YouTube's radicalizing Alt-right trolls and Facebook's recruiting new language boffins

Hello, here's a quick roundup of news from the world of machine learning. Facebook has started an NLP research group: Facebook’s AI research group has launched a natural language research consortium to partner up with other boffins focused on areas like machine translation and sentiment analysis. Members in the group will …

[Baldrickk]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

It may be a characteristic, but not the only one? So if it is just racist, then we should call it that. If it encompasses more than that, then alt-right is the term to use. Right?

(or should that be "AltGr")

[jrd]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

"Stop using the euphemism alt-right to refer to racism, that just enables the racist."

Problem is, who gets to assign the labels and who gets to decide what they mean? I remember a time when people described themselves as "alt right" to mean they had right of centre views but did not align themselves with existing right-wing groups (such as the Republicans). These were often libertarian, free-market, minimal-government types, and there was no implication that they were also neo-Nazis or white supremacists.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

These were often libertarian, free-market, minimal-government types, and there was no implication that they were also neo-Nazis or white supremacists.

It's just part of the way language gets weaponised for political purposes. If you're a far-left communist with a poster of Stalin, and a handy style guide that came free with your dog whistle, then anyone else appears right wing. If you're pro-big government and strict population control, then lable libertarians as alt-right, then conflate that with racist. It's a handy way to demonise your opposition when you're unable to win an argument using reason & logic.

It's happened with Brexit, ie those that voted leave are automatically assumed old, white, stupid racists, not libertarians like say, Terry Christian. So chant stuff like 'stop the coup' and don't think about coups being overthrowing a government, which is what the Remnants want to do because they lost a democratic vote. It also happened with cAGW propaganda. First we were 'sceptics', then people twigged that scientists were supposed to be sceptical, so rebranded 'deniers' with the obvious holocaust connotations.

It's nothing new, just this generation's take on McCarthyism

[BigSLitleP]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

"It's happened with Brexit, ie those that voted leave are automatically assumed old, white, stupid racists, not libertarians like say, Terry Christian. "

When polled, the majority of Brexit voters were White OAPs with poor educational backgrounds. I'm not going to bandy about "racist", that's a lot harder to prove and doesn't add anything to the conversation. From my point of view, libertarianism is one of the dumbest things to come about in recent years. The fact that you don't understand climate change puts you quite squarely in the demographic for all the above.

When the shoe fits....

Also, "this generation's take on McCarthyism"? Really? That shows you didn't live through that particular time period.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

From my point of view, libertarianism is one of the dumbest things to come about in recent years.

You prefer authoritairianism? Isn't that.. a bit facist?

The fact that you don't understand climate change puts you quite squarely in the demographic for all the above.

Oh, I suspect I understand it a whole lot better than you do.. But then we're not really supposed to understand it, just accept it, and all the social & political changes that come packaged with it.. And of course if you dare challenge or question it, the useful idiots will try to shout you down. A bit like Obama, who once used the '97%' meme without understanding where that came from.

Also, "this generation's take on McCarthyism"? Really? That shows you didn't live through that particular time period.

Neither did most of the useful idiots using identical tactics to denounce and deplatform their political opponents. Even dusting off some of the original material, ie it was Russia's fault Clinton didn't win, not problems with the Democrat's chosen candidate. Come 2020, it'll be different! Biden's the perfect candidate to represent those ordinary Americans.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

"From my point of view, libertarianism is one of the dumbest things to come about in recent years."

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Keep in mind that true libertarianism is to minimize government intervention into your life, not eliminate it. So a true libertarian would also believe that everyone should mind his OWN business, live and let live, and NOT be a pain in the butt to the rest of society (like imposing his "rights" upon others, getting all bent over use of pronouns or "offensive" terms, demanding all of society bend to political correctness, yotta yotta).

In other words, I think libertarianism is that natural human state when people are behaving in a SANE manner. Laws and regulations are only necessary to prevent abuses. when INSTEAD they become "impose the will of the ruler upon the ruled", such laws should be ELIMINATED. This is what libertarianism is all about.

It assumes that people are basically decent law abiding citizens who want the best for their own lives and the lives of their family. It assumes that people will behave and work towards their own bests interests when the consequences for bad behavior have NOT been eliminated nor the bad behavior excused. It also assumes that crime should be punished, that regulations should be enforced, and that society is more orderly when a minimal amount of regulation is present to ensure it.

Anything other than what I just said, unless I forgot something important, isn't libertarianism. It's something else, like anarchy or liberalism or social activism. Or maybe it's just the pot-heads wanting legal marijuana, and not caring about anything else. Whatever. Those people are LOONS anyway.

So yeah it might help to understand what libertarianism really is BEFORE saying it's "unintelligent" or "the dumbest thing" etc.. Because, chances are, you actually want what I just described...

