600 lean back would automatically pick a new video at random 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.839 for you to watch after you finished your old video. 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:13.680 Lean Back became the heart of the algorithm we all 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.640 know and many of us hate today. At first, lean 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.000 Back would select new videos for people to watch based 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.560 on what seemed like a reasonable metric, the number of 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.760 views those videos had received. So if more people watched 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.040 a video, it was more likely to wind up recommended 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.880 to new people. But it turned out lean back didn't 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.000 actually impact the amount of time spent on site per user. 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.360 So in two thousand twelve, YouTube started basing recommendations on 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.000 how long people spent watching videos, so it's engine switched 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.560 from recommending videos a lot of people have watched to 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.560 recommending videos people had spent a lot of time on. Now, 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.120 this seemed like a great idea at first. According to 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.000 The Verge, nearly overnight, creators who had profited for misleading 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.360 headlines and thumbnails saw their view counts plummet. Higher quality videos, 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:58.120 which are strongly associated with longer watch times, surged. Watchtime 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.200 on YouTube grew fifty a year for the next three years. 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.760 So that sounds great, right, not that evil yet horrible. 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.040 Let's read the next paragraph during this period of time 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.080 really quickly. Yeah, I was waiting for you to start 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.520 talking to them, interrupt you. No, I wanted to know 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:22.600 if if part of the lean back algorithm was that 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.920 they would just automatically play lean back by Fat Joe. 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.680 If that had been the YouTube algorithm, the numbers, that's 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:34.760 what they would do after any video you would watch. 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.440 We if that had been what had happened Sophia. We 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.640 would live in a paradise. Climate change would have been 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.960 dealt with. The president would be a being of pure light. 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.520 It would be there would be peace in Ukraine and Syria. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.520 It would be a perfect world. If only if only 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:55.280 YouTube's lean Back be backing people to the music video 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:59.480 for lean Back. I mean that's a chill ass Jamay, 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.200 that is chill ass jam There would be no Nazis 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.200 in twenty nineteen. If that's the change YouTube and made. 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:12.920 It's true, Fat Joe transcends the boundaries of country, religion, 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:17.840 skin color, anything. You could have saved the world YouTube, 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:21.440 if you just pushed fat Joe on a welcoming nation 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.600 into the into the longing arms of a nation. Yeah, 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:29.360 God damn, I wish that. I wish that's the path 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:33.960 things have taken. Tragically, it's not now. During this period 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:38.240 after lean Back was instituted, Gillim Chesslo was a software 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.400 engineer for Google. I'm sorry, Gillim Chasslow Chasslo. It's spelled 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.440 c h s l o T. I found I think 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.120 I'm pronouncing gilhim right, because I found some pronunciation guides 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.120 for the name gillim Um, but I've not found a 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.000 pronunciation guide for c H A S L O T. 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.160 I think Chaslow is. I think he's a French guy. 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:58.800 It's a very good name. It is a great name. 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.080 I think I'm pronouncing sort of correct Gillim Chaslow. But 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:08.520 I'm doing my best here to get dommed in the evenings. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.879 Gillim Chaslow for sure, stuffy bank owner. But in this 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:16.400 case he's actually an engineer whose expertise is an artificial 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.720 intelligence uh and The Guardian interviewed him for an article 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.040 titled how YouTube's algorithm distorts reality. I'm gonna quote from 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.600 that now. During the three years he worked at Google, 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:27.560 he was placed for several months with a team of 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.840 YouTube engineers working on the recommendation system. The experience led 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.720 him to conclude that the priorities YouTube gives its algorithms 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.080 are dangerously skewed. YouTube is something that looks like reality, 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.520 but it is distorted to make you spend more time online, 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:41.840 he tells me when we meet in Berkeley, California. The 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:45.439 recommendation algorithm is not optimizing for what is truthful, or 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:49.440 balanced or healthy for democracy. Chaslow explains that the algorithm 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:51.880 never stays the same it is constantly changing the way 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.400 it gives to different signals, the viewing patterns of a user, 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.280 for example, or the length of time a video was 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.239 watched before someone clicks away. The engineers he worked for, 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:02.520 we're responsible for continuously experimenting with new formulas that would 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.520 increase advertising revenue by extending the amounts of time people 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.159 watched videos. Watch time was the priority. Everything else was 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:14.399 considered a distraction. So YouTube builds this robot to decide 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.520 what you're gonna listen to next, and the robots only 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.440 concern is that you spend as much time as possible 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.600 on YouTube. And that's the seed of all of the 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:26.520 problems that we're going to be talking about today. So 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.840 Gillham was fired in two thousand thirteen, and Google says 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.399 it's because he was bad at his job. Chaslow claims 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.840 that they instead fired him because he complained about what 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.240 he saw is the dangerous potential of the algorithm to 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:40.440 radicalize people. Uh. He worried that the algorithm would lock 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:43.399 people into filter bubbles that only reinforce their beliefs and 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.040 make conservatives more conservative, liberals more liberal, and people who 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.840 like watching documentaries about aliens more convinced that the Jews 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:58.240 are fluoridating their water, et cetera. Uh, thank you for laughing. Yeah. 