Stop Blaming the Algorithm: Youtube is Curated Content.
16 June 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube is not a meritocracy; success is neither the result of an algorithm nor random "good fortune"; unless you already know to seek out a particular creator yourself, what you see (and what you don't see) on youtube is, simply, curated content.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
what I see happening on YouTube today is
illustrated very well by this photograph now how did I even find this photograph I don't play any of these video games none of this is part of my life I don't own a Nintendo switch but the one video you see there that got 27,000 views in less than two days that video was recommended to me by YouTube and there were no politics involved here that's not a political issue and there's nothing sexy about the video or its thumbnail it doesn't have a it's not like this one video has a woman in a bikini in it and there are no other factors here okay why was this video advertised to me I've never seen this channel before I've never heard this guy's name before it wasn't a paid advertisement why did this appear on the front page of YouTube for me and not any of his other videos one of the strangest and most persistent myths on the Internet is the idea that success arises spontaneously and anonymously that can happen to anyone at any time sort of like lightning striking you when you walk through a field and obviously in a subjective and emotional sense it must sometimes feel this way somebody uploads a video when it it just seems that for no reason at all becomes a smash yet it's become very common both in the political critique of YouTube and in the sort of positive celebration of YouTube to claim that videos rising to public prominence is the result of an algorithm a depersonalized automatic computational system of numbers programmed into a computer somewhere I'd invite you just pause for a minute before we go further in this video and reflect on how rarely in your own life you used to use the word algorithm just a few years ago people started saying this all the time about the internet now not everything on the internet is created and controlled by an impersonal algorithm a very large part of what we perceive and Seve on the internet is curated content and that just means a human being somewhere in an office sitting at a computer made the decision about what would and would not appear in your Facebook feed in your Twitter feed on the front page of YouTube right and I think that we're all playing a game of collective self-deception in imagining that these things are decided by an algorithm now really brief parallelism to what's going on in YouTube today there was a pretty short period maybe two years maximum when the website tumblr was really popping was really popular I would say it was maybe even six months when it was really super super successful and in tumblr there were a number of hashtags they didn't they don't really operate the same way as a hashtag on Twitter or they didn't at that time when you put in a Tash tag at that time on the website you would get a category and then a listing of new things being posted to that category and one of them was like humor another one was a black-and-white just for black-and-white photography and what I found out to my surprise that looked into it was that many of these hashtags were curated and they had an active program whereby there be just one or two employees of the company who would then select people just normal people use the the website they would select people to be curators on a volunteer basis so basically you started off with just a couple members of staff who would then reach out to people who seemed to show good taste or good judgment website say hey would you mind if we give you this role just like being a moderator and you can then nominate or post things to this hashtag so it appears so I was really intrigued by this and I started looking into it and of course what I found was that most people believe this was meritocracy most people believed that if you made a joke and it appeared in the humor hashtag and then many thousands of people saw it or at least many hundreds of people saw did this really reflected some on your part with the joke and of course many people had this view that it was just like lightning striking in the middle of a field that it was something random and unexpected now 27 thousand views in two days is a lot of views but it's really significant to note that the number of views he has in the videos before and after are dramatically lower just about 1,000 people 1,200 people so on and so forth right and if you take a look at this his lowest performing videos per video with the fewest views of a week ago that gives you a sense of the size of his core audience so how many people will watch every video he uploads assuming it's a kind of normal video that's on topic only 675 works so I'm not saying this to criticize the guy at all I'm nothing against him nothing against this channel okay there is no way I can look at this channel and think that it's a quote unquote organic phenomenon there's no way I can look at this channel and think that it's a kind of spontaneous or random phenomenon one that this this particular video just one of his videos in this series got 27,000 views in less than two days whereas all the other videos he's put up for for more than a month before that so we're looking here at a month worth of uploads that they're all just reaching small numbers of viewers right and then there's one video sensor and moreover this one video appears on the front page my front page when I'm using YouTube I have never played zelda breath of the WHA never in my life I have never owned a Nintendo switch I've never used a Nintendo switch there's no reason why this one video would appear for me and if if in general his channel were doing well in terms