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

In other words, I think libertarianism is that natural human state when people are behaving in a SANE manner. Laws and regulations are only necessary to prevent abuses. when INSTEAD they become "impose the will of the ruler upon the ruled", such laws should be ELIMINATED. This is what libertarianism is all about.

It's why fans of big government don't like libertarians. It would create mass unemployment, even if that meant some 'liberal' US states might avoid bankruptcy due to unfunded pension liabilities. It's also true for 'real' anarchy, ie do what you want as long as it doesn't intefere with anyone else's life. Governments love interfering, so hate libertarianism and anarchy.. They are very much the self-preservation society, and the (anti-)social media platforms are just a way to maintain that order.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Alt Right is PC for Rascist, lets call them racist to be clear

I don't think you fully understand this.

If you were to spend time reading alt-right posts on various boards, maybe 4chan's "/pol" (which is not pure alt-right, but has a lot of alt-right in it) you'll see that many (or even most) people just say what they want for the shock value (or trolling). But sometimes a regular poster goes full-blown wacko IRL (it's happened a couple of times).

On youtube, I doubt you'll see more than the occasional pretenders and wannabes. The _real_ wackos end up arrested and make the 5PM news. Fortunately, not so many of those.

In My Bombastic Opinion, Alt-right is really just a reaction to the left's PC BULLYING. It'll stop when it's no longer "shocking". And when the trolling no longer works.

[sum_of_squares]

So basically the key findings are:

1) People don't get radical overnight. Instead they start to find a topic interesting and dig deeper.

2) The YouTube algorithm does exactly what it is intended to do: guessing what people want to see next.

That's a click bait study if I ever saw one..

[BigSLitleP]

Objectively, you're kinda right. I think it's more the algorithm is very aggressive about it. I watched a video on a particular stupid british white supremacist that has quite a large following. The next video it showed me was a Polish video of one of their far right political parties, saying that muslims needed to be kicked out of the country because white Polish were fighting for their identity.

That's a big leap and I personally (with absolutely no evidence apart from one anecdote!) think that may be the issue.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

That's really stupid.

What it should have done is shown you a video for the brands most often bought by viewers of the British facist

YouTube exists to make money for us shareholders, not to serve the needs of its customers

[bombastic bob]

"click bait"

a nice summary of alt-right. good job!

[Michael Wojcik]

That's a click bait study if I ever saw one

Sigh.

There are widespread claims¹ that YouTube radicalizes some users. Those claims are generally poorly supported. This study seeks to provide evidence, using a documented methodology,² for or against that thesis.

That's valuable regardless of whether the thesis is correct. That's how research works: we find a question that's of interest to an audience, and we then we try to find evidence supporting one or another answer to that question.

Maybe you think the answer is obvious. Well, guess what, Sunshine: your opinion isn't worth any more than those of the other people making unsupported claims about the matter, and probably less than some. On the other hand, here we have some people who actually put some work into answering it. So perhaps you should have a little respect for what they've done.³

¹OK, here's a citation.

²Whether the methodology is sound is a separate question.

³But you won't, will you? Because being a superior know-it-all ass is par for Reg commentators.

[sum_of_squares]

My former text was too long.

Consider the following facts:

- "Correlation does not imply causation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)

- Reliability: The internal reliability of the study seems pretty bad (i.e. no randomization at all and there are other likely explanations for this relationship), the external reliability is unclear (is this related to YouTube users only?).

- Can they replicate it?

- Do they have a comparison group? (i.e. did they check if "YouTube left-wing people" become more left? Or did they compare against non-YouTube right-wing people?)

- Validity: Did they measure "YouTube makes you more radical" or just "Video platforms makes you more radical" or simply "the internet makes you more radical"?

So many unclear questions. So no, I don't have too much respect for studies only because they throw data together. If people would be more careful with what they claim then this world would be a better place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be interesting to see this study on the Far Left, but I doubt that will happen

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I've been radicalized by TheRegister.co.uk

I've ditched any and all social media accounts, installed Linux on my laptop and have just compiled an installable zip of Lineage OS with the latest security updates for my phone.

[LeeLynx]

Re: I think I've been radicalized by TheRegister.co.uk

I, for one, welcome our new electric-cattle-prod-wielding masters.

[Baldrickk]

I'm not really sure that we can really point the finger at YouTube too much here.

Think about it this way - take a video - any video, on any topic. For the purposes of discussion, lets use... an introduction to cross-stiching.

Now, we need to come up with suggestions for other videos a viewer of this video will watch.

We end up with a pool of similar videos, some "a little lighter" and some "a bit more intense".

User quite likes this topic, so eventually, they'll end up clicking on that "Advanced cross-stiching tips and tricks" video.

