This post should also make people realize how powerful youtube and tech monopolies became.
By changing their recommendation algorithms, they can change the way a whole society thinks! Just look at the recommendation from the blog: "Recommend more round-earth videos".
So far, this extreme political power has been used without the platforms managing it, but it would only make sense for all of those platforms to use it in their advantage.
All the more reason to bake user control into the legal-and-technical architecture of systems like this with structures like the Platform Coop. Communities impacted by media platforms need levers of control over them.
I would like for these centralized platforms decentralized re recommendations. I can picture an API that anyone can use, that would enable third parties to design recommendation algorithms for YouTube. Right now, YouTube is in charge, because they have all of the user data, so you have to go with their algorithm. A sort of "marketplace" for recommendation algos -- some explicitly marketed towards different genres, personality styles, politics, etc.
Right now it's just a tremendous black box, although it works well most of the time ime.
By changing their recommendation algorithms, they can change the way a whole society thinks! Just look at the recommendation from the blog: "Recommend more round-earth videos".
So far, this extreme political power has been used without the platforms managing it, but it would only make sense for all of those platforms to use it in their advantage.
reply