of the so-called algorithm this impersonal automatic system of computing numbers then one of those other videos would have shown up on my on my feet before I would have would have seen on the front page before so I think we live in an era when people have a bit of a comforting delusion that the difference between success and failure here on YouTube is either some kinds of some kind of in trends personal merit or is just random like lightning striking that there's an algorithm there's a there's a you know magical machine that's crunching numbers and selecting these videos on an unknown and impersonal basis on my channel I think I think in the history of this channel I have only once had a video go above 100,000 views and this is the suspicious part that video went over a hundred thousand views instantly like in just a couple of days huge number of viewers right away my channel is very small there's no organic explanation for that the other videos have had that had many many views like more than ten thousand views I could see that it was organic I could see the process of people finding the view and it took time to give an example I have a video that gave advice on how to do well on an intelligence test specific intelligence test and the link was first shared on one discussion forum and a few people came and then it was sure but in another discussion forum and at first you got some negative feedback people didn't like the video and then over time people shared the link Pete other people were writing the test it was consistently gaining an audience but not not overnight I could see that was organic from person to person okay YouTube is not a meritocracy and it's not the product of a mindless algorithm when you come on YouTube you are looking at curated content the advertisements that appear to you on Facebook in your feed likewise are not random sure there's some role for an algorithm in in making the work of employees at Facebook more efficient so they can employ a smaller number of people and they can make the decisions more rapidly and so on and so forth sure but when we're looking at success on YouTube now when we're looking at videos that get tens of thousands of views in shorter time that just happen to appear on the front page of YouTube it's not happening right human beings are making those decisions and sometimes sometimes they're making those decisions for political reasons I do believe that in the case of Faraday speaks who's a nice guy I think his one video went viral the first video he uploaded when he had zero followers on YouTube I believe that went viral I believe that was promoted and it appeared on my on my front page appeared on so many polls from page I believe that was promoted initially as an intentional decision made by some editor some curator at YouTube the same way an editor of a newspaper chooses an article to put it some friends on the front page and they did that because it had a political message that was about YouTube they wanted to promote in my video my video that went to over a hundred thousand views so quickly so suspiciously that video also had a specific message about YouTube a message that YouTube wanted to promote [Music]
illustrated very well by this photograph now how did I even find this photograph I don't play any of these video games none of this is part of my life I don't own a Nintendo switch but the one video you see there that got 27,000 views in less than two days that video was recommended to me by YouTube and there were no politics involved here that's not a political issue and there's nothing sexy about the video or its thumbnail it doesn't have a it's not like this one video has a woman in a bikini in it and there are no other factors here okay why was this video advertised to me I've never seen this channel before I've never heard this guy's name before it wasn't a paid advertisement why did this appear on the front page of YouTube for me and not any of his other videos one of the strangest and most persistent myths on the Internet is the idea that success arises spontaneously and anonymously that can happen to anyone at any time sort of like lightning striking you when you walk through a field and obviously in a subjective and emotional sense it must sometimes feel this way somebody uploads a video when it it just seems that for no reason at all becomes a smash yet it's become very common both in the political critique of YouTube and in the sort of positive celebration of YouTube to claim that videos rising to public prominence is the result of an algorithm a depersonalized automatic computational system of numbers programmed into a computer somewhere I'd invite you just pause for a minute before we go further in this video and reflect on how rarely in your own life you used to use the word algorithm just a few years ago people started saying this all the time about the internet now not everything on the internet is created and controlled by an impersonal algorithm a very large part of what we perceive and Seve on the internet is curated content and that just means a human being somewhere in an office sitting at a computer made the decision about what would and would not appear in your Facebook feed in your Twitter feed on the front page of YouTube right and I think that we're all playing a game of collective self-deception in imagining that these things are decided by an algorithm now really brief parallelism to what's going on in YouTube today there was a pretty short period maybe two years maximum when the website tumblr was really popping was really popular I would say it was maybe even six months when it was really super super successful and in tumblr there were a number of hashtags they didn't they don't really operate the same way as a hashtag on Twitter or they didn't at that time when you put in a Tash tag at that time on the website you would get a category and then a listing of new things being posted