"Second Source" Confirms Project Veritas Report on YouTube Meddling in Irish Abortion

Odd that they'd care. It's been known for ages that Google interferes with results, so I don't understand why so many people have trouble believing it, just because of the source.

Sometimes, it's not about slant and bias on a story. Sometimes, it's about the story never being told by one side at all.

IAmTheReign wrote: »

Nothing about the story makes any sense.

I guess the reason it does not make sense is that most people - and I include myself in this - have no idea how and why google and others manipulate their search results. And because some of the ways and reasons they do so are - by necessity - secretive it becomes mundanely easy to build conspiracy narratives around their motives and actions. Especially simplistic narratives such as the whole left/right partisan nonsense we seem to enjoy importing from American Dialog.

For example in the Breitbart article there is an informative sentence hidden amongst the article which reads "When YouTube or Google add terms to the list, search results for those terms will only display links to YouTube-approved “verified” sources in the top results."

This happens quite a lot - not just connected to referendum or election campaigning. If the algorithms in the system detect malicious activity related to given search terms - then the algorithm will lock down search results to verified sources.

For example if you use bot accounts to suddenly upload all kinds of videos suggesting Nutella put dodgy ingredients in their products - then very quickly you tube would start putting the search term "Nutella ingredients" on this black list to ensure that when people search for "Nutella Ingredients" they are not getting the results _Your_ attempt to manipulate the algorithm was trying to make them get.

This would not - at all - be You Tube attempting to promote Nutella or protect or even improve their market share. But if you wrote an article titled "Source Confirms Report on YouTube Meddling in Nutella Searches" you very much could write an article making it look like You Tube was doing exactly that. And it would be a convincing article.

As you yourself pointed out - they blocked terms related to _both_ sides in the referendum. So the people thinking they are influencing results in order to influence election results are not making sense. See blocking a term "repeal the 8th" in this way is _not_ blocking videos about repeal the 8th. What it _is_ doing is ensuring the results you get when searching for videos for Repeal the 8th are not results coming from bot accounts and malicious agents attempting to corrupt you tube.

So it is win-win for people like Veritas. They - or someone like them - just need to commission a company to manipulate anti abortion videos on you tube. Very easily done - you and I could commission it for a few 100 dollars today. Then if you tube do nothing about it - these videos flood the memesphere and they win. If you tube does do something about it - by locking down certain search terms to verified sources as they did - Veritas can then scream manipulation and they win. Either way they win really.

Most people are not at all aware of the constant and complex war going on between people like google, youtube, face book and twitter - and all kinds of hackers and malicious agents who are abusing those services. These services try all kinds of things in the war - and if anyone wanted to retrospectively use those moves to make people like You Tube look like they are acting to a political agenda - it would be very very easy to do with minimal effort.

A content creator - on you tube as it happens comically enough - recently did a multi part video on this subject and I genuinely recommend it as a first step in the eduction of just what these people are up to and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4&t=5s - Manipulating You Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1RhQ1uuQ4&t=610s - Manipulating Twitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY - Manipulating Facebook

It's more likely that because anti-abortion in America is associated with the far-right, and because that climate is so toxic in the last few years, advertisers don't want their ads played on anti-abortion videos, or any right-leaning videos. So google shows them less because they make less money.

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I manage a machine learning team and do machine learning as part of my every day job. I'm not some random guy online making up theories about machine learning.

I do not care (or to be honest believe) who you are - I can only evaluate what you say. And if what you say seems to be over simplistic nonsense then claiming qualifications while saying it - especially qualifications I am in no position to verify and you display no sign of actually holding - does not stop it seeming to be over simplistic nonsense.

Also managing a team just means your job is managing a team. Very often it is possible - and I know many people who in fact do it - to manage a team who have a skill set you yourself entirely lack. I once had to manage a team of tax accountants for example. I know pretty much literally nothing about tax. At all. I was not required to.

So moving from _who_ you claim to be back to _what_ you are claiming: As I said even your phrase "good and bad types of articles" is so powerfully vague that it qualifies for nothing more than comedy. It is certainly not meaningful or informative. And I see nothing to suggest you know the way these models are created - nor even what these models are created to do.

I notice you glossed over the fact when I actually did a search the bias of the results not only did not go even remotely the way you predict a San Fran influenced model would - but if anything went the other way.

OMM 0000 wrote: »

Are you for real?

Very much so. Are you?

OMM 0000 wrote: »

OBVIOUSLY I'm giving a simplistic explanation of how machine learning works. You expect me to go through machine learning step by step

There is a world of difference between simple and simplistic however. I dumb down my areas of expertise too when I am writing on boards - to make them simple. But never simplistic. You appear to operate the other way around.

See the problem with the line "good and bad types of articles" when trying to introduce your narrative of Employee Bias is it paints the picture that it is is the _content_ of the article itself that would be the focus of the models. Which is the main reason for my scepticism that you know what you are talking about - that you know how these models are built - or that you know what the agenda of such models even is.

Let me explain it simply - not simplistically - for the boards users who I am not motivated to treat like idiots. The main goal of the algorithms of service providers like You Tube is not simply to police the content of the articles as your simplistic narrative attempted to imply. The main agenda is above all to ensure that the person _behind_ The content is in fact a real person.

The goal in other words - if you were to make a video on abortion in Ireland - is not to build machine learning models intent on working out if your article is pro choice or anti choice and hence a "good" or "bad" article. Its main goal above all else is to ensure you are an actual person making that content and not some malicious bot network or paid actor attempting to game the you tube algorithms.

I do not think users here are as easily confused by technicals as you might image. The first video I linked to above for example - the one on gaming the You Tube algorithm specifically - is certainly mildly technical - much more so than your posts have been - but I can see nothing whatsoever in it that is going to confuse anyone here.

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I'm a CTO, background in computer science, so your analogy about managers not knowing what their team does doesn't apply to me. Machine learning has bias. That's it. Can we move on?

Again I can only take your word for your qualifications - which I do not. I do not care who you are. I only care about what you say and your evidence for saying it. If Einstein was reincarnated and made a post about physics - I would not care it was Einstein. I would only care about the content of the actual post. "Appeal to authority" is considered a fallacy. Especially when that authority is your own. Say what you want - your CV is irrelevant to me however.

As for moving on - only you can control who you reply to next and what you say. Move on if you wish