Now, we present similar videos to this one... again, some a little lighter, and some a bit more intense. Eventually, they'll click on the link to "cross stitching tricks to impress your friends" - now we're getting somewhere. This is a bit heavier, and the suggested videos are all from a "darker" suggestion pool than the first.

Now, not all viewers will reach that level, and will take different times to get there, but you can follow a chain to reach the more "edgy" content.

Trying to stop this would be actively preventing people from finding certain viewpoints, which would be censorship - probably not where we want to go.

[Jellied Eel]

I'm not really sure that we can really point the finger at YouTube too much here.

It's their fault for radicalising people! Their algorithms are designed for that purpose, which kinda gets bad if someone's browsing history is taken into consideration for investigations/prosecutions/vetting etc etc.

Think about it this way - take a video - any video, on any topic. For the purposes of discussion, lets use... an introduction to cross-stiching.

Now, we need to come up with suggestions for other videos a viewer of this video will watch.

Which is where Google's f'ng useless. So I have 18 'recommended' videos in my browser. Generally they're the same videos every time I check. So for whatever reason, it throws up one about cross-stitching. If I have no interest in that subject, I can't tell YT to recommend me something else. If you click on a 'recommended' video, YT's AlGorithm will think you want even more videos on the same subject 'recommended' to you.. which gets really f'ng annoying.

Ok, so was a lot worse a couple of weeks ago when YT decided I really wanted a much smaller selection of recommendations & decided to use a thumb-friendly/large thumbnail template, which was also really f'ng annoying when I have 3x30" monitors..

Now, not all viewers will reach that level, and will take different times to get there, but you can follow a chain to reach the more "edgy" content.

Or you can use bias to try to navigate people away from 'edgy' content towards Google-approved and ideologically sound content. If they try to subvert this re-conditioning, then obviously those people are up to no good..

[Kiwi]

If I have no interest in that subject, I can't tell YT to recommend me something else.

On Android, and I assume on a logged-in PC, there's a mechanism (via a form of 'hamburger menu' IIRC) to mark a video as "not interested".

I've found when I strayed into dash-cam territory that it can be effective in getting that genre out of the recommendations fairly quickly.

(Logging in to YT or other google 'services' is NOT something I recommend one does lightly - tor on top of 3 layers of vpn, using a computer that's already atop a nice pile of thermite is close to safe)

[Rudolph Hucker the Third]

As Titania McGrath has already and eloquently Tweeted, the best way to defend Democracy and Free Speech is to block Popularist voting and ban any opinions we disagree with. Otherwise "bad people" get listened to. And don't get sucked into the oxymoron of everything being alt-right (if you are alt-left).

[Anonymous Coward]

I think radicalizing is being overused

One mans radicalization is anothers 'being told the truth about the world and the way it works and getting angry about the engrained injustice and imbalance and wanting to do something about fixing it'. Like those crazy amnesty, greenpeace, and XR radicals.

[amanfromMars 1]

The Military Frankenstein Monster Wants to Play Against the Barbra Streisand Effect

What could possibly go wrong, other than everything further collapsing much more quickly than before .... when the beast is discovered and uncovered as an impotent illiterate paper tiger and fatally wounded mad dog bull in a china shop in the Total Information Awareness Space ...... https://www.rt.com/usa/467836-darpa-deepfakes-disinfo-malicious-dissent/

Smarter Competition and Effective Virtual Opposition will welcome their enemies own identification of troublesome unbeatable memes and themes to reinforce and deeper employ.

[Steve Graham]

It's deliberate

I don't retain cookies between sessions, so if I visit YouTube, it's as a virgin user. And the "recommended for you" videos often include right-wing propaganda. There was even a period when Stephen Yaxley-Dickhead's "Tommy Robinson" entire channel of racist bullshit was recommended. Then there was one of medical expert Doctor Jacob Rees-Muppet "being clever" that came up all the time.

Obviously, Youtube promotes paid content. And obviously, the far-right movements pay to get people onto the radicalizing escalator.

[DCFusor]

Re: It's deliberate

If you think cookies are the only way they know it's you, you have one heck of a lot to learn about big data's gathering techniques.

[dwieske]

and so it happens that el reg turns into another fake-news-rag, in fact it it clear it radicalises to the left, as was illustrated by a hilarious article in the NYT where a moderate moved slightly right (oh the horror), to end up being a leftwind extremist....

[dwieske]

posting garbage conclusions from garbage research using nonsensical methodology = fake news

seriously, wtf is up at the register????? you would expect the reg to EXPOSE the absolute nonsense behind this "research" as it has been exposed by other journalists already.... (tim pool eg.)

[BuckeyeB]

The Problem Here

The problem is that they are lumping in right wing with ALT-Right, which have nothing to do with each other. The ALT-Right's philosophies are more in line with leftist philosophies than with conservative ones. So they end up blocking mainstream conservative content and calling it ALT-Right. That's the reason for all the controversy about this.