to that category and one of them was like humor another one was a black-and-white just for black-and-white photography and what I found out to my surprise that looked into it was that many of these hashtags were curated and they had an active program whereby there be just one or two employees of the company who would then select people just normal people use the the website they would select people to be curators on a volunteer basis so basically you started off with just a couple members of staff who would then reach out to people who seemed to show good taste or good judgment website say hey would you mind if we give you this role just like being a moderator and you can then nominate or post things to this hashtag so it appears so I was really intrigued by this and I started looking into it and of course what I found was that most people believe this was meritocracy most people believed that if you made a joke and it appeared in the humor hashtag and then many thousands of people saw it or at least many hundreds of people saw did this really reflected some on your part with the joke and of course many people had this view that it was just like lightning striking in the middle of a field that it was something random and unexpected now 27 thousand views in two days is a lot of views but it's really significant to note that the number of views he has in the videos before and after are dramatically lower just about 1,000 people 1,200 people so on and so forth right and if you take a look at this his lowest performing videos per video with the fewest views of a week ago that gives you a sense of the size of his core audience so how many people will watch every video he uploads assuming it's a kind of normal video that's on topic only 675 works so I'm not saying this to criticize the guy at all I'm nothing against him nothing against this channel okay there is no way I can look at this channel and think that it's a quote unquote organic phenomenon there's no way I can look at this channel and think that it's a kind of spontaneous or random phenomenon one that this this particular video just one of his videos in this series got 27,000 views in less than two days whereas all the other videos he's put up for for more than a month before that so we're looking here at a month worth of uploads that they're all just reaching small numbers of viewers right and then there's one video sensor and moreover this one video appears on the front page my front page when I'm using YouTube I have never played zelda breath of the WHA never in my life I have never owned a Nintendo switch I've never used a Nintendo switch there's no reason why this one video would appear for me and if if in general his channel were doing well in terms of the so-called algorithm this impersonal automatic system of computing numbers then one of those other videos would have shown up on my on my feet before I would have would have seen on the front page before so I think we live in an era when people have a bit of a comforting delusion that the difference between success and failure here on YouTube is either some kinds of some kind of in trends personal merit or is just random like lightning striking that there's an algorithm there's a there's a you know magical machine that's crunching numbers and selecting these videos on an unknown and impersonal basis on my channel I think I think in the history of this channel I have only once had a video go above 100,000 views and this is the suspicious part that video went over a hundred thousand views instantly like in just a couple of days huge number of viewers right away my channel is very small there's no organic explanation for that the other videos have had that had many many views like more than ten thousand views I could see that it was organic I could see the process of people finding the view and it took time to give an example I have a video that gave advice on how to do well on an intelligence test specific intelligence test and the link was first shared on one discussion forum and a few people came and then it was sure but in another discussion forum and at first you got some negative feedback people didn't like the video and then over time people shared the link Pete other people were writing the test it was consistently gaining an audience but not not overnight I could see that was organic from person to person okay YouTube is not a meritocracy and it's not the product of a mindless algorithm when you come on YouTube you are looking at curated content the advertisements that appear to you on Facebook in your feed likewise are not random sure there's some role for an algorithm in in making the work of employees at Facebook more efficient so they can employ a smaller number of people and they can make the decisions more rapidly and so on and so forth sure but when we're looking at success on YouTube now when we're looking at videos that get tens of thousands of views in shorter time that just happen to appear on the front page of YouTube it's not happening right human beings are making those decisions and sometimes sometimes they're making those decisions for political reasons I do believe that in the case of Faraday speaks who's a nice guy I think his one video went viral the first video he uploaded when he had zero followers on YouTube I believe that went viral I believe that was promoted and it appeared on my on my front page appeared on so many polls from page I believe that was promoted initially as an intentional decision made by some editor some curator at YouTube the same way an editor of a newspaper chooses an article to put it some friends on the front page and they did that because it had a political message that was about YouTube they wanted to promote in my video my video that went to over a hundred thousand views so quickly so suspiciously that video also had a specific message about YouTube a message that YouTube wanted to promote [Music]