Just like people have cognitive biases the YouTube choice of recommended videos at times doesn’t help if people don’t want to end up being somewhere that they don’t want to.
I was poking around some math oriented videos. Most likely since I was on the Numberphile channel I was recommended a chess oriented on the MindYourDecisions channel. This in turn lead to recommendations for several other MYD videos. To this point the process of recommending content I might like is fine. Then, immediately after I view “Prove 4=2” YouTube decides that I really can’t get enough about 4 and 2 and finds a Super Mario Brothers video with those numbers.
Among my more dubious claims to fame is conquering several well known, although old, video games. The ones that I played in college. I have watched video game videos on YouTube before, but not in months. Whether the old viewing history factors into this or not it’s certain that YouTube is starting to stretch chess=video games. It’s not a coincidence, these are examples of several similar weird YT recommendations that follow the same pattern.
It works the same way with more dubious content. If someone puts out a video titled, “A Celebration Of The Life Of XXXTentacion” that gets viewed there’s a chance YouTube will decide, “Hey! You might like this Eclipse Sacrifice bullshit!”
Not everyone has the critical thinking skills to figure out that they have essentially been tricked by a clickbait title and if they view that they are going to get recommendations for more of the same. It’s hard to say how many people got exposed to gematria for the first time ever with the XXX video and left feeling that it was a positive, eye opening experience. Judging from the volume of negative comments it’s possibly only a handful.
And here’s where the human cognitive biases take over from the algorithm bias. Once you get to the comments there is a decided pro gematria home court advantage. Subscribers get notified and rightfully get first crack at the commentary. After that, in addition to the misleading content of the video the comments suggest that gematria works. On top of that, the producer of the video rightfully has the power to delete comments. A power that can and has been abused, but a necessary anti-troll evil. Because two year olds will be two year olds, some people just like to harass for the lulz.
In particular to the XXX video we now stand at thousands of comments most of which have no real value pro or con gematria, and anybody that wishes to add something has limited chance to get their opinion seen. The notification first serve home court advantage. Deleted criticism is another home court edge. Add the edge of the author pinned comment highlighting the top choice. There’s no way it’s going to be anything but pro gematria. Here’s the pinned comment on the XXX Eclipse Sacrifice video:
I’m big on complaining without offering a solution. And I do offer one. YouTube might have cleaned house right after Parkland and done some actual work on reviewing bullying and harrassing material. They should get more serious about it. They should do more work on keywords in the recommendations that automatically flag a video for review by staff before it explodes into a debate. How they implement this? I have no clue. It would require actually spending money they don’t want to do. So we’re stuck with people being offended that YouTube claims to care about as Community Guidelines that really looks like nothing has or will change.
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