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.880 Chaslow said there are many ways YouTube can change its 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.199 algorithms to suppress fake news and improve the quality and 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.720 diversity of videos people see. I try to change YouTube 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:09.120 from the inside, but it didn't work. YouTube's masters, of course, 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.159 had no desire to diversify the kind of content people saw. 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:14.640 Why would they do that if it meant folks would 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.719 spend less time on the site, So it doesn't. Fifteen 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:23.680 YouTube integrated Google Brain, a machine learning program, into its algorithm. 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.320 According to an engineer interview by The Verge, one of 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.560 the key things it does is it's able to generalize. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.000 Whereas before, if I watch a video from a comedian, 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.360 our recommendations were pretty good at saying here's another one 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.760 just like it. But the Google Brain model figures out 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:38.240 other comedians who are similar but not exactly the same, 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:41.359 even more adjacent relationships. It's able to see patterns that 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.239 are less obvious, and Google Brain is a big part 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.160 of why Stephen Crowder and others like him are now millionaires. 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:49.680 It's why if you watch a Joe Rogan video, you'll 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.240 start being recommended videos by Ben Shapiro or Paul Joseph Watson, 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.280 even though Joe Rogan is not an explicitly political guy 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.360 in Ben Shapiro and Paul Joseph Watson are. It's why 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.520 for year, whenever conservative inclined to people would start watching, 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.480 say a Fox News clip critical of Obama, they'd wind 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:08.760 up being shuffled gently over to Info Wars and Alex Jones. 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.639 It's why if you watched a video about Obama's birth certificate, 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.520 YouTube would next serve you Alex Jones claiming that Michelle 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.320 Obama is secretly a man. It's why if you watched 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.000 a video criticizing gun control, YouTube would serve you up 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.399 Alex Jones claiming the New World Order under Obama was 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.000 going to confiscate your guns so we could carry out genocide. 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:29.119 And it's why if you watched coverage of the Sandy 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:33.080 Hook massacre, YouTube would hand you Alex Jones claiming the 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.640 massacre was a false flag and all the children involved 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.800 were crisis actors. I bring up Alex Jones so many 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.480 times in this because it's probable that no single person 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:45.600 benefited as much from YouTube's Google brain algorithm changes as 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:49.239 Alex Jones. That's what Gilim Chaslow seems to think. On 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:54.040 February eighteen, he tweeted this, the algorithms I worked out 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:59.120 on Google recommended Alex Jones videos more than fifteen billion times. 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:01.760 Vulnerable be pull in the nation. Yeah. Fifth, that's the 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:07.800 scale of this thing because it recognizes that people who 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:09.720 are going to start like watching just sort of a 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.919 conservative take on whatever issue gun control, uh, the Sandy 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.000 Hook shooting, uh, fluoride in the water or whatever, people 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.680 who might just want like a Fox News take on that. 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.280 Alex Jones is much more extreme. But because he's much 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.960 more extreme, he's like compelling to those people, and if 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:31.480 you serve him them, they watch his stuff all the 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:33.879 way through. And his videos are really really long. It 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:35.960 is like a four hour show, So people stay on 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:37.840 the site a long time. If they get served up 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.639 a four hour Alex Jones video, they just keep playing 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:43.000 it while they're doing whatever they're doing, and they sink 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.760 deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole. And a regular 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:48.960 person would look at this and be like, oh, Google's 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.280 taking people who believe, I don't know that a flat 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:53.760 tax is a good idea and turning them into people 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.680 who think that Floride is turning frogs gay and that 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.760 Sandy Hook was an inside job and that's a bad thing. 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.480 But YouTube algorithm didn't think that way. It just thought like, oh, 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.399 as soon as these people find Alex Jones videos, they 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.600 spend fifty more time on YouTube. So I'm just gonna 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:11.679 serve Alex Jones up to as many fucking people as 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:18.639 I possibly can. And that's what starts happening in So 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:24.480 that's where we are in the story right now, and 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:26.840 then we're going to continue from that point. But you know, 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:31.280 it is time for next, Sophia, No tell me, it's 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:37.760 time for products. And maybe maybe I'm not gonna make promises. 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.120